Incoming Philippine president to allow Marcos' burial in heroes' cemetery

Incoming Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has said he would allow the burial of late strongman Ferdinand Marcos at the Heroes' Cemetery, saying the issue has long divided the nation.

"I will allow the burial of President Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani not because he is a hero but because he was a Filipino soldier," Duterte told reporters in southern Philippine Davao City on Monday.

He said Marcos's formal interment in the Heroes' Cemetery "can be arranged immediately."

Duterte, 71, has yet to be officially declared winner of the May 9 elections, but a vote count by a watchdog accredited by the Commission of Elections showed he is 6 million votes ahead of his closest rival. He will formally assume office on June 30.

"I am sure that I would erase from among our people one hatred," he said.

Indeed, the issue of the former leader's burial remains unresolved and continued to be a divisive issue in the Philippines.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino, whose six-year, single term ends in June, has not allowed military honors to be given when Marcos is buried, saying it would be "the height of injustice to render any honors to that person who was the direct mastermind" of the suffering of the many victims of the country's martial-law years.

Aquino is the son of the late President Corazon Aquino and Senator Benigno Aquino, a known political foe of Marcos who was assassinated in 1983 upon returning to the Philippines.

The assassination, which was blamed on the dictator, sparked a series of rallies that culminated in a civilian-backed military uprising that ousted Marcos and swept Corazon Aquino to power in 1986.

Marcos died in 1989 in Hawaii. His body, which was brought back to the Philippines in 1993, is now on display inside a glass box in an air-conditioned crypt in the family's ancestral home north of Manila.

The Marcos family, pleading for an "honorable burial," had lobbied the government for Marcos' embalmed remains to be interred at the Heroes' Cemetery in Manila.

The renewed call to grant Marcos a hero's burial had met resistance from anti-Marcos groups, resurrecting decades of on-and-off political debate on whether the disgraced leader deserves a military honor and a plot in the hallowed ground. Endit