Vice President Leni Robredo on Monday urged Filipinos to “hold firm to the truth” of the Martial law and dictatorship to prevent the people from falling into such despair again.
“Our task is to push back against these lies at every instant,” Robredo said in her message for this year’s Martial law anniversary.
During the Martial law years, Robredo recalled how many individuals were abused and killed and how the institutions of society crumbled. “These truths know no political color, but come starkly in the black and white of our lived experience as a nation,” she said.
Despite the efforts of some quarters to revise history, Robredo said that there should be no debates that these horrific events did happen. “Those who attempt to tell us otherwise are not only merely telling a supposed version of the story: they are lying to our faces, stealing our truths from us, stealing our stories because without these truths and stories, we will be further divided.”
Now more than ever, Robredo stressed the need to tell the stories of Martial Law and dictatorship “over and over so that this generation, and the ones that come after, may be bound tighter through remembering.”
Robredo also underscored the importance of holding firm to the truth of this “painful chapter of our history, and through this, forge the determination to never again” let this happen. “We must do this because, ultimately, our national aspirations can only be as strong as our national memory,” she added.
Remembering the lessons of Martial Law and dictatorship under former President Ferdinand Marcos, Robredo said, is very timely as the country grapples with another series of tests and challenges. “In a time when divisiveness is the norm and the gaps in society continue to widen, it is essential that we strive to find more spaces of commonality,” she said.
Robredo highlighted the importance of not only looking forward to a shared horizon “where our shared dreams may come to fruition” but equally importantly, by looking back. “We do this by telling our stories, and by asserting the truths that bind us together as one people, with one history,” she said.