Ferdinand Marcos

B

Marcos as Dictator

The convention never completed its work, however. Claiming anarchy was near, Marcos declared martial law in 1972, thereby suspending the 1935 constitution, dissolving Congress, and assuming total power. Marcos suppressed the political opposition, arresting leaders such as Benigno ('Ninoy') Aquino, Jr., and ended a long tradition of a free press. A new constitution promulgated in January 1973 gave Marcos absolute power, and elections were indefinitely postponed. Marcos ruled by decree, cloaking his dictatorial decisions in the rhetoric of law.

Marcos claimed that martial law was the prelude to the creation of a “new society” in which self-sacrifice was necessary for the national welfare. But Marcos, his wife, and their closest associates practiced corruption with impunity. They plundered the Philippine economy through their system of “crony capitalism,” in which they controlled monopolies in industry, communications, and banking. The Marcoses amassed a huge personal fortune, much of which they hid in foreign bank accounts and investments. Their lavish lifestyle stood in stark contrast to the lives of ordinary Filipinos.

Marcos’s sense of invincibility eventually prompted him to lift some of the oppressive rules that stifled political dissent and press freedom. In 1980 Marcos permitted Aquino, the Liberal Party opposition leader, to go into exile in the United States. He also permitted Radio Veritas, a Catholic-run radio network, to make broadcasts critical of his regime. The Catholic hierarchy, led by Jaime Cardinal Sin, the archbishop of Manila, became vocal in its opposition to Marcos. In the Philippines, where the majority of the population is Catholic, the church was traditionally looked to for guidance in political matters.

In 1981 Marcos officially lifted martial law, but retained sweeping emergency powers, in order to validate his power through a sham presidential election. Predictably, he won an easy victory and another term as president. Then his health began to fail. He had a degenerative illness, lupus erythematosus, which led to kidney failure. He was on dialysis and had a kidney transplant. He seemed to be dying.

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In 1983 Aquino decided to return to the Philippines, even though he anticipated being rearrested. Aquino was shot in the back of the head and killed minutes after his arrival at Manila International Airport (now Ninoy Aquino International Airport). The government claimed the assassination was the work of a lone gunman, who had been killed by security police at the airport. A special commission subsequently concluded the murder was the result of a military conspiracy, but in 1985 a high court acquitted all of the officers charged with the crime. (In 1990 16 military officers were convicted of Aquino’s assassination, but the mastermind of the murder was never determined.)

Aquino’s death proved to be the galvanizing force in Marcos’s downfall. Aquino’s widow, Corazon Aquino, put the ailing Marcos on the defensive by depicting him as a brutal dictator. In a gamble to regain some political legitimacy, and secure continued U.S. support for his regime, Marcos announced that a “snap,” or unscheduled, presidential election would be held in February 1986, a year before his term was to expire. Marcos fully expected to win the election, considering his well-oiled political machine and the divided nature of the opposition. But Cardinal Sin arranged an opposition alliance, convincing Corazon Aquino to run for president and Salvador Laurel to run for vice president.

During the voting, American observers witnessed many irregularities. Afterward, the two monitoring bodies, one sponsored by a U.S.-based group and the other an official government commission, reported contradictory election results. Both candidates claimed victory, but the national assembly recognized Marcos as the winner. The Catholic Church in Manila issued a statement claiming the election had been “a fraud unparalleled in history.” Marcos’s claim of victory rang hollow.

C

People Power Movement

On February 22 two of Marcos’s key military supporters publicly turned against him. Secretary of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos staged a military mutiny, seizing two vital military installations in suburban Manila. This mutiny presented Marcos with an immediate challenge that his cousin General Fabian Ver, the armed forces chief of staff, wanted to meet with decisive force. Cardinal Sin, using Radio Veritas, summoned the Philippine people into the streets to block General Ver’s tanks. Thousands of civilians flocked into the streets and formed a human barricade on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), the main boulevard between the two military bases. Marcos’s troops lacked either the brutality or the political will to attack unarmed civilians, and they were effectively immobilized by the strong show of what Filipinos called “people power.”

Despite these events, Marcos insisted on being inaugurated president in a private but purely symbolic ceremony on February 25. The next day the Marcoses and their family and close associates fled the Philippines for Hawaii on two aircraft supplied by the U.S. Air Force. Aquino became president.

When the Marcoses left the Philippines, the country was burdened with $27 billion in external debt and was in a deep economic recession. In 1988 Marcos was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in New York on federal racketeering charges relating to his years in office. Before he could stand trial, however, Marcos died in Honolulu in 1989. The Philippine government allowed Imelda Marcos to return to the Philippines and place Marcos’s remains in a refrigerated crypt in his home province in 1991.

IV

Evaluation

Ferdinand Marcos had the intellect, the leadership skills, and the opportunity to be the greatest president of the Philippines in the 20th century. Instead, his impact was ruinous for the economy, the society, and the political institutions of his country. The lost opportunity of economic growth and social prosperity stunted an entire generation and left the Philippines far less competitive than many of its neighbors in Southeast Asia, where economic growth during the same period was spectacular.

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