Marcos may change textbooks with wrong info on martial law
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he may change textbooks that contained wrong information about the history of the country during his father's term during martial law.
"Only if they’re wrong. It's factual. You can check facts. Let’s talk about facts, not political opinion. What are the things that actually did happen? That we can show, we can prove. You can see. We have video, we have photographs, we have records. This actually happened," Marcos said when asked if he is going to change the textbook about his father's martial law rule in an interview with TV host Toni Gonzaga on Tuesday.
Marcos said former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. declared martial law in 1972 because of war on two fronts in the country.
"And that is the, in the countryside, the NPA, CPP-NPA was fomenting revolution. They wanted to bring down the government through violent means. The government had to defend itself. The second front was the secessionist movement down in the South led by MNLF and Chairman Nur Misuari at the time. He started that uprising, the secessionist movement and that eventually turned into violence and essentially war that was even supported… That’s the reason that my mother went to Libya because Libya was supporting the separatist movements here in the Philippines," he said
"Those were the dangers and the perils that the country was facing. Most people do not realize the communist rebels, how close they came to Manila and how close they came to large urban centers and slowly gained control. And that’s why it was necessary to ? in my father’s view at the time ? to declare martial law because there was really a war," he added.
Marcos said such information was not written in the history textbook of martial law since it was written by the "victors" or those who ousted his father.
"The victors write history, don’t they? It is the victors in a conflict that will write the history. The government fell. So the victors wrote this history. And that’s what you were ? that’s what is being taught in school and that’s what you heard and learned," he said.
"Those reasons were expounded at great length during my father’s time. But of course it was polarized. The enemy is the one who writes the history. That is what happened. That is why that is what the people know," he added.
Marcos did not deny that there were abuses during martial law. However, he also expressed the belief that there is no reason to revise history.
"I don’t know what historical revision ? there’s nothing that we say about the… We recognize the problems that happened, the abuses that occurred like in any war. All of these things are some things that are already part of history," he said.
"We have no, there’s no reason to revise history," he added. Robina Asido/DMS
