CCP Tribute to Imelda Marcos Draws Flak

Published on September 12, 2009

In a separate statement, ACT national chairman Antonio Tinio noted that the Arroyo government has been persistent in its efforts to pay tribute to Imelda as a “patron of the arts.”

Tinio recalled that in September 2008, the Department of Education’s Center for Students and Co-Curricular Affairs invited Imelda to speak before hundreds of high-school student leaders at a conference in Baguio, where she was honored for her “contribution to Philippine culture and arts.”

“Why is this government using public funds and mobilizing resources to honor the surviving member of the conjugal dictatorship that robbed the Filipino people of their democratic rights and stands accused of plundering billions from the public treasury? Hitler was a known patron of the arts, but we don’t see the German government holding a gala night for him,” added Tinio.

“We condemn the Arroyo administration’s efforts to rehabilitate the image, social standing, and place in history of Imelda Marcos. As educators we are concerned about teaching future generations the right lessons from our past. Honoring Marcos is not the way to do it,” he added.

The Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) said that the Filipino people have nothing to thank Imelda, even for establishing the CCP.

“It is precisely when the institution transcends its origins as an extravagant, elitist and insensitive undertaking of a tyrannical regime that the CCP has its finest moments. Only an equally corrupt, fascist and puppet power clique like the Arroyo power circle can ever be obliged to pay tribute to a paragon of corruption, repression and moribund politics that Imelda is,” the CAP said.

The group actively joined other cause-oriented organizations in overthrowing the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.

CAP said further that the CCP tribute to Imelda is “another bleak manifestation of the festering crisis in Philippine culture and the arts.”

“It highlights once again that the dominance of fascist, feudal and colonial culture remains in our society, to the benefit of the utterly corrupt and intolerably oppressive like Imelda Marcos and the Arroyo regime, and to the detriment of justice, freedom, democracy and dignity for our people,” the CAP said. (Bulatlat.com)

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