The Marcos shadow

[EL LOCO]

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September 28, 2014 is the 25th anniversary of the death of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This seems an irrelevant part of the distant past and the Marcos martial rule only a page in our students’ history books. Yet, the issue of that dark period remains very much alive and forms part of current political battles.

Of course, the most visible of the Marcos influence is the return of the Marcos family in the halls of power. Marcos’ namesake himself, Senator Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is in the Senate. His wife, Congresswoman Imelda Marcos, is in the lower House while his eldest daughter, Governor Maria Imelda “Imee” Marcos firmly holds the local power in Ilocos Norte.

The Romualdezes in Leyte also came back to power. Martin Romualdez joined Congresswoman Imelda Marcos in Congress while Alfred Romualdez is now the mayor of Tacloban City.

However, the more insidious Marcos influence is in the reshaping of Philippine elite politics. Dictator Marcos, in his time, stripped away the democratic trimmings of what essentially was the oligarchical rule of the previous regimes of the pre-martial law period. Marcos imprisoned his rival families, formed alliances with selected local political lords, formed new lines of power through the military and the barangay system, abolished Congress (resurrected in an emasculated Interim Batasang Pambansa) later, and cowed the Supreme Court into a rubberstamp of his dictates.

He drove the opposition underground, to the mountains, or to exile abroad. Then he started the systematic pillage of entire industries and wealth of the nation, using his cronies as economic generals. At the end, he was able to hide and stash abroad more than half of his estimated US$8.5 billion loot.

Without restraints, he monopolized and bled the tobacco, sugar, and coconut industries in the agriculture sector, the mining and construction industries, and almost the entire service industry.

He also created the necessary myths to hide the looting and maintain political support. The most pervasive of these is the notion that martial rule is for the poor; that it brings economic prosperity both to the nation and the family.

However, this is illusory. What Marcos actually did was to create loyalist pockets, such as in Ilocos Norte and other Northern Luzon provinces, by using part of his loot but, by and large, the poor remained poor. The economy, without strong industries and capital inputs, dive-bombed.

The succeeding post-Marcos governments failed to recover the larger part of the Marcos wealth, failed to get justice for martial law victims, failed to dismantle the rule of the Marcos family and their political and economic cronies, failed to put in place strong democratic institutions, failed to educate succeeding generations on the lessons of the Marcos martial rule, and allowed the Marcos family and their cronies to return to the halls of power.

Marcos rule now threatens to return, ironically, by using the same traditional politics that they dismantled in 1972. A Marcos that did not apologize for damaging the nation and its people, a Marcos that now tries to inveigh against those who fought them and cynically imposing their myths on the new, post-Marcos generations. The Marcos shadow threatens us all.

[Lakbay Pilipino]

i would like to engage anybody in an honest-to-goodness, no name-calling, way personalay solution-oriented discussion. marcos was a corrupt president who pillaged and left this country in huge debt, moral corruption, and decadence.

[kit_cebu]

the next presidents were still corrupt...and WITHOUT NOTHING TO SHOW for...i, thank you...

and this latest president? it's just...beyond words...

[Lakbay Pilipino]

and this latest president? it's just...beyond words...

tinuod, i share the same sentiment. produkto gihapon siya sa patronage politics ug nag gakikan sa mga adunahang yutaan. usa sa akong gika hi-ubsan niya ang pag padayon og tukod sa mga coal powered plant nga naa man untay cheaper and sustainable alternatives. bulsa gihapon sa mga hakog og kwarta. ang pag entertain pod sa cha-cha, haskang kuwanggola.

pero at least, iyang napa preso si bong revilla ug jinggoy estrada. wa jud ko gatuo nga naay mga senador mapreso. naa poi ka uswagan gamay ang kaso batok ni napoles. i think somehow, morally, we've improved. nag gikan baya ta kang estrada nga plunderer, ug kang arroyo nga nanikas ug election.

[print+="helloworld"]

ahw..kani si ABnoy wa diay ni nanikas sa mga pilipino? apil na ang DAP o PDAF? inig human sa iya termino ma priso pd ning panota ma opaw ni og samot unya ma apil og ka priso ang mga yellow zombies..hahah

[<SMILE>]

If Bobo'ng will win the Presidential race, the first thing he would do is to make the previous dictator a hero and then an unimaginable utilization of the existing Philippine corrupt political machinery and by that time no corruption will happen for everything will be very well hidden and very organized.

[bleedingboi]

I appreciate the topic. The details are true, but the guy is now dead. So can we just go and close this chapter and arrest more crooked politicians?

[Lakbay Pilipino]

I appreciate the topic. The details are true, but the guy is now dead. So can we just go and close this chapter and arrest more crooked politicians?

i would re-echo this, but it's alarming a large number of people online don't think the details outlined here were true about marcos. i've read the other threads here in istorya and see how other people ostentatiously defended marcos and his supposed "good deeds" outweighing the bad things that has happened, if not outright denial of the atrocities.

we can never close this chapter, it should be clear in history for as cliche goes, those who don't know history ought to repeat it. in fact, vestiges of marcos rule remain - the dictator may have been gone, but the spirit of martial law has lived on. DAP and PDAF were fruits of his presidential decrees, we could have abolished this. our morals have been corrupted so much that we are thankful to politicians for helping us with OUR MONEY. for doing their jobs, they get credit and faces plastered all over the project.

another culture is silencing if not killing dissent. we still have journalists brazenly killed. under arroyo, almost 100 journalists were killed, and under pnoy, over 20. libel cases has been filed left and right on media personalities, gagging them from talking about the issues.

unless we look for the root problem, there will always be crooked politicians produced by this crooked system. but hey, the root problem could possibly be found in our history.

MARTIAL LAW REMEMBERED | Where did Marcos go wrong and when did we start forgetting? - InterAksyon.com

[cen]

ahw..kani si ABnoy wa diay ni nanikas sa mga pilipino? apil na ang DAP o PDAF? inig human sa iya termino ma priso pd ning panota ma opaw ni og samot unya ma apil og ka priso ang mga yellow zombies..hahah

OT: wala man gani niya gi-approve ang FOI bill (transparency) nga na bilib unta ko niya atong SONA 2010 (maski si Gordon ang akoang gibutaran). Until now wala pa gihapon na ma-balaod nato ang FOI. Wala sad niya gi-mention sa iyang current SONA. Disappointing kaayo.

[firestarter]

Hmmmm.. unsay topic?