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THE Interior and Local Government secretary Benhur Abalos’ campaign to get the Philippine National Police’s 479 generals and colonels to submit this only-in-the-Philippines thing called “courtesy resignations” — wholeheartedly backed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — will be among this administration’s colossal governance blunders.

Talk of historical irony. It was Marcos’ nemesis who invented this fiction of courtesy resignation.

“Courtesy resignation” is the pulled-out-of-thin-air invention that President Corazon Aquino used in her Proclamation 1, issued Feb. 25, 1986, or the day she claimed to have assumed the presidency. In that proclamation, she said: “As a first step to restore public confidence, I expect all appointed public officials to submit their courtesy resignations beginning with members of the Supreme Court.”

“Courtesy resignation” was obviously a public relations spin for Aquino’s dictatorial order: “All you Marcos minions, including the Supreme Court, step down now!” The Supreme Court justices of course ignored Aquino’s order and so did Marcos Cabinet ministers and deputies who simply didn’t go to office, didn’t even bother to submit “courtesy resignations” and faded away from the government — refusing to pay “courtesy” to the new one-woman ruler. Even the highest ranking official after Marcos, Prime Minister Cesar Virata refused to vacate his post, pointing out that it wasn’t Marcos who appointed him but members of the Batasan Pambansa.

HISTORIANS, especially those of the Yellow persuasion currently monopolizing the martial law discourse at the UP, Ateneo and UST, must investigate the claim — for me, a fact without an iota of doubt — that the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) was responsible for the Aug. 21, 1971 bombing of the opposition rally at Plaza Miranda.

They cannot bury their heads in the sand, or cover their eyes, and pretend that the CPP had nothing to do with it.

Nor can they claim it was an insignificant event in our political history. It was intended by its architect, the CPP chairman at that time, Jose Ma. Sison, as he had explained, “split the ruling classes” so they would fight each other to cause a “revolutionary flow.”

In 1989, American journalist Gregg Jones published a book Red Revolution, which incontrovertibly showed that it was the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) that undertook August 21 1971 the bombing of the Liberal Party’s main electoral rally.

That was the vilest false-flag operation ever undertaken in this country. Even as Jones was largely sympathetic to the Communist insurgency, seeing it as a legitimate revolutionary movement against the dictatorship, his book had a chapter titled “Ghosts of Plaza Miranda.” There, he said the perpetrator was the CPP, as ordered by its chairman then Jose Ma. Sison. The book provided details on how the Plaza Miranda was planned and executed, the personalities involved, based on his interviews with officials at the Central Committee level.

TODAY is National Heroes’ Day. What is strange about this holiday, so important that the country gives up a full day of working, that workers paid daily suffer, is the law that ordered it. Commonwealth Act 3827 of Oct. 28, 1931 did not specify who were the heroes the day was celebrating. The Act consisted of only three sentences:

“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in legislature assembled and by the authority of the same:

“Section I: The last Sunday of August of every year is hereby declared as an official holiday to be known as the National Heroes Day.

“Section II: This Act shall take effect upon its approval.”

Succeeding laws merely reaffirmed its date of celebration. However, we owe our being able to sleep late today to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, an economist by training and very practical-minded, who moved it to the first Monday of August, so we’ll have a long weekend, which she thought would be a boost to local tourism.

I CHANCED upon a Facebook post that helped me understand why the Ateneo de Manila, one of my alma maters, has become so Yellow, so rabidly anti-Marcos that it has gone to the dogs, intellectually as well as politically. This was a post by Dr. Christina Astorga, considered one of the leading academics of Ateneo, having served as chairman of its theology department from 1994 to 2003.

Her post and curriculum vitae reveal that despite her being an academic supposedly trained to rely on data for her claims, she hasn’t researched on a single aspect of the Marcos’ martial law regime. Her views on the martial law years are based entirely on the website Rappler, the Philippine Star and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, certified propaganda venues of the Yellows. Kudos to Rappler for being able to brainwash academics.

Well, if Ateneo’s academic leaders are such biased persons who rely not on data but on biased media, then what would you expect of its faculty and students?

WHEN President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. announced even before he assumed the presidency last June 30 that he would not appoint an Agriculture department secretary and instead assume that portfolio himself, I immediately expressed serious doubts in my column whether this was a wise decision.

I pointed out that while it sends a message that his administration would make agriculture a priority, in actual practice, it really means his holding two jobs, with both the presidency and the agricultural department being led by a part-time official, and therefore their performance compromised.

In fact, in the post-war period, only two presidents have headed a department, and this was only the defense portfolio, I suspect, because they wanted to make sure the military was solidly behind them. President Marcos Sr. assumed the defense post when he became president on Dec. 31, 1965. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became Defense secretary for a month in 2003 and two months to Feb. 1, 2007.