This is but the beginning of a reckoning. As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law, the Filipino people pledges its unwavering decision to resist the illegitimate rule of the junior Marcos and bring the family to long-delayed justice. There will be no rest for Bongbong Marcos and his thieving murdering family whose crimes against the people remain unpunished up to this day.

In the Cordilleras, the indigenous peoples’ struggles for the right to self-determination during the Marcos years still hold unmatched importance to the minorities. The resistance mounted by those that came before continues to inspire the present legal and underground mass movement in the region and elsewhere. The hamlets, forced evacuation, including the 1984 Abra massacre that killed a a child, pregnant woman and another adult, these are all still etched in the collective memory of the people of Cordillera. The calls for justice and reparation ring loud and true today like never before.

Little did Marcos II know that when he lied and cheated his way back to Malacañang, he was setting himself up for their greater fall. Their family’s return to the highest office in the land only serves to further enrage the people who has long awaited justice and is now forced to suffer from another Marcos presidency. Like rubbing salt to the wounds of the past, his ascension as reactionary president while continuing to deny accountability further pushes the people to action and revolution.

It is unsurprising that apologists, enablers and a new slew of cronies are calling for the people to ‘move on’ as if not 3,000 individuals died during Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship from 1972 to 1981 and even up to the succeeding years, as if the 70,000 illegally detained and 34,000 tortured during that era survived their ordeals without retaining life-altering traumas, as if the Marcoses’ greed did not cause the theft of Php500 billion from the public coffers and the economy’s fall due to foreign debt. Nobody but those who stand to benefit from the crimes of the Marcoses can have the temerity to issue such a call.

Today, with the Marcoses once again set to run the government like their very own milking cow through corruption and neoliberal collusion, Martial Law seems more like impending reality than a distant memory. Only his own rerun of dictatorship and the support of invested imperialist powers would allow his family to loot the public coffers for a second time.

But the Filipino people are prepared for a rerun of their own valiant resistance as well, with the benefit of lessons gleaned from the horrors of Martial Law. In fact, the struggle against dictatorship never stopped and will never stop until the Marcoses are held accountable. Be it through extralegal action or armed struggle, there will be revolutionary justice for the Filipino people. ###

Never again and never forget! Hold the Marcoses accountable for their crimes!

Resist the illegitimate rule of Marcos II!

Advance the armed revolution! Join the New People’s Army!