Actor-turned-politician Rep. John Marvin "Yul Servo" Nieto has asked the House of Representatives to join him in calling on the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and government to stop removing the images of the country’s national heroes from Philippine bank notes in active circulation.
In House Resolution No. 2415, Servo proposed that both Congress and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines be given the authority to approve any plan to change the design of all peso bills and coins, instead of giving the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas the sole power to make such decision.
HR 2415 seeks to secure the “irreplaceable permanence” the image of national heroes in bank notes.
The Manila lawmaker filed the resolution in the wake of the controversy triggered by the recent BSP decision to circulate new P1,000 bank notes that feature the image of the Philippine eagle.
Aside from the mispelled scientific name of the eagle, what sparked stronger protest was the BSP decision to delete from the P1,000 bill the images of World War II heroes namely, Supreme Court Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos, Brig. Gen. Vicente Lim and civil leader Josefa Llanes Escoda.
All three were Filipino martyrs who were killed by the Japanese army during its occupation of the Philippines during World War II. Llanes-Escoda was presumed to have been executed then buried in an unmarked grave at the La Loma cemetery in Quezon City after she was taken prisoner of the Japanese Army for aiding soldiers captured by the enemy.
Lim, the first Filipino graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, was also executed for leading the resistance movement while Abad Santos, who led the caretaker government, was beheaded for refusing to collaborate with Japan.
Servo recounted that it was during the country’s liberation from the Japanese that Americans brought the currency called the Victory Series No. 66in 1944. Five years later the Central Bank of the Philippines released the English series of bank notes “all bearing portraits of Filipino heroes on the obverse, vignettes in Philippines history on the reverse”.
Since the inception of the Central Bank, national heroes have been featured in bank notes, “serving as a constant reminder for us of the sacrifices that they have done for our independence and freedom, all in the name of our love for our country,” said Servo.
“More than the misspelled scientific name of the Philippine eagle, it is even worse to erase important historical figures of the new bank notes, by doing so, it is as if we are denigrating their significant contribution against the aggressive foreigners who have hur and killed hundreds and thousands of our countryment, focusing on any other than our national heroes is unjustifiable,” the Manila solon stated in the resolution.
He also lamented that Philippine bank notes “are being used in political agenda and propaganda just to please the incumbent administration because of its general circulation to the public.” According to him the BSP and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines should not be given the sole power to “remove the legacy of our national heroes in the Philippine Bank Notes.” Servo argued that any move to redesign peso bills should have the concurrence of Congress and NHCP “because it has a significant relevance and implication in the society and Philippine history.”