Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 21) — The National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) will need a bigger 2024 budget to fight the growing disinformation about martial law in both printed and online realms, an official said.
During the plenary debates on the proposed 2024 budget at the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman asked the commission if it was aware of the \”concerted campaign to distort and revise the truth and the reality of the martial law regime on its gross repression and inordinate plunder.\”
\”Yes, Mr. Speaker, the agency is very much aware especially of the disinformation that’s being peddled online, and that’s why it’s amping up its efforts to be able to produce all of these research materials which admittedly would need even more augmentation on the part of the Congress in terms of its budgetary allocation,\” Pangasinan Rep. Christopher de Venecia said.
De Venecia, the NHCP’s budget sponsor and who speaks on behalf of the agency, said the budget augmentation would allow the agency to produce materials and mainstream these to the general public through different modalities such as physical and online copies.
The commission originally requested ₱452 million for next year but the Department of Budget and Management only approved ₱250 million under the proposed 2024 budget — lower than its ₱335 million funding for this year.
Under its proposed spending program for next year, the NHCP will allocate ₱57.010 million to its historical commemoration and promotion program, which is ₱45,000 less than the current year’s budget.
Aside from this, De Venecia said the NHCP is addressing the issue of historical distortion with its National Memory Project, an online platform launched in August that stores digitized materials concerning Philippine history at both national and local levels.
\”The atrocities and plunder of Marcos Sr.’s martial law regime and the sacrifices and heroism of its victims and survivors must never be allowed to be swept under the rug of distortion and historical revisionism,\” Lagman said.
\”We cannot move forward together without looking back,\” the lawmaker added. \”The ignominy of the past will forever hound the present if we attempt to consign to oblivion the inordinate transgressions and flagrant misrule of the martial law regime.\”
The late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law on Sept. 21, 1972, but was only declared to the nation via broadcast two days later.
‘ ’10’: ‘contentWidth’: ‘100%’ ’embedCode’: ‘