Mary Baker, who died in Christchurch in March 2022, aged 91, had a very long association with CAFCA, going right back to our early days in the 1970s when we were CAFCINZ. As Marie Venning mentions, below, Mary's working life included being a typist and we were among the groups who took advantage of her skill, offered voluntarily. Back in those days, Watchdog was not the sophisticated-looking publication it is today. All copy had to be typed onto stencils and then the long-suffering Bill Rosenberg printed the issue on his gestetner (now museum pieces, along with stencils. Plus, typists and typewriters are long gone).

Mary was a Watchdog stencil typist. And not a passive one, either. I once discovered, post-publication, that she had altered an article of mine which had been critical of Māori capitalists. When asked why, she replied that only Māori should be able to criticise Māori (I disagreed with her then, and would still do so today). But Mary's involvement with us went way beyond being our typist in the distant past. She was a CAFCA supporter for decades, an actual member for several years in the latter part of her life, and also a regular pledger for years to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my pay.

We worked with Mary and co during the years she was a leading figure in the Catholic Commission for Justice and Development (CCJD). "I've always been very aware that organisations like CAFCA, that they never ever put me wrong, that their material was always good. That's what I found with most of the groups I've been in, that while a lot of people who don't get involved might really argue against you, you can put up facts and figures that come from these groups we've worked with and CAFCA was definitely one of the ones we (CCJD) had small projects with - that their material was always good and researched and I guess I've learned the organisations I trust and that you can rely on to give you good information" (oral history interview with Kathleen Gallagher, 23/2/04) CCJD helped me to make my first visit to the Philippines, in 1987.

For several years in the 1980s and into the 90s Mary was an active member of a group of Catholic, mainly women, peace activists called Ploughshares (not to be confused with the Ploughshares group of male Catholic peace activists who deflated the Waihopai spy base dome in 2008) who held weekly pickets at the US military base at Christchurch Airport, with a religious angle.

She was a peace activist for decades. When she was in her 80s, she came to one of the Anti-Bases Campaign's Waihopai spy base protests. I regarded Mary as a friend and used to regularly ring her for a chat, before she went into a home. RIP, Mary, you were one of the true champions of the people's movement in Christchurch in the second half of the 20th Century.

MARY BAKER

- Marie Venning

On the face of it, Mary Baker was similar to all women of her era. Her whole life could be seen as being that of "the average" Kiwi woman. As a young woman Mary enjoyed life in the way many did in the early 1950s - with a diet of dance, friendships, work, singing, church-going, family, and boy awareness! And sport. She represented her region at basketball (now called netball) and softball. Her life was full and busy.

What made Mary Baker different, when her early life had laid a pattern of conscious or unconscious adherence to our society's norms and expectations? A culture which had a powerful effect on most at that time, a culture which valued conformity and feared dissent? Perhaps it was that Mary's intellect was unfettered by academic interference?

As was the norm, at that time, it was unusual and unexpected for women to go to university - even in the 1950s! And for people of solid working-class background, university was rarely on the horizon. When at Rangiora High School Mary took the Commercial course. Her working life involved typing and office management. Her typing prowess led to her being asked by many to do voluntary work, which she was also good at!

Mary had a sense of her own worth which led her to ask her own questions. She was a thinker. As with the Mary of the Gospel (who'd had an influence on Mary's life) she knew how to ponder. Sometimes her conclusions would lead to some pain and discord but Mary would keep to her convictions. Mary also had "openness" of spirit and mind.

Hence, when she saw a documentary about apartheid South Africa called "Last Grave At Dimbaza", she could cry identifying with the mother-love she had for her own babies. This experience was not blotted out but was allowed to simmer so that, as more awareness of the evils of apartheid came to consciousness personally and collectively, Mary was ready to take an active role.

As the worker for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Development Mary took on the role of Coordinator for the Coalition Against the Tour (the 1981 Springboks' tour). This period of her life is covered in full by David Small (see below). This courageous and well-managed role brought fame and strain to Mary. It certainly took very much energy. In the year following she spent as much time as possible going to the beach to watch the waves as a way of healing herself.

Hated Racism

An eventful event of 1980 was her presence at the Three Nations Hui organised by Kevin Clements of the University of Canterbury's Sociology Department. This was held at Rehua Marae. Every well-known Māori activist was present, plus Aborigine representatives and tribal representatives from Canada. It became an extraordinary emotional, passionate experience with Eva Rickard becoming the person who led through the chaos and brought the hui to creative results.

A major effect for Mary was to witness and hear Hannah Jackson talk about Te Tiriti. This was a first for many of us and cut through to our brains in a laser-like way. Perhaps it was the delivery that contributed to Mary's heart as Hannah delivered her speech in a calm, low-key way. Mary hated racism. She couldn't understand it. She had a great love for her own: husband Brian and daughters Maureen, Alison, Roseanne, Kathy, Erin, Philippa and sons Graeme and Scott. And her love extended to many foster children who returned her love into her old age.

She was interested in her neighbours and when at the Cashmere View retirement villa, she wanted to "shout" all in her area to a morning tea. Which leads to another significant part of Mary Baker's character: her generosity. She was generous with her time as well as with her money. Her first reaction would be to give. Yet, she was a remarkable manager of money, able to save with severe determination if she had a goal in mind.

Finally, Mary Baker was her "own woman", she didn't stop evolving. She has left a legacy of spirited, Māori and Pakeha Te Reo-speaking whanau, a beautiful testament to the aroha and truth-seeking of their adored mother, Mary Baker. And of very many friends who have valued her support, trust, generosity and joy of living. We salute you, Mary.

MARY BAKER

- David Small

"A gentle motherly woman, softly spoken and the last sort of character anyone would expect to see wearing a crash helmet, marching at the head of a protest crowd and chanting African freedom songs". That was the description of Mary Baker on the front page of the Press the day before the first test against the Springboks in August 1981. Mary was exactly the sort of person we wanted to front the anti-tour movement in Christchurch.

Face Of Anti-Tour Movement In Christchurch

Conservative control of the media had helped create the absurd but very real situation where a significant number of anti-tour people also hated HART* (Halt All Racist Tours), the anti-apartheid movement. Mostly in our early 20s, the Christchurch HART Committee decided that if we were to build the sort of mass movement needed to stop the tour, we needed an acceptable face of protest - the Coalition Against the Tour (CAT) was created, and Mary Baker was made its Chair.

The model worked well and variations were later adopted in Auckland (MOST, Mobilisation to Stop the Springbok Tour) and Wellington (COST, Citizens Opposed to the SpringbokTour). *Murray Horton's tribute to HART is in the Obituaries inWatchdog 72, March 1993, Ed.

What made Mary the ideal Chair of CAT was that beneath her difficult-to-demonise image lay a character of principle, passion, courage and commitment. Mary came from a working-class, rural, Catholic background in Canterbury. A mother of eight, she entered the workforce in 1973 working for Corso as assistant to Robert Consedine.

Later she worked for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Development (CCJD) where she was profoundly influenced by its director, Father John Curnow*, a radical internationalist who was pushing the church in the direction of Vatican II towards liberation theology and an "option for the poor". These influences led naturally to Mary's commitment to the anti-apartheid movement and a life-long passion to fight racism. *Murray Horton's obituary of John Curnow is in Watchdog 68, October 1991, Ed.

Unlike the tight closed leadership of MOST and COST, CAT was radically participatory. This grew out of Christchurch's training in non-violent direct action in the form of disrupting the World Veteran Games in January 1981 after they had allowed South African participants. In the months that followed, we developed a model of decision-making, planning, evaluating and caring for each other that connected us and made our work effective.

Mary made an essential contribution to that ongoing process of figuring out how best to operate in what was for all of us uncharted waters; a process that saw CAT grow and incorporate the many anti-tour groups that formed and joined in the ever-more regular meetings at Friends Meeting House in Manchester Street.

The first major achievement of CAT and the anti-tour movement in Christchurch was the May 1 mobilisation where 15,000 people in four separate marches left Linwood, Sydenham, Riccarton and Merivale and converged on the Square. The second national mobilisation on July 3 saw us march to Latimer Square and establish a tent city for the weekend, anticipating conflict with the authorities that never happened.

Confronted Springboks On Their Flight To NZ

Public opposition to the tour was growing so much that Mary believed the Government would have to call it off. With that in mind, she travelled to Canada to visit her daughter Maureen. It was what she did on her return flight that created Mary the legend. Amazingly, she had found herself on the same flight to Auckland as the Springboks rugby team. After giving them a piece of her mind and being warned by the flight crew, Mary waited until everyone was locked in by their breakfast tray tables before walking up and down the aisle holding up a sick bag on which she had written SHAME - a classic, gutsy one-woman protest.

On her return to Christchurch, Mary found that the rest of us had cranked things up a notch as well and moved into a strategy of mass arrests. For weeks, we had been trying to disrupt things in such a way that the Police would have to arrest us. After several actions where the Police just directed traffic around our blockades, eventually our tactic worked at a sit-in during rush hour on a busy weekday at the intersection of Hereford and Colombo Streets.

A total of 179 people were arrested. Mary was one of the last to be arrested - the Police took the young ones first believing that with the "ringleaders" removed people like Mary (women middle aged and older) would just disperse. As it was not my turn to get arrested that day, I watched it all unfold. I vividly recall the scene of that small group of women with their arms linked refusing to move and eventually getting dragged away. Mary said that it took a hold involving a policeman's "thumbs behind my ears" to immobilise and remove her.

Arrests, Radicalisation, Feminism

It was the first of several times Mary was arrested. She never got convicted as the courts adopted an unofficial policy of discharge without conviction for anyone who pleaded guilty to obstructing the carriageway. But Mary had to observe her daughter Erin be subjected to one of the most appalling travesties of justice during the tour - convicted of a very serious offence from the Nelson protest on the basis of organised Police perjury.

Mary's radicalisation during 1981 took many forms. At the start of the year, anyone caught pasting posters in public places would get arrested and charged. But posters were our main form of publicity so we just kept plastering the city - again and again, so many times that our defiance led eventually to Police abandoning the enforcement of laws against paste ups.

In the wake of the tour, the City Council erected bollards to control paste-ups and a private poster company was formed, but at the time it was still a risky business. Realising that lots of other people were putting themselves on the line, Mary decided that she should too and so she and her friend Anne Edmundson joined in and did some paste-ups around the city. Mary also reported getting used to the increasingly common tactic of demonstrations ripping down fences - something she originally found quite shocking.

The feminism of the anti-tour movement in Christchurch also contributed to Mary's radicalisation. Mary was influenced by young women leaders of the movement, particularly Annie Bowden. Annie knew Mary well, having gone to school with her daughters, and she shared her feminist perspectives with Mary and her friend Marie Venning and others. For Catholic women of Mary's generation, feminism provided a lens to reassess all manner of things in their lives and in wider society. Women Against the Tour in Christchurch, together with the women's caucus within CAT, impacted so many things including, importantly, understandings of what inclusivity means for activist groups.

With Mary as Chair of CAT, the CCJD offices often ended up being somewhat overrun with lots of young people, protest materials, etc. which did not always please her occasionally irascible boss, John Curnow. However, as Mary commented in a rich oral history interview with Kathleen Gallagher in 2004 the country's leading radical priest did later concede that it was good and appropriate that CCJD's offices were used in that way.

Mary always trusted and had confidence in the leadership and vision of young people. Although she lamented "I think it's harder because we had a lot of people coming through the universities at that time, but now the way the universities work there's less time for them to become involved". Unlike many of us, Mary was a mad rugby fan. In fact she was crazy about all sports as was her family - all of her children represented Canterbury at something and two of them, Erin and Philippa, became world champions!

Mary felt upset and angry with the ignorant belligerance of the Rugby Union in continuing to support apartheid. She was also frustrated that so few sporting people and leaders of other sporting codes made a stand on the issue. As a sports lover she could not understand how people could not see that sport is often political and when it is, social justice must come first. From all accounts, Mary's ability to appreciate and enjoy life while remaining committed to making the world a better place was part of who she was right until the end.

MOANA JACKSON

- Jane Kelsey

Each morning for the month before I wrote this, when I went to make my morning coffee, Moana looked back at me from a slightly yellowing section of the Herald with that quixotic smile about to offer something profound. Beneath the headline "Moana On Moana" is a moving account of the new documentary (13/5/22) by magical storyteller and political analyst Moana Maniapoto about "uncle" Moana Jackson (having formerly married into the Jackson whanau), which was published a month after Moana had passed on from a drawn-out battle with cancer. Putting that paper away means finally accepting that he's gone. That is too final.

We first met around 1987 when Moana began work on his first big project "He Whaipaanga Hou - Māori And The Criminal Justice System". These were turbulent times, with a Labour government faced with the impossible task of reconciling revolutionary neoliberalism with a decolonisation and Tiriti movement that had built up real momentum. Brother Syd, staunch unionist and activist, was already well-known, and another brother Bob (Willie's Dad) was a wharfie and stalwart of the Auckland Distict Māori Council. Moana had spent some time overseas and kept a lower profile.

Lots Was Happening In The Justice Space

A series of reports - Puao-te-ata-Tu on the social welfare system, the Roper report into violence, the Royal Commission on Social Policy, were all exposing racism, inequality and injustice. Justice Minister Geoffrey Palmer also commissioned research into why Māori were so over-represented in the criminal courts and jails.

After a false start with a Pākehā lead researcher, Moana was asked to take it over. He had returned from studying indigenous law in Arizona and some time working at the Navaho Legal Service. With a team of young researchers - including Dean Hapeta who rapped on request at Moana's tangi - they travelled the country talking to the people themselves.

The obvious reason - 150 years of colonisation - and the equally obvious solution - decolonisation - wasn't what Palmer expected. There were threats not to publish the report "He Whaipaanga Hou. Māori And The Criminal Justice System" and demands that parts of it were changed. The foreword was written by the Secretary for Justice, not the Minister. He complained that the Justice Department was not given the opportunity to respond to the comments, then rejected the core argument on behalf of the Minister:

"Undoubtedly, the most controversial part of the Report is its advocacy of an autonomous system for dealing with Maori offences that parallels the existing criminal justice system. This proposal is rested on the status of Maori as tangata whenua and on an interpretation of the word rangatiratanga in the Treaty of Waitangi. ...".

"The Minister has made it clear that while he supports the need to make the legal system sensitive to Maori values and needs, he believes it is essential that New Zealand retains one legal system in which everyone is equal under the law...The report provides useful ideas on how the legal system could be better attuned to Maori values. It would be regrettable therefore if attention was unduly focused on the proposal for a parallel system to the detriment of the many valuable insights, commentaries and perspectives it contains".

Moana and I were together in Melbourne at the time for a workshop on "customary law" and I remember how distressing it was for him to be told to make changes that would undermine the integrity of what the people had told him, and the toxicity that followed. From there, Moana and Caren Wickliffe - now Judge Fox - with other Māori and Pākehā supporters set up Ngā Kaiwhakamarama i Nga Ture, the Māori Legal Service, followed by Te Hau Tikanga, the Māori Law Commission as a parallel to the newly established and very Pakeha New Zealand Law Commission.

Building on relationships already established internationally, Moana and Nganeko Minhinnick worked with indigenous peoples around the world to challenge colonial and imperial powers who silenced their voices and justified their ongoing oppressions through the United Nations. The foundations they laid for the long fight to secure even a non-binding United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was a momentous achievement for subsequent generations to build on.

There were so many other achievements over the decades, from the landmark Wai 262 Waitangi Tribunal claim lodged in 1991 with Moana as the lawyer to his major report for the Independent Working Group on Constitutional Transformation Matike Mai, convened by Margaret Mutu.

He's Left A Living Legacy

His yet reappraisal of "He Whaipaanga Hou" will soon be finalised. With these and so many other works, Moana has left a living legacy. No-one should forget that being a person of utmost integrity and principle carried a very high personal price. Moana was vilified by many of those in power, in the media, in the legal profession and academia. It is not easy to absorb that toxicity day in day out, year in year out. But Moana never wavered.

A deeply private person, his great joy was his whanau - son Hatea, daughter in law Diane and his four mokopuna, who took care of Moana in Waimana in Te Urewera during his illness. He also had many devoted friends, as was obvious from the tangi and the many eulogies in Aotearoa and around the world. Most were heartfelt, genuine outpourings from people who knew and loved him, and the many Māori and Pākehā whom he so generously mentored.

It's a shame that some of those who praised the "esteemed" Moana Jackson as one of the nation's foremost legal thinkers and powerful intellectuals - especially those in positions of influence - never did so while Moana was alive, when doing so would have taken some of the burden from his shoulders. Yet other contributions were backhanders and would have been better left unsaid.

Thinking Way Ahead Of His Time

Moana departed as he lived, laying down a kaupapa for his tangi that challenged beliefs and practices that he said have no place in tikanga. Colonial Christianity was replaced by ngā karakia a te Māori and the drums and poi of Parihaka bore him to his final rest. The wahine toa who spoke on the marae and sat on the paepae during his tangi did him proud. Moana's wāhine hoa - Ani Mikaere, Annette Sykes, Mereana Pitman, Leonie Pihama - wrote this tribute for him at the tangi, published in e-Tangata:

"Moana Jackson. Son of Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu, Rongomaiwāhine. No single individual has guided the reclamation of tikanga so positively and powerfully since the genocide imposed on Māori by colonisation and Pākehā law - as a philosopher, poet, father, and creator. People love him because he loved people. If he was there with you, he was totally there with you and with the kaupapa. Never distracted. Everyone felt important and felt their kaupapa was important".

"He looked for potential in everyone and every situation. Everyone's mana was celebrated. He would just email out of the blue: 'I was thinking about what you were doing', and uplift you with the email. In the age of technology that has been so important. Moana was hugely influential in shaping creative spaces that shifted the ground. As the activists mobilised around Te Tiriti o Waitangi me He Wahaputanga o Te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tirene, he became the constant, principled, intellectual toka".

"With "He Whaipaanga Hou", he brought decolonisation and tikanga closer to how to achieve real transformation. "He Whaipaanga Hou" went from reform of the criminal justice system to setting the pou in the ground to show that healing and redress cannot happen without decolonisation, and then building from tikanga and te ao Māori".

"The UN Declaration with Nganeko Minhinnick was his commitment to Iwi Taketake and the leadership of Māori in that space. Then Ngā Kaiwhakamarama i Nga Ture, with Caren Fox, which challenged the Pākehā Law Commission with tikanga and te ao Māori. To Matike Mai, with Margaret Mutu, and the successor to "He Whaipaanga Hou", which is yet to be released. Moana always worked with strong Māori women and always he brought young people, especially young women, along. Mentoring them and championing their space".

"Moana's support for Te Wānanga Raukawa was tireless. He was hugely influential in developing their Ahunga Tikanga programme and he was a kaiāwhina over many years. He constantly reminded staff and students that what they were doing mattered - and he inspired them to keep building on the work that had been done".

"What happens now? Moana was who you went to for advice when you couldn't figure it out. Everyone did. He came to you too at the drop of a hat and he was always present in the moment and thinking way ahead of his time. We will never see his like again. Those who are left behind can only try".

That says it all. I began writing this tribute before Matariki. Maybe now I can put that Herald story away with my other tāonga.

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Although never a CAFCA member, Moana Jackson was a much-valued member of our whanau. Throughout the 1990s and well into this century, CAFCA worked closely with the former GATT Watchdog on numerous campaigns and issues, and they worked closely with Moana. CAFCA and GATT Watchdog created and ran the annual Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Moana was one of the judges - Jane Kelsey was another - for the 1999 Roger.

For the record, it was won by TransAlta, a Canadian power company that has now vanished from NZ. It turned up here to profit from the 1990s' power reforms (you remember those? They were going to make our power bills cheaper). You can read the Judges' Report here. Here's the key quote: "TransAlta's brief foray into New Zealand is a warning to the world of what can happen when basic infrastructural services such as electricity are privatised and deregulated". Thank you, Moana. Murray Horton.

MARIE HILAO-ENRIQUEZ

- Murray Horton

Marie Hilao-Enriquez, who died in Los Angeles in April 2022, aged 68, was a well-known public figure in the Philippines, as the former head of a major human rights group. Marie and her family suffered grievously under the 1970s' and 80s' martial law dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. She was a political prisoner and torture victim (one of a huge number of political prisoners held for years without charge or trial. Her oldest daughter was born in prison). One sister and her only brother were also political prisoners.

Another sister became the highest profile female political murder victim of the Marcos regime, being raped, tortured and murdered whilst in detention. Marie's parents became the lead plaintiffs in the landmark class action suit filed in the US against the Marcoses on behalf of thousands of human rights victims and their families. Despite being awarded $US1 billion in damages, precious little has been recovered from the billions that the Marcoses stole from the Philippine people. Marie went on to become a national leader of the human rights movement, one known around the world.

NZ Speaking Tour

In 2004, the former Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA) organised a two-weeks long NZ speaking tour by Marie. I accompanied her for the whole thing and we had a great time. Her topic was of great interest to both CAFCA and the Anti-Bases Campaign - "The Philippines In The Firing Line. America's 'Second Front In The War On Terror' And The Impact On Human Rights". You can read her speech here. CAFCA put money into the tour and I used my two weeks on the road with Marie to speak at her public meetings and connect with people (many of them CAFCA members) throughout the country.

A highlight of her tour was when she went into Auckland Central Remand Prison to visit Ahmed Zaoui, who was then nearing the end of his disgraceful two years' imprisonment without charge or trial. This was the first time that Marie had been into a prison other than in the Philippines, and she found it a fascinating experience. She was eager to make the point that nice, white, liberal First World countries like New Zealand also hold political prisoners. She was delighted to be later informed that Zaoui had been released and was able to live a normal life in NZ.

The best mainstream media coverage she got (an absolute coup) was getting a 30-minutes live and nationwide interview with Linda Clark on the latter's top rating Radio New Zealand national programme, Nine To Noon With Linda Clark. The producer told me that it was listened to by 250,000 people throughout the country, a respectable percentage of the total population. Clark was both interested and informed about the Philippines. Marie went on 15 minutes late, so I assumed that they would cut her slot to 15 minutes. But, no, Clark kept her talking for the full promised 30 minutes.

She was fascinated by Marie's account of what it was like to actually conceive, give birth to, and look after her oldest daughter whilst she was in prison as a political prisoner. As I listened to this, I thought this is fascinating personal stuff, the kind of individual story that Kiwis relate so very well to, but that it was old, Marcos-era stuff. But Clark didn't let us down, concluding by bringing Marie right back to the present to talk about the impact of the American-led "War On Terror" on the Philippines. Nor was media coverage confined to NZ - she got a page in the excellent UK-based New Internationalist magazine.

And the absolute highlight for her was very much a case of leaving the best until last. Her Whangarei meeting was unforgettable - a big turnout from many nationalities and the only place in the country where Filipinos turned out in numbers (primarily women married to Kiwi men, several of whom accompanied their wives). A meeting with a sizeable Filipino contingent has a completely different dynamic to one entirely made up of good stolid Kiwis. Marie's Whangarei meeting fizzed and sparkled.

For the only time on the tour, she was able to (partially) address the audience in Filipino, and she excelled in answering the no holds barred questions that some of her countrywomen tossed at her (which got the audience debating and discussing among themselves). She was buzzing about it all the way back down to Christchurch (where she got to spend a few days' holiday with Becky and I before going home). You can read my full article on her NZ tour here.

Aunty Marie: Death In The Family

I last saw Marie in 2008, on my last visit to the Philippines. Becky and I attended a glitzy fundraising dinner for the major human rights organisation headed by Marie. While I was in Manila a newspaper devoted a whole column to attacking her as a "communist". Human rights work is a very risky occupation - the evening paid tribute to the 34 murdered members of the organisation.

But it was primarily an evening of celebration, of music, song and dance, featuring some of the country's top progressive musicians. We caught up with many old friends and Marie looked after us very well - she made sure that I was seated next to two of the country's most high-profile Leftwing Congressmen, neither of whom I'd met before.

She retired from the human rights movement several years ago and moved to LA to be closer to her two daughters. She'd had serious health problems for years and died of complications from Parkinsons, far too young, at only 68. But she had not been forgotten. She had a funeral in LA & a memorial in Manila, was the subject of several Filipino mainstream media obituaries, and tributes at her memorial came from entities as diverse as the European Union and the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Marie's death was very much a death in the family - she was a maternal aunt of my wife Becky. So, the political prisoners, torture victims, murder victim, class action suit plaintiffs - these are all Becky's aunts, uncle and grandparents. To Becky and I, and our colleagues on the PSNA Committee, she was simply Aunty Marie (I had to train myself not to introduce her as that during her 2004 NZ speaking tour).

Marcos: The Great Leap Backwards

Marie died just two weeks before the Philippines' 2022 Presidential election, which was won by Ferdinand Marcos Junior, universally known as Bongbong. Considering the appalling death, pain and suffering inflicted on Marie and her family during the dictatorship of Bongbong's father, she got out at the right time. I've had a universal WTF reaction from friends in relation to this election result. So, what accounts for it?

Bongbong could teach Trump how to run a sustained Big Lie campaign. He avoided most conventional campaigning, debates and media interviews, concentrating on a blitzkrieg social media offensive carried out by armies of trolls. Their message? That he has nothing to apologise for in relation to his murderous father's long dictatorship; that, in fact, it was a "golden age", and that the only people who suffered were communists who got what they deserved.

How could Filipinos believe this crap? Simple - Filipinos are the biggest users of social media in the world, that's where they get their news and opinions. But an explanation is necessary - for Filipinos "the Internet" means Facebook. That's where Marcos peddled his lies. There's more to it than that. The Filipino population is overwhelmingly young, the median age is mid-20s (in NZ it is mid to late 30s).

Meaning that the great majority of Filipinos have no personal experience of the Marcos dictatorship, which was ended by the 1986 People Power peaceful revolution. More importantly, they have no knowledge of it, as that history is not taught in schools (this is a very good negative example of why teaching history in schools is so important).

And succeeding governments have not undertaken any deMarcosfication. Marcos died in American exile, but his family was allowed back into the country in the 1990s with no legal consequences (Bongbong and his mother Imelda have both been found guilty in both criminal and civil cases, with Imelda actually sentenced to prison - nothing has been done to enforce any of that). Of the, at least, $US10 billion of State money stolen by Marcos Senior - one of the worst examples of kleptocracy in world history - very little has been recovered. The same goes for the $US1 billion in damages awarded to Marcos' victims and their families by a US court.

Most importantly, none of the Presidents who have succeeded Marcos (all from the tiny handful of dynastic families who own all the land and control the politics) has done anything to address, let alone fix, any of the huge systemic problems that dog the Philippines: huge inequality, poverty, concentration of land ownership and wealth, staggering corruption, relentless political violence and war (warlords are still very much a thing there), and a culture of total impunity.

Many Filipinos would have thought that if this is "democracy", we'll look for an alternative. After all, the last President, Rodrigo Duterte, was elected in 2016 by promoting himself as a tough guy populist, who waged a brutal "war on drugs" that murdered tens of thousands. His daughter is now Bongbong's Vice President. So, the thieves and murderers are back in power. At 93, Imelda Marcos has lived long enough to be able to make a triumphant and consequences-free return to the scene of the crime. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. As for the Philippine progressive movement, the struggle continues unabated.