Ferdinand Marcos

Ferdinand Marcos
Marcos in 1982 during a ceremony
10th President of the Republic of the Philippines
In office December 30, 1965 – February 25, 1986
Preceded by	Diosdado Macapagal
Succeeded by	Corazon Aquino
Prime Minister of the Philippines
In office December 30, 1978 – February 25, 1981
Preceded by	Pedro Paterno
Succeeded by	César Virata
Secretary of Defense of the Philippines
In office August 28, 1971 – January 3, 1972
President	Himself
Preceded by	Juan Ponce Enrile
Succeeded by	Juan Ponce Enrile
In office December 31, 1965 – January 20, 1967
Preceded by	Macario Peralta Jr.
Succeeded by	Ernesto Mata
President of the Senate of the Philippines
In office April 5, 1963 – December 30, 1965
President	Diosdado Macapagal
Preceded by	Eulogio Rodríguez
Succeeded by	Arturo Tolentino
Executive Vice President of the Senate of the Philippines
In office February 25, 1954 – December 30, 1961
President	Diosdado Macapagal
Leader of the Liberal Minority in the Senate of the Philippines
In office February 25, 1960 – December 30, 1960
President	Diosdado Macapagal
Senator of the Philippines
In office December 30, 1959 – December 30, 1965
President	Carlos P. García (1959–1961) Diosdado Macapagal (1961–1965)
Member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines
In office December 30, 1949 – December 30, 1959
President	Elpidio Quirino (1948–1949) Ramon Magsaysay (1953–1957) Carlos P. García (1957–1959)
Preceded by	Pedro Albano
Succeeded by	Simeón M. Valdez
Constituency	2nd district of Ilocos Norte
Personal details
Born	Ferdinand Emmanuel Marcos y Edralín (1917-09-11)September 11, 1917 Sarrat, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
Died	September 28, 1989(1989-09-28) (aged 72) Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Party	Partido Liberal ng Pilipinas Nacionalista Party Kilusang Bagong Lipunan
Spouse	Imelda Marcos ​ ​ (m. 1954; died 1989)​
Children	María Imelda Josefa, Ferdinand, Irene Victoria.
Parent(s)	Mariano Marcos Josefa Edralin
Alma mater	University of the Philippines
Occupation	Lawyer
Signature

Ferdinand Emmanuel Marcos y Edralín (Sarrat, Ilocos Norte; September 11, 1917 – Honolulu, Hawaii; September 28, 1989) was a Filipino lawyer and politician who ruled as dictator under the office of President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, governing the country through an autocracy and centralizing power at the national level with the help of his wife, the First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos.

Coming from a well-known and influential family, he took part in the Philippine Army during the Second World War, service that earned him a certain recognition which he later used to develop his political career. He served three consecutive terms as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, from 1949 to 1959, after which he went on to serve as a senator of the Philippines and became President of the Senate of the Philippines between 1962 and 1965, after which he was elected to the presidency of the Philippines in 1965 and again in 1969. Then, with the subsequent proclamation of martial law, he remained in power during the nine years it was in force. He later went on to hold the office of Prime Minister of the Philippines, from 1978 to 1981, when he was once again reelected to the presidency, an office in which he remained for 21 years. He was finally deposed by the EDSA Revolution in 1986, after which he went into exile in Hawaii together with his wife.

Youth and political rise

He was the son of Mariano Marcos Rubio, a renowned lawyer and politician who was a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines from 1925 to 1931 (there are two institutions, Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University and Mariano Marcos State University, in his native province of Ilocos Norte, that were named in his honor), and of Josefa Edralín.

Coming from a well-off family, he was raised in a family tradition tied to politics, with his father taking a large part in the political life of the country, which led him to orient himself toward the same fields as his father. This affiliation led to his involvement in a poorly clarified event when, in 1935, after winning the election to the House of Representatives, Julio Nalundasan was murdered at the door of his house in Batac and suspicion fell on Mariano Marcos, his main opponent in the race for the seat: Ferdinand Marcos was accused of having plotted and taken part in the murder, with the participation of his uncle Pío Marcos and of a very close ally of his father, Quirino Lizardo, and with the consent of Mariano Marcos himself, who allegedly acted as the mastermind. The regional prosecutor's office completed the requirements to prosecute the four suspects, and Ferdinand was even held in prison for twenty-seven days, but after a successful appeal before the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the case was invalidated and all the suspects were declared innocent.

He studied law at the University of the Philippines, where he stood out for his gifts as an orator and his excellent performance in both extracurricular and academic activities, and he practiced law in Manila until the arrival of the Second World War, at which point he went on to serve as an officer in his country's army.

His time in the army, especially his role in the Filipino resistance, was very important in the development of his career as a politician, since it gave his figure a heroic dimension. However, investigations carried out after his death established that his role in the resistance activities against the Japanese between 1942 and 1945 had been very limited.

Political career

Congressman

In 1946 he became an aide to the first President of the Independent Republic of the Philippines, Manuel Roxas, who was also the founder of the Liberal Party of the Philippines, in which Marcos began his political activism, being elected in 1949 as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines for the 2nd district of his native province of Ilocos Norte, and being reelected twice more consecutively, in 1952 and in 1955.

During the decade he served in the House of Representatives of the Philippines he became Chairman of the Committees on Economy and Industry and also of the Preparation Bloc, a group of parliamentarians with promising futures, of which Diosdado Macapagal, Emmanuel Peláez and Arsenio J. Lacson were part. He was also a member of the Defense Committee, spokesman of the Liberal Party on Economic Affairs, and a member of the Special Commission on Imports and Price Regulation, as well as of the Commissions on Internal Affairs, Economic Planning and Enterprises, Banking Currency, and Public Regulation.

It was also during his period as a member of the House of Representatives, in 1954, that Ferdinand Marcos met Imelda Romuáldez, a young Filipino model who at the time held the title of "Muse of Manila" and who also came from a family with a long tradition in politics, whom he married after only eleven days of courtship. This relationship would be key to his own political future, since Imelda would not only be his wife until his death, but would become his main promoter and political adviser.

Presidency (1965–1986)

Ferdinand Marcos during his visit to the White House in 1966.

Although Marcos, with the help of his wife Imelda Marcos, initially presented himself as a "popular hero" who represented the hope of the Philippines, once he reached power, he and his wife became a genuine partnership whose aim was to increase their own power more and more, while they embezzled public funds, creating a vast multimillion-dollar fortune and sustaining an authoritarian, populist, demagogic regime that was repressive toward its opponents.

Richard Nixon with the family of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.

Between 1959 and 1964 Ferdinand Marcos was a senator in Congress. A year later he would win the Presidential Election.

The Philippines was living through the worst economic crisis in its history. Marcos promised to end it by applying an economic adjustment program. The testimonies of officials of the private chambers of commerce and of private businessmen gave enormous support to what was happening. At least, the development goals are now being met". The Marcos regime instituted a compulsory youth organization, known as the Kabataang Barangay, which was led by Marcos's eldest daughter, Imee. Presidential Decree 684, enacted in April 1975, required all young people between 15 and 18 to be sent to remote rural camps to do volunteer work.

President Marcos meeting with Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako.

His government reformed Philippine politics in its entirety; the Philippines was living through the worst economic crisis in its history. Marcos promised to end it by applying a great economic adjustment guided by the doctrines of Milton Friedman. He eventually replaced the parliamentary system and the support of the Armed Forces, with which he subdued Congress so as to be able to be reelected forever, managing to be reelected for a consecutive term (this after the 1969 elections), being reelected a third time in 1981 and a fourth in 1986, although this last election did not manage to keep him in power, due to the EDSA Revolution, which overthrew him. In any case, Marcos is the only person in the history of the Philippines to be elected to the presidency on four occasions. He was also responsible for reforming the Philippine Constitution in 1981, replacing the Congress of the Philippines with a National Legislature, which received the name of Batasang Pambansa (Philippine Parliament), which would then be appointed by him, and he was also elected Prime Minister by it, an office he held from 1978 to 1981, which made him the only head of state of his country to hold simultaneously the offices of president and Prime Minister of the Philippines.

His other creations included institutions and offices such as the Ministry of Human Settlements and the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Embassy of the Philippines, both bodies that his wife, Imelda Marcos, would head from their creation until the end of the "conjugal dictatorship," as the Marcos regime was called. He was likewise responsible for pursuing a policy characterized by its closeness to the United States (a country that notably backed his government). Besides being responsible for the death, torture or illegal detention of more than 100,000 Filipinos, Marcos illicitly appropriated between 5 and 10 billion dollars, according to the NGO Transparency International, which makes him the second most corrupt leader in history, behind only the Indonesian anti-communist dictator Suharto. By 1977, the army had quadrupled (from 65,000 in 1972 to 270,000) and more than 60,000 Filipinos had been detained for political reasons.

Under this law, constitutional rights were suspended and the Armed Forces and the police acquired enormous powers of repression; in addition, Marcos's presidential term remained extended or theoretically suspended until the Law was lifted, which allowed him to keep the presidency beyond the two-term limit. On September 23, 1972, upon declaring Martial law,

At the moment of declaring the Law, on September 23, Marcos justified his actions by arguing the threat of the double insurgency (communist and Islamist) against the country's government. Later, he accused the opposition parties of holding back his government and of being the main parties responsible for the violence that led him to declare that law. As was the case with the Armed Forces and the police, the imposition of Martial law (which in practice was a self-coup) handed Marcos broad executive powers. Ruling by decree, Marcos ordered the dissolution of Congress and crushed freedom of the press and other civil liberties. He shut down media outlets, and quickly ordered the arrest of opposition leaders and prominent activists, including senators Ninoy Aquino, Jovito Salonga and José Diokno, whom he could not have arrested without the emergency law because they enjoyed parliamentary immunity. On August 21, 1983, Benigno Aquino was assassinated as he was returning to the Philippines from exile. Aquino was a symbol of the population's discontent; more than 2 million Filipinos attended his funeral.

His regime also had a strong anti-crime program, and it was also notably marked by militarism, driving the progressive increase in the power and primacy of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, increasing their levels of equipment and their preponderance over national politics, which was heightened by the presence of leftist guerrillas in the country, as well as by the desire to turn the Philippines into a military force of the Pacific-Oceanic region. Politically, the Marcos government consisted of an autocratic, anti-communist, personalist, militarist and nepotistic dictatorship, during which numerous human rights violations were committed, with more than 75,000 complaints of abuses and harms committed by the regime existing by the 2010s.

Ferdinand Marcos in 1983.

Marcos's administration intensified corruption and the embezzlement of public funds at all levels of the political structure, with Marcos himself being responsible, according to the NGO Transparency International, for illicitly amassing a fortune of between USD 5 and 10 billion.

Finally, after a series of events that gradually weakened the solidity of his regime and with national and international pressure at its limit, Marcos called elections in 1986, which resulted in an electoral fraud in his favor. This provoked the rejection of sectors of the Catholic Church, of politics and of the armed forces together, which ended up converging in the EDSA Revolution, which finally forced Ferdinand Marcos to leave power and, together with his wife, Imelda Marcos, in Hawaii. Corruption and the economic crisis gradually weakened the regime, but it would be the assassination of the leader of the Filipino opposition, Benigno Aquino, in August 1983 that was the turning point that would end up marking the beginning of the end of the Marcos dictatorship.

His final fall came on February 25, 1986, when thousands of Filipinos during the People Power Revolution occupied the presidential compound, putting an end to 21 years of tyranny. Days earlier Ferdinand Marcos had managed to be reelected, defeating his opponent Corazón Aquino in fraudulent elections. Hours later the dictator and his family, under the auspices of the United States government, were evacuated and landed in Hawaii carrying on board 413 pieces of jewelry, an ivory statue, a diamond necklace, 24 gold bars, more than 27 million Philippine pesos in freshly printed banknotes and 15 million dollars.

He died three years after his fall from power, on September 28, 1989, during his exile in Hawaii, United States. His destination had been the island of Guam, a territory under United States administration. Marcos left the Philippines aboard a United States helicopter with suitcases full of gold and diamonds. His wife, Imelda Marcos, would from then on wage a series of legal battles to legitimize the vast fortune accumulated by the Marcoses, estimated at 35 billion dollars, in addition to having devoted her last years to the survival of the power of the Marcos family, remaining politically active. Likewise their children, Imee Marcos and Ferdinand Marcos Jr., also maintain notable political careers, the former as governor of the province of Ilocos Norte and the latter as a senator.

In 1987 he was planning to overthrow the government of Corazón Aquino by kidnapping the President without intending to harm her; this was overheard and Marcos was placed under house arrest.

Capital flight

The NGO Transparency International has calculated that the Marcos clan illegally amassed a fortune of between 5 and 10 billion dollars during the years in which it remained in power. In 1986 proceedings began to return to the Philippines part of the money hidden by the Marcos family in Switzerland. After 17 years of judicial proceedings the Philippine government finally received 658 million dollars, which were used to finance land reform and to pay compensation to the victims of the dictator's persecutions. No other country has frozen bank accounts or seized assets of members of the Marcos clan.

Since then a series of measures have been implemented, such as the Presidential Commission on Good Government, which has spent 32 years trying to recover the assets stolen by the former Philippine president. More than a third remains unaccounted for.

See also

• Kleptocracy