It did not slit throats nor pay mercenaries to gun down its foes a la Sopranos, but it destroyed many lives and ruined many a fortune. Of course, some kind of "cardboard indictment" was also used. The victims of the purge were called "cronies" and "loyalists" at that time - and that entitled the freshly minted Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to sequester acres of land, homes, shares of stock and bank deposits. In very many cases, it was never proved that all that was sequestered was in fact "ill-gotten" - another label of opprobrium and of shame. But when most of what you own is sequestered because you wear the scarlet letter of a "crony", you are, for all intents and purposes ruined. You just hit rock-bottom! 


Throughout the country there were fabulous buildings and extravagant edifices - all supposedly constructed on orders of Madame Imelda Marcos, known for her expensive taste! Many of these were sealed off by the PCGG - and listed as sequestered. In an evident show of how wasteful vengeance can be, and how mindless really, no matter the cunning and calculation that can sometimes go into it, none of these sequestered blocks and parcels of real estate ever benefited the people in whose behalf they were taken away from their owners. They were rather left to fall into disrepair, a victim of the elements and a testament to the pointlessness of vengeance!


The Bagong Lipunan Lodges are a good example. On either end of the winding and scenic viaduct along Patapat - that spans the distance between northern Cagayan and the northern arc of Ilocos Norte - was a beautiful Bagong Lipunan Lodge, each with a swimming pool. Their ruins remain to this day - a stark reminder of how one can be so unrighteous when one is so convinced of one's righteousness and the irremediable sinfulness of one's opponents. And this is true of so much that was sequestered in the name of the glorious "people's revolution".


But it was the same despised Imelda who gave us the Cultural Center, the Philippine International Convention Center, the Folk Arts Theater and other structures of which we remain rightfully proud today, even if we often lack the cleverness to give them the tending and the care they need to remain things of beauty. What there is, is a begrudging acceptance that it is good that we have them - accompanied by an implacable dislike for her who caused them all to be!


Vengeance gets us nowhere, and what it seems to achieve is always paid for at so high a price that, in the end, if we have the good sense born of humility, we should awaken to the realization that it is utterly pointless, fruitless and just stupid!


Sources: 

<ol class="article-sources">
<li>
The wastefulness of vengeance by Fr. Ranhilio Aquino, September 27, 2016 (<a href="https://goo.gl/RBVuIT" class="news_link" target="_blank" title="Source">Manila Standard</a>)
</li>
</ol>



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Cory's PCGG - a story of the wastefulness of vengeance