By Lorraine Marie T. Badoy

They claim they’re scandalized by what the Vice President (VP) said. They think she went beyond the pale by threatening to dig up the Marcos carcass and throwing it to the WPS. How she dishonors the dead, they said.

And yet they won’t talk about the series of unfortunate incidents that brought the Vice President to this point. Or how the Marcos siblings first dishonored the dead by deprecating the gift of a dignified burial extended to their father by a President of the Republic.

It was as if the VP had just woken up that day and, on a whim, decided that this was what she wanted to do.

They won’t mention how she held her peace for as long as she could and soldiered on supporting this administration by doing a bang-up job at the DepEd, as evidenced by her consistently topping trust and approval surveys for both herself and the Department she headed. At the same time, they went to town trying to decimate her.

Until she no longer could.

They won’t talk about the decades the name ‘Marcos’ wasn’t mentioned as it was spat out with hatred and vitriol by Filipinos. And a political comeback was a near impossibility until they rode on the coattails of the wildly popular Digong Duterte.

They won’t talk about how the cadaver of their father was denied a proper and dignified burial by his enemies and how past presidents bowed before those powerful political forces until then-PRRD came along.

Until then, people lined up  (for a fee!) to get a peek at the freak show that their father had become- mummified remains that lay above ground in a perya-like atmosphere somewhere in the North.

It is an apt metaphor for a country burdened with the specter of the undead dictator who refused to die and continued to divide our nation.

Until Rodrigo Roa Duterte became President.

Risking the significant loss of his huge political capital in the early days of his presidency, PRRD went ahead anyway and allowed the burial of FM Sr- amidst enraged howls of protestations - even from his own supporters (me included) for the simple reason that he is a man of the law and the law gave this entitlement to past presidents (no matter if they turned out to be despots despised by the people.).

And just like that, FM Sr. went from a grotesque character in the theater of the macabre to a dignified figure resting side by side with heroes. It's totally undeserved, in my opinion, but there you are. It happened.

PRRD also laid the gruesome issues about the dictator who overstayed his welcome with the people to rest.

You would think this would cement a political alliance- a reasonable enough expectation for anyone with half his humanity intact- to feel some debt of gratitude for this uncommon act of grace, decency, and political courage extended to them by PRRD.

But no, not the Marcoses. Their prodigious capacity for treachery and their lust for power made all that impossible-as we are now finding out.

The VP’s critics will also not talk about how, from the mouth of his own sister Imee, Bongbong Marcos owes his presidency to Inday Sara Duterte, whose only fault, as it turns out, was her failure to imagine that betrayal and lack of love for the country of the Marcos level could ever exist.  

So she fell for the trap and gave in to the deceitful maneuverings of the sly and Machiavellian Imee Marcos, daughter of her father through and through: a cunning liar and sly manipulator- someone as greedy for power and money as the dead dictator.

They will not talk about the monumental ways this ungrateful family turned the Constitution every which way they could and violated laws of the land wholesale while invading public coffers with the explicit goal of perpetuating themselves in power once again – but not without first destroying Inday Sara by way of a well-funded (billions in taxpayers’ money! Oh the agony!) operations involving media and government agencies themselves.

It is seemingly as evident as the white powdery substance on the Commander-in-Chief’s nasal region during the Araw Ng Kagitingan parade.

Her critics will not talk about the ways the Romualdez-Marcos government weaponizes and perverts Congress and the legislative processes – making legislators their lapdog operators who present their false witnesses to try to pin down the former President and the sitting VP with made-up phantasmagorical tales that only dimwits and cocaine addicts could ever believe.

In the process, they have hijacked an entire country, using government resources not to serve the people but with endless politicking that has brought us to the sorry state we’re in, with poverty and hunger rates in the country at an all-time high and the economy in shambles -a Moody Index rating us as “the most underperforming economy in the region”- coming on the heels of “the most promising economy of the region” under PRRD.

Oh, what an abysmal and cataclysmic fall!

Worse, none of these critics of the VP have had the strength of character to take the principled stand and call out those who have committed all these crimes with great impunity and shamelessness, not just on the VP and the former President but on the Filipino people themselves.

A government ruled by the survival of the most shameless,thick-skinned sycophants.

Has Chiz ever said anything, for instance, about the Maharlika Fund, the anomalous PCSO lottery wins that defy mathematical odds, the stupendous ayuda program that has reduced us to a country of mendicants and zero development projects that empower a nation? Of course not. But how eagerly he comes to the defense of his political backers.

Before these critics get themselves all twisted up, for the record, it is the Marcos progeny themselves who first grossly disrespected their own father by failing to see the priceless gift of a dignified burial given by then President Rodrigo RoaDuterte and then to return this decency to them in kind.

They have also failed to value the gift of Trust given to them by a most Trustworthy woman who, in turn, coaxed the Filipino people to trust BBM.

So before you harrumph all over the place with your flick eyebrows, Chiz, complete your story.

The politics you criticize is the rotten, ill-mannered gutter politics of your patron. And yours as well.

The Marcos family is FINALLY getting what’s due them – and from a public servant with the moral ascendancy to serve this dish whole, scalding hot, fresh off the oven.