Marcos' 2022 Palace win didn't cleanse dad's legacy, says Lagman
President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (left), Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman (Facebook)
Liberal Party (LP) President and Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman said on Saturday, May 6 that it's wrong to think that President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s victory in last year's polls "condoned his father’s dictatorial misrule". Lagman made this statement in the afterglow of Marcos Jr.'s five-day visit to the United States (US) wherein the latter reportedly secured $1.3 billion worth of investment pledges. At the tail end of his US trip, Marcos was interviewed by Reuters and some of his remarks rubbed Lagman the wrong way. "While it is understandable that President Marcos Jr. would downplay the atrocities and pillage during the Marcos Sr. era, it is a grossly mistaken notion that his presidential victory cleansed or condoned his father’s dictatorial misrule," he said. "His victory was principally the result of years of massive disinformation intoning the 'Golden Age' of the martial law regime," claimed the self-styled independent minority congressman. "While we look at the present and the future for economic recovery and moral regeneration, let us not forget the past repressions and plunder lest they are repeated with aggravation and impunity with the people’s blind tolerance," underscored Lagman, who has been critical of the Marcos administration. In the Reuters interview, Marcos Jr. was confronted with allegations that his presidential campaign in the lead up to the May 2022 national elections whitewashed the corruption and extravagance linked to his family when his father, the late former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., was in power. Marcos Jr. responded by saying that it was an "old issue" and that his administration was forward-looking. "A fractured society that continues to fight battles that are 45 years old is selling itself short because it's the future that we're worried about, not the past," he was quoted as saying. Marcos Jr. won the 2022 presidential race via rare majority vote, wherein over 31 million Filipinos picked his name from the ballot.