Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 26) — As the country celebrated National Heroes’ Day on Monday, Senator Imee Marcos revealed an information that she said “will shock most Filipinos”: the country, officially, has no heroes.
“Little do most Filipinos know that ever since the Philippines gained independence, the government has never officially proclaimed who our national heroes really are, even if it has been taught as early as grade school that the likes of Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio are among them,” Marcos said in a statement.
The senator said the Philippine National Heroes Committee officially recommended the likes of Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Aguinaldo, Apolinario Mabini, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Sultan Dipatuan Kudarat, Juan Luna, Melchora Aquino, and Gabriela Silang to be called heroes in 1995.
The issue, however, “deteriorated into a debate involving regional interests that never was resolved,” she pointed out.
According to her, the only bill that sought to proclaim a national hero was filed in 2014 by Bohol congressman Rene Relampagos, seeking to declare Rizal as such. The proposal has remained pending at the committee on revision of laws as of January 2017, Marcos said.
“What we only have are implied heroes, despite having official dates for their commemoration,” she said.
Marcos called for the inclusion of Macario Sakay in the roster of Filipino heroes.
Sakay among the Filipinos who established the Tagalog Republic and fought against Spanish and American colonizers during the early part of the 20th century.
“Sakay’s negative image as a bandit was just black propaganda contrived by American colonial authorities who found it hard to subdue him,” Marcos said.
She added that the betrayal of Sakay by a fellow Filipino to effect his surrender to the Americans should be taught in history class.
Marcos is the daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani in 2016 after a highly-protested ruling by the Supreme Court.
Her family is also accused of revising history to conceal the rights abuses and corruption during her father’s regime.
