Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. [c] (11 de septiembre de 1917 - 28 de septiembre de 1989) fue un político filipino, dictador [7] [8] [9] y cleptócrata [10] [11] [12] que sirvió como el décimo presidente de Filipinas de 1965 a 1986. Marcos gobernó el país bajo la ley marcial de 1972 a 1981 , [13] y con poderes enormemente ampliados bajo la Constitución de 1973 hasta que fue depuesto por una revolución no violenta en 1986. Marcos describió la filosofía de su gobierno como " autoritarismo constitucional " [14] [15] : 414 bajo su Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (Movimiento Nueva Sociedad). Una de las figuras más controvertidas de la historia filipina, el régimen de Marcos fue famoso por su corrupción, [16] [17] [18] extravagancia, [19] [20] [21] y brutalidad. [22] [23] [24]
Marcos obtuvo éxito político al afirmar haber sido el "héroe de guerra más condecorado de Filipinas", [25] pero muchas de sus afirmaciones han resultado ser falsas, [26] [27] [28] con documentos del Ejército de los Estados Unidos que describen sus afirmaciones en tiempos de guerra como "fraudulentas" y "absurdas". [29] [30] Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, se convirtió en abogado y luego sirvió en la Cámara de Representantes de Filipinas de 1949 a 1959 y en el Senado de Filipinas de 1959 a 1965. Fue elegido presidente de Filipinas en 1965 y presidió una economía que creció durante el comienzo de su gobierno de 20 años [31] pero que terminaría en la pérdida de los medios de vida, la pobreza extrema para casi la mitad de la población filipina, [32] [33] y una aplastante crisis de deuda. [34] [33] Llevó a cabo un agresivo programa de desarrollo de infraestructuras financiado con deuda externa , [35] [36] lo que lo hizo popular durante su primer mandato, aunque desencadenó una crisis inflacionaria que llevó al malestar social en su segundo mandato. [37] [38] Marcos puso a Filipinas bajo la ley marcial el 23 de septiembre de 1972, [39] [40] poco antes del final de su segundo mandato. La ley marcial fue ratificada en 1973 mediante un referéndum fraudulento . [41] Se revisó la constitución, se silenciaron los medios de comunicación , [42] y se utilizó la violencia y la opresión [24] contra la oposición política, [43] [44] musulmanes, [45] presuntos comunistas, [46] [47] y ciudadanos comunes. [44]
Después de ser elegido para un tercer mandato en las elecciones presidenciales y referéndum de 1981 , la popularidad de Marcos sufrió mucho, debido al colapso económico que comenzó a principios de 1983 y la indignación pública por el asesinato del líder de la oposición, el senador Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. más tarde ese año. Este descontento, el resurgimiento resultante de la oposición en las elecciones parlamentarias de 1984 y el descubrimiento de documentos que exponían sus cuentas financieras y registros de guerra falsos llevaron a Marcos a convocar las elecciones anticipadas de 1986. Las acusaciones de fraude masivo, agitación política y abusos de los derechos humanos llevaron a la Revolución del Poder Popular de febrero de 1986, que lo sacó del poder. [48] Para evitar lo que podría haber sido una confrontación militar en Manila entre tropas pro y anti-Marcos, el presidente estadounidense Ronald Reagan le aconsejó a Marcos a través del senador Paul Laxalt que "cortara y cortara limpiamente". [49] Marcos luego huyó con su familia a Hawái. [50] Fue sucedido como presidente por la viuda de Aquino, Corazón "Cory" Aquino . [51] [52] [53]
Según documentos fuente proporcionados por la Comisión Presidencial de Buen Gobierno (PCGG), [54] la familia Marcos robó entre 5.000 y 10.000 millones de dólares del Banco Central de Filipinas . [55] [56] La PCGG también sostuvo que la familia Marcos disfrutó de un estilo de vida decadente, llevándose miles de millones de dólares [57] de Filipinas [58] [59] entre 1965 y 1986. Su esposa, Imelda Marcos , que se hizo famosa por los excesos que caracterizaron la " dictadura conyugal " de ella y su marido, [60] [61] [62] es la fuente del término Imeldific . [63] Dos de sus hijos, Imee y Bongbong , son activos en la política filipina, y Bongbong fue elegido presidente en las elecciones presidenciales de 2022 . Ferdinand e Imelda Marcos ostentaron durante décadas el récord mundial Guinness por el mayor robo jamás cometido a un gobierno, [64] aunque Guinness eliminó el récord de su sitio web mientras se sometía a una revisión periódica unas semanas antes de las elecciones de 2022. [65]
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos nació el 11 de septiembre de 1917 en la ciudad de Sarrat, Ilocos Norte , hijo de Mariano Marcos (1897-1945) y Josefa Edralin (1893-1988). [66] Mariano Marcos fue un abogado y congresista de Ilocos Norte , Filipinas. [67] Fue ejecutado por guerrilleros filipinos en 1945 por ser un propagandista y colaborador japonés durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Dibujado y descuartizado con el uso de carabaos , sus restos quedaron colgados en un árbol. [68] [69] [70] Josefa Marcos fue una maestra de escuela que sobreviviría mucho más que su esposo, muriendo en 1988, dos años después de que la familia Marcos la abandonara en el Palacio de Malacañang cuando huyeron al exilio después de la Revolución del Poder Popular de 1986 , y solo un año antes de la muerte de su hijo Ferdinand. [71]
Ferdinand fue bautizado y criado por primera vez en la Iglesia Independiente de Filipinas . [72] Posteriormente se convirtió al catolicismo romano en etapas posteriores de su vida para casarse con Imelda Trinidad Romualdez . [73]
Marcos vivía con una esposa de hecho , Carmen Ortega, una mestiza ilocana que fue Miss Press Photography en 1949. Tuvieron tres hijos y residieron durante unos dos años en el 204 de la calle Ortega en San Juan . En agosto de 1953, su compromiso fue anunciado en los diarios de Manila. [4]
No se sabe mucho sobre lo que le pasó a Ortega y sus hijos después, pero Marcos se casó con Imelda Trinidad Romualdez el 17 de abril de 1954, solo 11 días después de que se conocieron. Tuvieron tres hijos biológicos: Ferdinand , Imee e Irene Marcos . [74] El cuarto hijo de Marcos con Ortega nació después de su matrimonio con Imelda. [60] Marcos e Imelda luego adoptaron una hija, Aimee . [75] Marcos tuvo un romance con la actriz estadounidense Dovie Beams de 1968 a 1970. Según informes del Sydney Morning Herald , Marcos también tuvo un romance con la ex modelo de Playboy Evelin Hegyesi alrededor de 1970 y engendró una hija con ella, Analisa Josefa. [76]
Marcos afirmó que era descendiente de Antonio Luna , un general filipino durante la guerra filipino-estadounidense , [77] una afirmación que desde entonces ha sido desacreditada por la genealogista Mona Magno-Veluz. [78] También afirmó que su antepasado era un pirata del siglo XVI, Limahong (chino: 林阿鳳), que solía atacar las costas del Mar de China Meridional . [79] [80] Es un descendiente mestizo chino , al igual que muchos otros presidentes. [81]
Marcos estudió derecho en la Universidad de Filipinas (UP) en Manila , asistiendo a la Facultad de Derecho . Se destacó tanto en actividades curriculares como extracurriculares, convirtiéndose en miembro de los equipos de natación, boxeo y lucha libre de la universidad. También fue un consumado orador , polemista y escritor para el periódico estudiantil. Mientras asistía a la Facultad de Derecho de la UP, se convirtió en miembro de Upsilon Sigma Phi , donde conoció a sus futuros colegas en el gobierno y a algunos de sus críticos más acérrimos. [82] [ página necesaria ] [83] [ página necesaria ]
Cuando se presentó a los exámenes de abogacía de 1939 , fue uno de los mejores del colegio de abogados (máximo puntaje) con una puntuación de 92,35%. [84] Se graduó cum laude y estuvo entre los diez primeros de su clase, con el futuro presidente del Tribunal Supremo Felix Makasiar convirtiéndose en el salutatorian de su clase . [85] [86] Fue elegido miembro de las sociedades de honor internacionales Pi Gamma Mu y Phi Kappa Phi , esta última le otorgó su Premio al Miembro Más Distinguido 37 años después. [87]
Ferdinand Marcos recibió el título de Doctor honoris causa en Derecho (LL.D.) en 1967 por la Universidad Central de Filipinas . [88]
Marcos ganó notoriedad nacional por primera vez por el asesinato de Julio Nalundasan . Nalundasan, el rival político de Mariano Marcos, fue asesinado con un solo disparo de rifle en su casa en Batac el 21 de septiembre de 1935, el día después de haber derrotado a Marcos por segunda vez por un asiento en la Asamblea Nacional . [89]
En diciembre de 1938, Ferdinand Marcos fue procesado por el asesinato de Nalundasan. No fue el único acusado del clan Marcos. También fueron acusados su padre, Mariano, y sus tíos, Pio Marcos y Quirino Lizardo. [90] Según dos testigos, los cuatro habían conspirado para asesinar a Nalundasan, y Ferdinand Marcos finalmente apretó el gatillo. A fines de enero de 1939, finalmente se les negó la libertad bajo fianza. [91]
Las pruebas eran contundentes contra el joven Marcos, que era miembro del equipo de fusileros de la Universidad de Filipinas y campeón nacional de fusileros. [92] Aunque el fusil de Marcos se encontró en su armería en la armería del ROTC de la UP , el fusil del capitán del equipo Teodoro M. Kalaw Jr. no estaba en ese momento y la Oficina Nacional de Investigaciones tenía pruebas de que era el que se había utilizado en el asesinato de Nalundasan. De todos los acusados, sólo Ferdinand Marcos tenía acceso a la armería de la UP. [89]
Más tarde ese mismo año, Ferdinand y Lizardo fueron condenados por asesinato. Ferdinand fue sentenciado a entre 10 y 17 años de prisión. [93] La familia Marcos apeló ante el Tribunal Supremo de Filipinas . [94]
Según Primitivo Mijares , el juez José P. Laurel , que redactó la decisión mayoritaria, se vio reflejado en el joven Marcos, ya que había estado a punto de matar a un rival durante una pelea durante su juventud, había sido condenado por un tribunal de primera instancia por asesinato frustrado y fue absuelto después de apelar ante la Corte Suprema, y vio en Marcos una oportunidad de pagar su deuda con la sociedad. El decano de la Facultad de Derecho de la UP, George A. Malcolm, era profesor de Laurel y juez asociado de la Corte Suprema. Malcolm había instado a sus colegas a absolver al joven Laurel porque sabía que era un estudiante brillante. Por lo tanto, se dice que Laurel vio en Marcos un espejo de sí mismo y pidió a sus colegas que lo absolvieran. [89]
El Tribunal Supremo revocó la decisión del tribunal inferior el 22 de octubre de 1940, absolviendo a la familia Marcos de todos los cargos excepto el de desacato. [95] [96]
El servicio militar de Marcos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial ha sido objeto de debate y controversia, tanto en Filipinas como en círculos militares internacionales. [29]
Marcos, que había recibido entrenamiento ROTC, fue activado para el servicio en las Fuerzas Armadas de los Estados Unidos en Filipinas (USAFIP) después del ataque a Pearl Harbor . Sirvió como tercer teniente durante la movilización en el verano y otoño de 1941, continuando hasta abril de 1942, después de lo cual fue tomado prisionero. [97] Según el relato de Marcos, fue liberado de prisión por los japoneses el 4 de agosto de 1942, [97] y los registros militares estadounidenses muestran que se reincorporó a las fuerzas de la USAFIP en diciembre de 1944. [97] El servicio militar de Marcos terminó formalmente con su baja como mayor en la 14.ª Infantería, Fuerzas Armadas de los Estados Unidos, en Filipinas, norte de Luzón, en mayo de 1945. [98]
Las controversias en torno al servicio militar de Marcos giran en torno a: el motivo de su liberación del campo de prisioneros de guerra japonés; [97] sus acciones entre su liberación de prisión en agosto de 1942 y su regreso a la USAFIP en diciembre de 1944; [97] su supuesto rango al ser dado de baja de la USAFIP; [98] y sus afirmaciones de haber recibido numerosas condecoraciones militares, la mayoría de las cuales resultaron ser fraudulentas. [29]
Documentos descubiertos por The Washington Post en 1986 sugirieron que la liberación de Marcos en agosto de 1942 se produjo porque su padre, el ex congresista y gobernador provincial Mariano Marcos , había "cooperado con las autoridades militares japonesas" como publicista. [97]
Después de su liberación, Marcos afirmó que había pasado gran parte del período entre su liberación en agosto de 1942 y su regreso a la USAFIP en diciembre de 1944 [97] como líder de una organización guerrillera llamada Ang Mga Mahárlika ( en tagalo , "Los Hombres Libres") en el norte de Luzón . [99] Según la afirmación de Marcos, esta fuerza tenía una dotación de 9.000 hombres. [99] Su relato de los hechos fue puesto en duda más tarde después de que una investigación militar de los Estados Unidos expusiera muchas de sus afirmaciones como falsas o inexactas. [100]
Otra controversia surgió en 1947, cuando Marcos comenzó a firmar comunicaciones con el rango de teniente coronel, en lugar de mayor. Esto llevó a los funcionarios estadounidenses a señalar que Marcos sólo fue "reconocido como mayor en la lista del 14.º Regimiento de Infantería USAFIP, NL desde el 12 de diciembre de 1944 hasta su fecha de baja". [98]
La mayor controversia surgida a partir del servicio de Marcos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sin embargo, se referiría a sus afirmaciones durante la Campaña Senatorial de 1962 de ser "el héroe de guerra más condecorado de Filipinas" [29] Afirmó haber recibido 33 medallas y condecoraciones de guerra, incluida la Cruz de Servicio Distinguido y la Medalla de Honor , pero los investigadores descubrieron más tarde que las historias sobre las hazañas de Marcos en tiempos de guerra eran en su mayoría propaganda, siendo inexactas o falsas. [101] Solo dos de los supuestos 33 premios, la Cruz de Oro y la Estrella de Servicio Distinguido, se otorgaron durante la guerra, y ambos habían sido impugnados por los superiores de Marcos. [101]
Después de la rendición de los japoneses y el fin de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el gobierno estadounidense se preocupó por establecer el Plan Marshall para revivir las economías del hemisferio occidental, y rápidamente dio marcha atrás en sus intereses en Filipinas, concediendo la independencia a las islas el 4 de julio de 1946. [102] [103] Después de la guerra, Marcos fue uno de los once abogados confirmados por el nuevo gobierno como fiscal especial en la oficina del Procurador General encargada de juzgar mediante "un proceso de ley y justicia" a todos los acusados de colaborar con los japoneses. [104] Finalmente, Marcos se postuló para el antiguo puesto de su padre como representante del segundo distrito de Ilocos Norte y ganó tres mandatos consecutivos, sirviendo en la Cámara de Representantes de 1949 a 1959. [105]
Marcos se unió al "Ala Liberal" que se separó del Partido Nacionalista , que finalmente se convirtió en el Partido Liberal . Con el tiempo se convirtió en el portavoz del Partido Liberal en asuntos económicos y fue nombrado presidente del Bloque de Neófitos de la Cámara, que incluía al futuro presidente Diosdado Macapagal , al futuro vicepresidente Emmanuel Peláez y al futuro alcalde de Manila Arsenio Lacson . [105]
Marcos se convirtió en presidente del Comité de Comercio e Industria de la Cámara de Representantes y miembro de los Comités de Defensa, Medios y Arbitrios; Industria; Bancos, Moneda; Veteranos de Guerra; Servicio Civil; y Corporaciones y Planificación Económica. También fue miembro del Comité Especial sobre Control de Importaciones y Precios y del Comité Especial sobre Reparaciones, y del Tribunal Electoral de la Cámara de Representantes. [105]
Después de servir como miembro de la Cámara de Representantes durante tres mandatos, Marcos ganó su escaño en el Senado en las elecciones de 1959 y se convirtió en el líder de la minoría del Senado en 1960. Se convirtió en el vicepresidente ejecutivo del Partido Liberal y se desempeñó como presidente del partido de 1961 a 1964.
De 1963 a 1965 fue Presidente del Senado . Hasta el momento, es el último Presidente del Senado en convertirse en Presidente de Filipinas. Presentó varios proyectos de ley importantes, muchos de los cuales llegaron a los códigos de la República. [105]
Durante su campaña electoral en las elecciones presidenciales de 1965 , la vida de Marcos se convirtió en la base de la película biográfica Iginuhit ng Tadhana (La historia de Ferdinand E. Marcos) , protagonizada por Luis Gonzales como Marcos.
El primer mandato de Marcos comenzó con su toma de posesión el 30 de diciembre de 1965 y terminó cuando fue investido para su segundo mandato el 30 de diciembre de 1969. [106]
Al perseguir un agresivo programa de desarrollo de infraestructura financiado con préstamos extranjeros, siguió siendo popular durante la mayor parte de su primer mandato, [106] con su popularidad decayendo solo después de que su gasto impulsado por la deuda durante la campaña para su segundo mandato desencadenara una crisis inflacionaria en noviembre y diciembre de 1969, antes de su segunda toma de posesión. [37] [38] Entre los principales proyectos del primer mandato estaba la construcción del complejo del Centro Cultural de Filipinas , considerado uno de los primeros ejemplos de lo que se conocería como el complejo de edificios de los Marcos . [107] [108]
Poco después de ser elegido, Marcos desarrolló estrechas relaciones con los oficiales del ejército filipino, [106] y comenzó a expandir las fuerzas armadas permitiendo que los generales leales permanecieran en sus puestos más allá de su edad de jubilación, o dándoles puestos en el gobierno civil. [109] También obtuvo el apoyo de la administración Johnson en los EE. UU. al permitir la limitada participación filipina en la guerra de Vietnam a través del Grupo de Acción Cívica Filipina. [110]
El primer mandato de Marcos también vio la exposición del Senado filipino de la masacre de Jabidah en marzo de 1968, donde un hombre musulmán llamado Jibin Arula testificó que había sido el único sobreviviente de un grupo de reclutas del ejército moro que habían sido ejecutados en masa en la isla de Corregidor el 18 de marzo de 1968. [111] [112] Las acusaciones en la exposición se convirtieron en un importante punto de inflamación que encendió la insurgencia moro en Filipinas . [112]
Marcos llevó a cabo una campaña populista enfatizando que era un héroe de guerra condecorado que emergía de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. En 1962, Marcos afirmaría ser el héroe de guerra más condecorado de Filipinas al obtener casi todas las medallas y condecoraciones que los gobiernos filipino y estadounidense podían dar a un soldado. [113] Incluidas en su reclamo de 27 medallas y condecoraciones de guerra están la Cruz de Servicio Distinguido y la Medalla de Honor. [113] [114] Según Primitivo Mijares, autor del libro La dictadura conyugal de Ferdinand Marcos e Imelda Marcos , el opositor Partido Liberal confirmaría más tarde que muchas de sus medallas de guerra solo fueron adquiridas en 1962 para ayudar en su campaña de reelección para el Senado, no para su campaña presidencial. [60] Marcos ganó la presidencia en 1965. [115]
Ferdinand Marcos asumió su primer mandato como décimo presidente de Filipinas el 30 de diciembre de 1965, tras ganar las elecciones presidenciales filipinas de 1965 contra el presidente en ejercicio, Diosdado Macapagal . Su investidura marcó el comienzo de su larga permanencia de dos décadas en el poder, a pesar de que la Constitución filipina de 1935 había establecido un límite de solo dos mandatos de cuatro años.
Una de las primeras iniciativas de Marcos al convertirse en presidente fue ampliar significativamente el ejército filipino. En una medida sin precedentes, Marcos decidió ejercer simultáneamente como su propio secretario de Defensa, lo que le permitió tener una participación directa en la gestión del ejército. [106] También aumentó significativamente el presupuesto de las fuerzas armadas, recurriendo a él para proyectos civiles como la construcción de escuelas. A los generales leales a Marcos se les permitió permanecer en sus puestos más allá de su edad de jubilación, o se les premió con puestos en el gobierno civil, lo que llevó al senador Benigno Aquino Jr. a acusar a Marcos en 1968 de intentar establecer "un estado de guarnición". [109]
Bajo intensa presión de la administración de Lyndon B. Johnson , [110] Marcos revirtió su posición previa a la presidencia de no enviar fuerzas filipinas a la guerra de Vietnam, [110] [116] y consintió en una participación limitada, [117] pidiendo al Congreso que aprobara el envío de una unidad de ingenieros de combate . A pesar de la oposición al nuevo plan, el gobierno de Marcos obtuvo la aprobación del Congreso y las tropas filipinas fueron enviadas desde mediados de 1966 como el Grupo de Acción Cívica de Filipinas (PHILCAG). PHILCAG alcanzó una fuerza de unos 1.600 soldados en 1968 y entre 1966 y 1970 más de 10.000 soldados filipinos sirvieron en Vietnam del Sur, principalmente participando en proyectos de infraestructura civil. [118] [119]
Con la intención de convertirse en el primer presidente de la tercera república en ser reelegido para un segundo mandato, Marcos comenzó a recibir préstamos extranjeros masivos para financiar el "arroz, las carreteras y los edificios escolares" que prometió en su campaña de reelección. Como los ingresos fiscales no le alcanzaban para financiar el aumento del 70% del gasto en infraestructuras que su administración había realizado entre 1966 y 1970, Marcos comenzó a recurrir a préstamos extranjeros, lo que creó un déficit presupuestario un 72% superior al déficit anual del gobierno filipino entre 1961 y 1965. [106]
Esto inició un patrón de gasto financiado con préstamos que la administración de Marcos continuaría hasta que los Marcos fueron depuestos en 1986, lo que resultó en una inestabilidad económica que todavía se siente hoy, y de deudas que los expertos dicen que Filipinas tendrá que seguir pagando hasta bien entrado el 2025. [106] Los proyectos de infraestructura más grandes del primer mandato de Marcos, especialmente el complejo del Centro Cultural de Filipinas , también marcaron el comienzo de lo que los críticos llamarían el complejo de edificios del matrimonio Marcos , con grandes proyectos de infraestructura pública priorizados para la financiación pública debido a su valor propagandístico. [108] [ página necesaria ]
En marzo de 1968, un musulmán llamado Jibin Arula fue rescatado de las aguas de la bahía de Manila, tras recibir disparos. Fue llevado ante el entonces gobernador de Cavite, Delfin N. Montano, a quien le contó la historia de la masacre de Jabidah, diciendo que numerosos reclutas del ejército moro habían sido ejecutados en masa por miembros de las Fuerzas Armadas de Filipinas (AFP) el 18 de marzo de 1968. [111] [ se necesita una mejor fuente ] Esto se convirtió en el tema de una exposición en el Senado por parte del senador de la oposición Benigno Aquino Jr. [120] [121]
Aunque la falta de testigos vivos aparte de Arula obstaculizó gravemente las investigaciones sobre el incidente, se convirtió en un importante punto de conflicto que encendió la insurgencia moro en Filipinas . [112] A pesar de someterse a numerosos juicios y audiencias, ninguno de los oficiales implicados en la masacre fue condenado, lo que llevó a muchos musulmanes filipinos a creer que el gobierno "cristiano" de Manila tenía poco respeto por ellos. [122] [123] Esto creó un furor dentro de la comunidad musulmana en Filipinas, especialmente entre los jóvenes educados, [124] [ página requerida ] y entre los intelectuales musulmanes, que no tenían ningún interés discernible en la política antes del incidente. [112] Educados o no, la historia de la masacre de Jabidah llevó a muchos musulmanes filipinos a creer que todas las oportunidades de integración y acomodación con los cristianos se perdieron y se marginaron aún más. [125]
Esto finalmente condujo a la formación del Movimiento de Independencia de Mindanao en 1968, la Organización de Liberación de Bangsamoro (BMLO) en 1969 y la consolidación de estas diversas fuerzas en el Frente Moro de Liberación Nacional (MNLF) en octubre de 1972. [126]
La campaña de Ferdinand Marcos para un segundo mandato comenzó formalmente con su nominación como candidato presidencial del Partido Nacionalista en su asamblea general de julio de 1969. Una semana antes se había reunido la junta gobernante del partido para asegurar que la nominación fuera unánime. [127] Según la Constitución de Filipinas de 1935, que estaba en vigor en ese momento, se suponía que a Marcos se le permitiría un máximo de dos mandatos de cuatro años como presidente. [106]
Durante la campaña de 1969, Marcos lanzó proyectos de infraestructura por valor de 50 millones de dólares en un esfuerzo por ganarse el favor del electorado. [128] Este rápido gasto de campaña fue tan masivo que sería responsable de la crisis de la balanza de pagos de 1970, cuyo efecto inflacionario causaría malestar social que condujo hasta la proclamación de la ley marcial en 1972. [37] [38] Se informó que Marcos gastó PHP100 por cada PHP1 que gastó Osmeña, utilizando PHP24 millones solo en Cebú. [129]
Con su popularidad ya reforzada por el gasto financiado con deuda, la popularidad de Marcos hizo muy probable que ganara las elecciones, pero decidió, como informó el Artista Nacional de Literatura Nick Joaquin en Philippines Free Press , "no dejar nada al azar". [127] Time y Newsweek eventualmente llamarían a la elección de 1969 la "más sucia, más violenta y más corrupta" en la historia moderna de Filipinas, con el término "Tres G", que significa " armas, matones y oro " [130] [131] acuñado [132] para describir las tácticas electorales de la administración de compra de votos, terrorismo y robo de papeletas. [129]
Durante la campaña, Marcos gastó 50 millones de dólares en infraestructura financiada con deuda, lo que desencadenó una crisis de balanza de pagos . [133] La administración de Marcos acudió al Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) en busca de ayuda, y el FMI le ofreció un acuerdo de reestructuración de la deuda. Se pusieron en marcha nuevas políticas, incluido un mayor énfasis en las exportaciones y la relajación de los controles sobre el peso. Se permitió que el peso flotara a un valor de mercado más bajo, lo que resultó en una inflación drástica y malestar social. [134]
A partir de la década de 1960, Ferdinand Marcos se involucraría en una diplomacia no oficial con el bloque soviético , en formas que fueron moldeadas por la división chino-soviética . [135] [136] El Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 , una organización oficialmente ilegal, había respaldado a Marcos en 1965. La formación del Partido Comunista de Filipinas alineado con China llevó al apoyo gubernamental al Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas-1930 alineado con la Unión Soviética. Algunos miembros del PKP-1930 fueron designados para puestos dentro del gobierno de Marcos como "investigadores" asalariados. Sus conexiones transnacionales se utilizaron como otro canal de negociación con la Unión Soviética en líneas geopolíticas y económicas. [136]
El 11 de noviembre de 1969 se celebraron elecciones presidenciales y Marcos fue reelegido para un segundo mandato. Fue el primer y último presidente filipino en ganar un segundo mandato completo. [137] [138] [139] [140] Su compañero de fórmula, el actual vicepresidente Fernando López, también fue elegido para un tercer mandato completo como vicepresidente de Filipinas .
El segundo mandato de Marcos se caracterizó por el malestar social, que comenzó con la crisis de la balanza de pagos de Filipinas de 1969 , que ya estaba en marcha durante la segunda toma de posesión. [106] Comenzaron a formarse grupos de oposición, con grupos "moderados" que pedían reformas políticas y grupos "radicales" que defendían una ideología más radical de izquierda. [141] [142] [143]
Marcos respondió a ambos grupos con fuerza militar. La más notable de ellas fue la serie de protestas durante los primeros tres meses de 1970, un período que desde entonces se conoce como la Tormenta del Primer Trimestre . [144] [145] [143]
Otro acontecimiento importante durante el segundo mandato de Marcos fue la Convención Constitucional de Filipinas de 1971 , que se vio empañada en mayo de 1972 cuando un delegado expuso un plan de soborno en el que se pagaba a los delegados para que votaran a favor de los Marcos, con la propia Primera Dama Imelda Marcos implicada en el supuesto plan de soborno. [106] : 133 [146]
El 21 de agosto de 1971, en la Plaza Miranda del distrito de Quiapo, en Manila, se celebró un mitin de campaña política del opositor Partido Liberal. Marcos culpó al entonces todavía incipiente Partido Comunista de Filipinas y emitió la Proclamación Nº 889, por la que se atribuía poderes de emergencia y suspendía el recurso de hábeas corpus. [147] Se detuvo a opositores acusados de ser "radicales". La respuesta de Marcos oscureció aún más la distinción entre los moderados y la oposición radical, que ya se había desdibujado desde la tormenta del Primer Trimestre. Esto provocó una expansión masiva de la resistencia socialista clandestina, cuando muchos opositores moderados no vieron otra opción que unirse a los radicales. [148] [149] [143] En 1972 se produjo una serie de atentados con bombas en Metro Manila, lo que aumentó la tensión. Marcos volvió a culpar a los comunistas, aunque los únicos sospechosos capturados en relación con las explosiones estaban vinculados a la policía filipina. [150] [151]
El segundo mandato de Marcos terminó efectivamente poco menos de dos años y nueve meses después, cuando Marcos anunció el 23 de septiembre de 1972 que había puesto a Filipinas bajo la ley marcial. [39]
Aunque Marcos había ganado las elecciones de noviembre de 1969 por una mayoría aplastante y fue investido el 30 de diciembre de ese año, el gasto masivo de Marcos durante la campaña presidencial de 1969 desencadenó un creciente malestar público. [134]
Los gastos de Marcos durante la campaña llevaron a figuras de la oposición como el senador Lorenzo Tañada , el senador Jovito Salonga y el senador José W. Diokno a acusar a Marcos de querer permanecer en el poder incluso más allá del máximo de dos mandatos establecido para la presidencia por la constitución de 1935. [134]
Los grupos de oposición crecieron rápidamente en los campus, donde los estudiantes tenían el tiempo y la oportunidad de estar al tanto de cuestiones políticas y económicas. [141] [142]
Los medios de comunicación de la época clasificaron a los diversos grupos de la sociedad civil que se oponían a Marcos en dos categorías. [141] [142] Los "moderados", que incluían grupos religiosos, defensores de las libertades civiles y políticos nacionalistas, eran aquellos que querían crear cambios a través de reformas políticas. [141] Los "radicales", que incluían a varios grupos de trabajadores y estudiantes, querían reformas políticas más amplias y sistémicas. [141] [143]
Con la Convención Constitucional ocupando su atención desde 1971 a 1973, los estadistas y políticos opuestos a la administración cada vez más autoritaria de Ferdinand Marcos centraron sus esfuerzos principalmente en las gestiones políticas desde dentro de los pasillos del poder. [106]
Sus preocupaciones variaban, pero generalmente incluían una reforma electoral, llamados a una convención constitucional no partidista y un llamado a que Marcos no excediera los dos mandatos presidenciales que le permitía la Constitución de 1935. [106] [143]
Entre ellos se encontraban en particular la Unión Nacional de Estudiantes de Filipinas, [143] la Liga Nacional de Estudiantes (NSL), [143] y, posteriormente, el Movimiento de Ciudadanos Preocupados por las Libertades Civiles o MCCCL, liderado por el senador José W. Diokno . [142]
Las manifestaciones del MCCCL son recordadas especialmente por su diversidad, atrayendo a participantes tanto del bando moderado como del radical, y por su escala: a la más grande asistieron hasta 50.000 personas. [142]
La otra amplia categoría de grupos de oposición durante este período eran aquellos que querían reformas políticas más amplias y sistémicas, generalmente como parte del movimiento Democracia Nacional . Los medios de comunicación tildaron a estos grupos de "radicales", [141] [143] aunque la administración de Marcos extendió ese término también a los grupos de protesta "moderados". [152]
Entre los grupos considerados "radicales" por los medios de comunicación de la época se encontraban: [143]
Cuando Marcos se convirtió en presidente en 1965, la política y las políticas filipinas funcionaban bajo un marco geopolítico posterior a la Segunda Guerra Mundial. [153] Como resultado, Filipinas se vio ideológicamente atrapada en el miedo anticomunista perpetuado por los EE. UU. durante la Guerra Fría. [154] Marcos y la AFP enfatizaron así la "amenaza" representada por la formación del Partido Comunista de Filipinas en 1969, incluso si todavía era una organización pequeña. [145] : 43 en parte porque hacerlo era bueno para aumentar el presupuesto de la AFP. [145] : "43" [134] Como resultado, señala el especialista en seguridad Richard J. Kessler, esto "mitificó al grupo, investiéndolo con un aura revolucionaria que solo atrajo más partidarios".
Los disturbios sociales de 1969 a 1970 y la violenta dispersión de las protestas resultantes de la "Tormenta del Primer Trimestre" estuvieron entre los primeros acontecimientos decisivos en los que un gran número de estudiantes filipinos de la década de 1970 se radicalizaron contra la administración de Marcos. Debido a estas dispersiones, muchos estudiantes que anteriormente habían mantenido posiciones "moderadas" (es decir, que pedían reformas legislativas) se convencieron de que no tenían otra opción que pedir un cambio social más radical. [148] [149]
Otros acontecimientos decisivos que más tarde radicalizarían a muchos miembros de la oposición por lo demás "moderados" incluyen la Comuna de Diliman de febrero de 1971 ; la suspensión en agosto de 1971 del recurso de habeas corpus a raíz del atentado de Plaza Miranda ; la declaración de la ley marcial en septiembre de 1972 ; el asesinato en 1980 de Macli-ing Dulag ; [144] y el asesinato en agosto de 1983 de Ninoy Aquino . [143]
En 1970, las sesiones de estudio sobre marxismo-leninismo se habían vuelto comunes en los campus, y muchos activistas estudiantiles se unieron a varias organizaciones asociadas con el Movimiento Nacional Democrático (ND), como la Asociación Cultural Estudiantil de la Universidad de Filipinas (SCAUP) y el Kabataang Makabayan (KM, lit. Juventud Patriótica ) que fueron fundadas por José María Sison ; [155] [156] el Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK) que fue fundado como una organización separada de la SCAUP y el KM por un grupo de jóvenes escritores-líderes; [157] y otros.
La línea divisoria entre activistas de izquierda y comunistas se fue difuminando cada vez más, ya que un número significativo de activistas radicalizados también se unieron al Partido Comunista de Filipinas . Los activistas radicalizados de las ciudades comenzaron a desplegarse más ampliamente en áreas rurales, donde algunos se convirtieron en guerrilleros. [158] [159]
Cuando Marcos pronunció el primer discurso sobre el Estado de la Nación de su segundo mandato el 26 de enero de 1970, el malestar nacido de la crisis de la balanza de pagos de 1969-1970 estalló en una serie de manifestaciones , protestas y marchas contra el gobierno. Los grupos estudiantiles, algunos moderados y otros radicales, sirvieron como fuerza impulsora de las protestas, que duraron hasta el final del semestre universitario en marzo de 1970, y que llegarían a ser conocidas como la " Tormenta del Primer Trimestre ". [160] [134]
Durante el discurso sobre el estado de la nación pronunciado por Marcos el 26 de enero de 1970, la moderada Unión Nacional de Estudiantes de Filipinas organizó una protesta frente al Congreso e invitó a grupos de estudiantes, tanto moderados como radicales, a unirse a ellos. Algunos de los estudiantes que participaron en la protesta acosaron a Marcos cuando él y su esposa Imelda salían del edificio del Congreso, arrojándoles un ataúd, un caimán disecado y piedras. [161]
La siguiente gran protesta tuvo lugar el 30 de enero frente al palacio presidencial, [162] donde los activistas embistieron la puerta con un camión de bomberos y, una vez que la puerta se rompió y cedió, los activistas irrumpieron en el recinto del palacio arrojando piedras, búnkeres y bombas molotov. Se confirmó la muerte de al menos dos activistas y varios resultaron heridos por la policía.
Entre esa fecha y el 17 de marzo de 1970 se produjeron cinco protestas más importantes en la zona metropolitana de Manila, que algunos medios de comunicación calificarían más tarde como las "7 protestas mortales de la tormenta del primer trimestre". [163] Entre ellas, una manifestación el 12 de febrero en la Plaza Miranda; una manifestación el 18 de febrero denominada "Congreso del Pueblo", que también se suponía que iba a tener lugar en la Plaza Miranda, pero que se dispersó pronto, lo que provocó que los manifestantes se dirigieran a la Embajada de los Estados Unidos, donde prendieron fuego al vestíbulo; [149] una manifestación del "Segundo Congreso del Pueblo" el 26 de febrero; una "Marcha del Pueblo" desde Welcome Rotonda hasta la Plaza Lawton el 3 de marzo; y la Segunda "Marcha del Pueblo" en la Plaza Moriones el 17 de marzo. [163]
Las protestas oscilaron entre 50.000 y 100.000 personas por acción masiva semanal. [164] [ se necesita una mejor fuente ] Los estudiantes habían declarado un boicot a las clases de una semana de duración y en su lugar se reunieron para organizar manifestaciones de protesta. [149]
Las violentas disoluciones de diversas protestas del FQS fueron uno de los primeros acontecimientos decisivos en los que un gran número de estudiantes filipinos de la década de 1970 se radicalizaron contra la administración de Marcos. Debido a estas disoluciones, muchos estudiantes que anteriormente habían mantenido posiciones "moderadas" (es decir, que pedían reformas legislativas) se convencieron de que no tenían otra opción que pedir un cambio social más radical. [148] [ se necesita una mejor fuente ]
Expresando su oposición a las políticas de Marcos y citando el creciente descontento por las amplias desigualdades en la sociedad, [106] grupos de la sociedad civil y líderes de la oposición comenzaron a hacer campaña en 1967 para iniciar una convención constitucional que revisaría y cambiaría la Constitución de Filipinas de 1935. [ 165] El 16 de marzo de ese año, el Congreso de Filipinas se constituyó en Asamblea Constituyente y aprobó la Resolución No. 2, que pedía una Convención Constitucional para cambiar la Constitución de 1935. [166]
Marcos sorprendió a sus críticos al respaldar la medida, pero los historiadores señalaron más tarde que la Convención Constitucional resultante sentaría las bases para las justificaciones legales que Marcos utilizaría para extender su mandato más allá de los dos períodos de cuatro años permitidos por la Constitución de 1935. [106]
El 10 de noviembre de 1970 se celebraron elecciones especiales para elegir a los delegados de la convención. [106] : 130 Una vez que se determinaron los ganadores, la convención se convocó el 1 de junio de 1971 en el recién terminado Quezon City Hall . [167] Se eligieron un total de 320 delegados para la convención, siendo los más destacados los ex senadores Raul Manglapus y Roseller T. Lim . Otros delegados se convertirían en figuras políticas influyentes, entre ellos Hilario Davide Jr. , Marcelo Fernan , Sotero Laurel , Aquilino Pimentel Jr. , Teofisto Guingona Jr. , Raul Roco , Edgardo Angara , Richard Gordon , Margarito Teves y Federico Dela Plana. [106] [168]
En 1972, la convención ya se había visto empantanada por la politiquería y las demoras, cuando su credibilidad recibió un duro golpe en mayo de 1972, cuando un delegado expuso un plan de soborno en el que se pagaba a los delegados para que votaran a favor de los Marcos, con la propia Primera Dama Imelda Marcos implicada en el supuesto plan de soborno. [106] : 133 [146]
La investigación sobre el plan fue archivada de hecho cuando Marcos declaró la ley marcial en septiembre de 1972 y mandó arrestar a 11 delegados de la oposición. Los delegados de la oposición restantes se vieron obligados a exiliarse o a esconderse. En el plazo de dos meses, un comité especial creó desde cero un borrador de constitución completamente nuevo. [169] El plebiscito constitucional de 1973 fue convocado para ratificar la nueva constitución, pero la validez de la ratificación fue puesta en tela de juicio porque Marcos sustituyó el método de votación secreta por un sistema de votación viva voce por "asambleas de ciudadanos". [170] : 213 La ratificación de la constitución fue impugnada en lo que llegó a conocerse como los Casos de Ratificación . [171] [172]
El 29 de diciembre de 1970, el instructor de la Academia Militar de Filipinas , el teniente Victor Corpuz, dirigió a los rebeldes del Nuevo Ejército Popular en una incursión en el arsenal del PMA, capturando rifles, ametralladoras, lanzagranadas, una bazuca y miles de rondas de municiones en 1970. [173] En 1972, China, que entonces apoyaba y armaba activamente a las insurgencias comunistas en Asia como parte de la Doctrina de la Guerra Popular de Mao Zedong , transportó 1.200 rifles M-14 y AK-47 a bordo del MV Karagatan para que el NPA acelerara su campaña para derrotar al gobierno. [174] [175] [176]
También se estaban gestando rumores de un golpe de Estado . Un informe del Comité de Relaciones Exteriores del Senado de Estados Unidos decía que poco después de las elecciones presidenciales filipinas de 1969 , un grupo compuesto principalmente por coroneles y generales retirados organizó una junta revolucionaria con el objetivo de desacreditar primero al presidente Marcos y luego matarlo. El grupo estaba encabezado por Eleuterio Adevoso, un funcionario del opositor Partido Liberal. Un documento entregado al comité por un funcionario del gobierno filipino afirmaba que las figuras clave en el complot eran el vicepresidente Fernando López y Sergio Osmena Jr., a quien Marcos derrotó en las elecciones de 1969. [177]
Mientras que un informe obtenido por The New York Times especulaba que los rumores de un golpe de Estado podrían ser utilizados por Marcos para justificar la ley marcial , ya en diciembre de 1969, en un mensaje del embajador de los EE. UU. al secretario de Estado adjunto de los EE. UU., el embajador dijo que la mayoría de las conversaciones sobre la revolución e incluso el asesinato han venido de la oposición derrotada, de la que Adevoso es un activista líder. También dijo que la información que tiene sobre los planes de asesinato es "dura" o bien documentada y que tiene que asegurarse de que llegue al presidente Marcos. [178] [ fuente no primaria necesaria ] [179] [ fuente no primaria necesaria ]
En entrevistas concedidas al Washington Post , ex funcionarios anónimos del Partido Comunista de Filipinas afirmaron que "la dirección del Partido Comunista planeó -y tres agentes llevaron a cabo- el ataque a la Plaza Miranda en un intento de provocar la represión gubernamental y llevar al país al borde de la revolución. El líder del Partido Comunista, José María Sison, había calculado que Marcos podría ser provocado para que reprimiera a sus oponentes, llevando así a miles de activistas políticos a la clandestinidad, dijeron los ex funcionarios anónimos. Se necesitaban reclutas con urgencia, dijeron, para hacer uso de una gran afluencia de armas y ayuda financiera que China ya había acordado proporcionar". [180] José María Sison sigue negando estas afirmaciones, [181] y el CPP nunca ha publicado ninguna confirmación oficial de su culpabilidad en el incidente. Marcos y sus aliados afirmaron que Benigno Aquino Jr. era parte del complot, lo que fue negado por el presidente fundador del CPP-NPA, José María Sison . [182]
Algunos historiadores afirman que Marcos fue responsable del atentado de Plaza Miranda, ya que se sabe que utilizó operaciones de falsa bandera como pretexto para la ley marcial. [183] [184] Hubo una serie de atentados mortales en 1971, y la CIA declaró en privado que Marcos fue responsable de al menos uno de ellos. [ cita requerida ] Los documentos de inteligencia estadounidenses desclasificados en la década de 1990 contenían más pruebas que implicaban a Marcos, proporcionadas por un topo de la CIA dentro del ejército filipino. [185]
Otro ataque de falsa bandera tuvo lugar con el intento de asesinato del ministro de Defensa Juan Ponce Enrile en 1972. El presidente Nixon aprobó la iniciativa de ley marcial de Marcos inmediatamente después. [185]
Como respuesta al atentado de la Plaza Miranda, Marcos emitió la Proclama No. 889 , mediante la cual asumió poderes de emergencia y suspendió el recurso de habeas corpus [186] – un acto que luego sería visto como un preludio a la declaración de la ley marcial más de un año después. [147]
La suspensión del mandato judicial por parte de Marcos se convirtió en el acontecimiento que obligó a muchos miembros de la oposición moderada, como Edgar Jopson , a unirse a las filas de los radicales. Tras el atentado, Marcos agrupó a toda la oposición y se refirió a ellos como comunistas, y muchos ex moderados huyeron a los campamentos de montaña de la oposición radical para evitar ser arrestados por las fuerzas de Marcos. Aquellos que se desencantaron con los excesos de la administración de Marcos y quisieron unirse a la oposición después de 1971 a menudo se unieron a las filas de los radicales, simplemente porque representaban el único grupo que ofrecía abiertamente oposición al gobierno de Marcos. [187] [ página necesaria ]
En la tarde del 23 de septiembre de 1972, el presidente Ferdinand Marcos anunció que había puesto la totalidad de Filipinas bajo la ley marcial. [39] Esto marcó el comienzo de un período de 14 años de gobierno de un solo hombre que duraría efectivamente hasta que Marcos fue exiliado del país el 25 de febrero de 1986. Aunque el documento formal que proclamaba la ley marcial - Proclamación No. 1081 - fue levantado formalmente el 17 de enero de 1981, Marcos conservó virtualmente todos sus poderes como dictador hasta que fue derrocado por la Revolución EDSA. [188] La Plaza Miranda fue seguida pronto por una serie de alrededor de veinte explosiones que tuvieron lugar en varios lugares de Metro Manila en los meses inmediatamente anteriores a la proclamación de la ley marcial de Marcos . [189] El primero de estos atentados tuvo lugar el 15 de marzo de 1972, y el último el 11 de septiembre de 1972, [189] doce días antes de que se anunciara la ley marcial el 23 de septiembre de ese año.
El régimen de Marcos atribuyó oficialmente las explosiones a "guerrillas urbanas" comunistas, [189] y Marcos las incluyó en la lista de "acontecimientos incitadores" que sirvieron como justificación para su declaración de la ley marcial. [150] [ cita(s) adicional(es) necesaria(s) ] La oposición política de Marcos en ese momento cuestionó la atribución de las explosiones a los comunistas, señalando que los únicos sospechosos atrapados en relación con las explosiones estaban vinculados a la policía filipina. [150] [ cita(s) adicional(es) necesaria(s) ]
Los sitios de los atentados de Manila de 1972 incluyeron el Palace Theatre y el Joe's Department Store en Carriedo Street, ambos en Manila; las oficinas de la Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), Filipinas Orient Airways y Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company (PhilamLife); la sucursal en Cubao de la Philippine Trust Company (ahora conocida como PhilTrust Bank); la División de Publicaciones del Senado y el Philippine Sugar Institute en Quezon City, y la embajada de Vietnam del Sur. [189]
Sin embargo, sólo uno de estos incidentes –el del centro comercial Carriedo– fue más allá de causar daños a la propiedad: una mujer murió y unas 40 personas resultaron heridas. [150]
La declaración de ley marcial de Marcos se hizo conocida por el público el 23 de septiembre de 1972, cuando su secretario de prensa, Francisco Tatad , anunció a través de la radio [190] [39] [40] que la Proclamación № 1081 , que Marcos supuestamente había firmado dos días antes el 21 de septiembre, había entrado en vigor y extendería el gobierno de Marcos más allá del límite constitucional de dos mandatos. [191] Gobernando por decreto , casi disolvió la libertad de prensa y otras libertades civiles para agregar maquinaria de propaganda, cerró el Congreso y los medios de comunicación, y ordenó el arresto de líderes de la oposición y activistas militantes, incluidos los senadores Benigno Aquino Jr., Jovito Salonga y Jose W. Diokno. [192] [193] Marcos afirmó que la ley marcial era el preludio para la creación de su Bagong Lipunan , una "Nueva Sociedad" basada en nuevos valores sociales y políticos. [ cita requerida ]
Los primeros años de la ley marcial ganaron la aprobación pública, [194] [195] [196] ya que se creía que había provocado una caída en los índices de criminalidad. [197]
Sin embargo, a diferencia de los colegas de Ninoy Aquino en el Senado, que fueron detenidos sin cargos, Ninoy, junto con los líderes comunistas del NPA, el teniente Corpuz y Bernabé Buscayno , fue acusado de asesinato, posesión ilegal de armas de fuego y subversión. [198]
Como una de sus justificaciones para la declaración de la ley marcial, Marcos dijo que era necesario "reformar la sociedad" [150] : 66 colocándola bajo el control de un "dictador benévolo" que pudiera guiar a la población indisciplinada a través de un período de caos. [150] : 29 [199] Se refirió a este ejercicio de ingeniería social como el bagong lipunan o "nueva sociedad" [200] : 13 y la administración de Marcos produjo una variedad de materiales de propaganda -incluyendo discursos, libros, conferencias, lemas y numerosas canciones de propaganda- para promoverlo. [200] : 13 [201] [202]
Según el libro de Marcos Notas sobre la nueva sociedad , se trataba de un movimiento que instaba a los pobres y a los privilegiados a trabajar como uno solo por los objetivos comunes de la sociedad y lograr la liberación del pueblo filipino a través de la autorrealización. [ cita requerida ]
El régimen de Marcos instituyó una organización juvenil, conocida como Kabataang Barangay , que estaba dirigida por la hija mayor de Marcos, Imee. El Decreto Presidencial 684, promulgado en abril de 1975, alentaba a los jóvenes de 15 a 18 años a ir a campamentos y realizar trabajo voluntario. [203] [204]
En octubre de 1974, Marcos y el PKP-1930 firmaron un "acuerdo de unidad nacional" por el cual el PKP-1930 apoyaría programas de la Nueva Sociedad como la reforma agraria, la reforma sindical y la revitalización de las relaciones con el bloque soviético. [205] [206]
Para inculcar el patriotismo entre los ciudadanos filipinos y evitar que el creciente número de escuelas chinas propagaran ideologías extranjeras, Marcos emitió el Decreto Presidencial No. 176 [207], impidiendo que se estableciera cualquier institución educativa exclusivamente para extranjeros u ofreciendo cualquier plan de estudios exclusivamente para extranjeros [208] , y restringió la enseñanza del idioma chino a no más de 100 minutos al día. [209]
La ley marcial se puso a votación en julio de 1973 en el referéndum sobre la ley marcial en Filipinas de 1973 y estuvo plagada de controversias [41] [14], con un 90,77% de votos a favor y un 9,23% en contra.
Junto con Marcos, miembros de su círculo Rolex 12 como el Ministro de Defensa Juan Ponce Enrile, el Jefe de la Policía Filipina Fidel Ramos y el Jefe del Estado Mayor de las Fuerzas Armadas de Filipinas Fabián Ver fueron los principales administradores de la ley marcial de 1972 a 1981, y los tres siguieron siendo los asesores más cercanos del presidente Marcos hasta que fue derrocado en 1986. Otros miembros periféricos del Rolex 12 incluyeron a Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco Jr. y Lucio Tan .
Entre 1972 y 1976, Marcos aumentó el tamaño del ejército filipino de 65.000 a 270.000 efectivos, en respuesta a la caída de Vietnam del Sur en manos de los comunistas y la creciente ola de comunismo en el sudeste asiático. Se colocaron oficiales militares en las juntas directivas de diversas corporaciones de medios de comunicación, empresas de servicios públicos, proyectos de desarrollo y otras corporaciones privadas, la mayoría de los cuales eran graduados altamente educados y bien capacitados de la Academia Militar de Filipinas. Al mismo tiempo, Marcos se esforzó por fomentar el crecimiento de una industria nacional de fabricación de armas y aumentó considerablemente el gasto militar. [210]
Muchos abusos de los derechos humanos fueron atribuidos a la Policía Filipina, que entonces estaba dirigida por el futuro presidente Fidel Ramos. La Fuerza Civil de Defensa Nacional , precursora de la Unidad Geográfica de las Fuerzas Armadas Civiles (CAFGU), fue organizada por el presidente Marcos para luchar contra el problema de la insurgencia comunista e islámica, y ha sido acusada en particular de infligir notoriamente violaciones de los derechos humanos a los izquierdistas, el NPA, los insurgentes musulmanes y los rebeldes contra el gobierno de Marcos. [211]
En 1977, las fuerzas armadas se habían cuadriplicado y más de 60.000 filipinos habían sido arrestados por motivos políticos. En 1981, el vicepresidente George H. W. Bush elogió a Marcos por su "adherencia a los principios democráticos y a los procesos democráticos". [d] Ningún militar o político estadounidense de la década de 1970 cuestionó públicamente la autoridad de Marcos para ayudar a combatir el comunismo en el sudeste asiático. [ cita requerida ]
Desde la declaración de la ley marcial en 1972 hasta 1983, el gobierno de Estados Unidos proporcionó 2.500 millones de dólares en ayuda militar y económica bilateral al régimen de Marcos, y alrededor de 5.500 millones de dólares a través de instituciones multilaterales como el Banco Mundial . [216]
En un informe del Senado de Estados Unidos de 1979 se afirmaba que los funcionarios estadounidenses sabían, ya en 1973, que agentes del gobierno filipino se encontraban en Estados Unidos para hostigar a los disidentes filipinos. En junio de 1981, dos activistas sindicales contrarios a Marcos fueron asesinados a las puertas de un local sindical en Seattle. En al menos una ocasión, agentes de la CIA bloquearon las investigaciones del FBI sobre agentes filipinos. [217]
Antes de la administración de Marcos, el gobierno filipino había mantenido una estrecha relación con el gobierno de la República de China (ROC) gobernado por el Kuomintang , que había huido a la isla de Taiwán , a pesar de la victoria del Partido Comunista Chino en la Revolución Comunista China de 1949. Las administraciones anteriores habían visto a la República Popular China (RPC) como una amenaza para la seguridad, debido a su apoyo financiero y militar a los rebeldes comunistas en el país. [218]
Sin embargo, en 1969, Ferdinand Marcos comenzó a afirmar públicamente la necesidad de que Filipinas estableciera una relación diplomática con la República Popular China. En su Discurso sobre el Estado de la Nación de 1969, dijo: [219]
En Asia debemos esforzarnos por lograr un modus vivendi con la China comunista. Reitero esta necesidad, que se hace cada día más urgente. Dentro de poco, la China comunista habrá multiplicado por mil su poder de ataque con un sofisticado sistema de lanzamiento de sus armas nucleares. Debemos prepararnos para ese día. Debemos prepararnos para coexistir pacíficamente con la China comunista.
— Ferdinand Marcos, enero de 1969
En junio de 1975, el presidente Marcos viajó a la República Popular China y firmó un comunicado conjunto que normalizaba las relaciones entre Filipinas y China. Entre otras cosas, el comunicado reconocía que "sólo hay una China y que Taiwán es parte integral del territorio chino...". A su vez, el primer ministro chino Zhou Enlai también prometió que China no intervendría en los asuntos internos de Filipinas ni trataría de imponer sus políticas en Asia, una medida que aisló al movimiento comunista local que China había apoyado financiera y militarmente. [220] [221]
El Washington Post , en una entrevista con ex funcionarios del Partido Comunista de Filipinas, reveló que "ellos (los funcionarios del partido comunista local) terminaron languideciendo en China durante 10 años como "huéspedes" involuntarios del gobierno (chino), peleándose amargamente entre ellos y con el liderazgo del partido en Filipinas". [180]
Posteriormente, el gobierno capturó a los líderes del NPA Bernabé Buscayno en 1976 y a José María Sisón en 1977. [221]
En 1977, los informes de "graves violaciones de los derechos humanos" habían dado lugar a presiones de la comunidad internacional, incluido el recién elegido presidente estadounidense Jimmy Carter , que presionó a la administración de Marcos para que liberara a Ninoy Aquino y celebrara elecciones parlamentarias para demostrar que había comenzado cierta "normalización" después de la declaración de la ley marcial. [222] : 168 Marcos no liberó a Aquino, pero anunció que las elecciones parlamentarias filipinas de 1978 se celebrarían en 1978. [222] : 168
El 7 de abril de 1978 se celebraron elecciones para elegir a 166 (de los 208) representantes regionales del Batasang Pambansa interino (el primer parlamento del país). En las elecciones participaron varios partidos, entre ellos el recién formado partido de Ninoy Aquino, el Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN) y el partido del régimen conocido como Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL).
El partido LABAN de Ninoy Aquino presentó 21 candidatos para el área metropolitana de Manila [223], incluido el propio Ninoy, el activista Jerry Barican, el líder sindical Alex Boncayao, [224] Neptali Gonzales , Teofisto Guingona Jr. Ramon Mitra Jr. , Aquilino Pimentel Jr., periodista Napoleón Rama , el editor Alejandro Roces y el poeta y dramaturgo Francisco Rodrigo .
Entre las irregularidades detectadas durante las elecciones figuraban "urnas prefabricadas, registros falsos, 'votantes que vuelan', resultados electorales manipulados y compra de votos" [225] , y la campaña de LABAN se enfrentó a restricciones [225] , incluida la negativa de Marcos a dejar salir a Aquino de la prisión para que pudiera hacer campaña. Todos los candidatos del partido, incluido Aquino, perdieron las elecciones.
El partido KBL de Marcos obtuvo 137 escaños, mientras que Pusyon Bisaya, liderado por Hilario Davide Jr. , quien luego se convirtió en el líder de la minoría, obtuvo 13 escaños.
En 1978, Ferdinand Marcos se convirtió en Primer Ministro de Filipinas , lo que marcó el regreso del cargo por primera vez desde los mandatos de Pedro Paterno y Jorge Vargas durante la ocupación estadounidense. Con base en el Artículo 9 de la constitución de 1973, tenía amplios poderes ejecutivos que serían típicos de los primeros ministros modernos en otros países. El cargo era el jefe oficial del gobierno y el comandante en jefe de las fuerzas armadas. Todos los poderes anteriores del Presidente de la Constitución de 1935 fueron transferidos al cargo recién restaurado de primer ministro. El primer ministro también actuó como jefe de la Autoridad Nacional de Desarrollo Económico. Tras su reelección a la presidencia en 1981, Marcos fue sucedido como primer ministro por un líder educado en Estados Unidos y graduado de Wharton , Cesar Virata , quien fue elegido asambleísta (miembro del Parlamento) de Cavite en 1978. Es el epónimo de la Escuela de Negocios Cesar Virata, la escuela de negocios de la Universidad de Filipinas Diliman .
Después de poner en vigor enmiendas a la constitución y acción legislativa, [226] el presidente Marcos emitió la Proclamación 2045 , que levantó la ley marcial, el 17 de enero de 1981, [227] mientras conservaba la suspensión del privilegio del recurso de hábeas corpus para delitos relacionados con la rebelión y la subversión. [226] El levantamiento de la ley marcial se sincronizó con la elección del presidente estadounidense Ronald Reagan y la visita del Papa Juan Pablo II , para obtener el apoyo de Reagan y minimizar las críticas del Papa. [226] [228]
El 16 de junio de 1981, seis meses después del levantamiento de la ley marcial, se celebraron las primeras elecciones presidenciales en doce años . El presidente Marcos se presentó a las elecciones mientras los principales partidos de la oposición, las Organizaciones Democráticas Nacionalistas Unidas (ONUDI), una coalición de partidos de la oposición y LABAN, boicotearon las elecciones. Marcos obtuvo una victoria aplastante sobre los demás candidatos. [229]
La tercera toma de posesión tuvo lugar el martes 30 de junio de 1981 en la Tribuna Quirino de Manila. [230] El juramento del cargo fue administrado por el Presidente de la Corte Suprema de Filipinas, Enrique Fernando . A la toma de posesión asistieron el entonces Vicepresidente de los Estados Unidos , George H. W. Bush , el Primer Ministro de Singapur, Lee Kuan Yew , el futuro Presidente de China, Yang Shangkun, y el Primer Ministro tailandés, Prem Tinsulanonda . Fue entonces cuando Bush hizo el infame elogio a Marcos: "Amamos su adhesión a los principios democráticos y al proceso democrático". [231] Las ceremonias de toma de posesión comenzaron a las 6:50 AM PST ( GMT+8 ) para evitar el calor y las lluvias de la tarde. La toma de posesión también fue televisada en vivo. [232]
El período de la Ley Marcial, que duró desde septiembre de 1972 hasta enero de 1981, había sido un período de crecimiento significativo para el Partido Comunista de Filipinas y el Nuevo Ejército del Pueblo porque la implementación de la Ley Marcial tuvo el efecto de radicalizar a manifestantes que de otro modo habrían sido moderados. [145] : 43 [134] Esto continuó hasta la década de 1980, cuando el NPA pudo establecerse en áreas urbanas y el NDF pudo formar relaciones con organizaciones legales de oposición, todo a pesar de las afirmaciones de Marcos en enero de 1981 de que el conflicto había sido "sustancialmente contenido". [226] [227] El asesinato de líderes clave en la ciudad de Davao en los primeros años de la década de 1980 llevó a la administración a afirmar que la "columna vertebral" del CPP en el sur se había roto", [233] Pero los líderes restantes pronto comenzaron a experimentar con nuevas tácticas, incluyendo la insurrección urbana, lo que llevó a la prensa internacional a etiquetar a la ciudad de Davao como los "Campos de la Muerte" y como "la capital del asesinato de Filipinas". [234] La violencia alcanzó su punto máximo en 1985 con 1.282 muertes militares y policiales y 1.362 muertes de civiles. [221]
El gasto de la administración de Marcos se había basado en gran medida en la deuda desde el primer mandato de Marcos en los años 60. Esto dejó a Filipinas vulnerable cuando la alta inflación hizo que Estados Unidos aumentara las tasas de interés de 1980 a 1982, lo que causó recesiones en Estados Unidos en 1980 y nuevamente en el tercer trimestre de 1981. [235] [236] La economía filipina también comenzó a declinar en 1981, y continuó haciéndolo en el momento del asesinato de Benigno Aquino Jr. en 1983. La inestabilidad económica y política se combinaron para producir la peor recesión en la historia de Filipinas en 1984 y 1985, con la economía contrayéndose en un 7,3% durante dos años sucesivos [236] y la incidencia de la pobreza en un 49% o casi la mitad de la población filipina. [237]
El 21 de agosto de 1983, el líder opositor Benigno Aquino Jr. fue asesinado en la pista del Aeropuerto Internacional de Manila . Había regresado a Filipinas después de tres años de exilio en los Estados Unidos, donde se sometió a una operación de bypass cardíaco para salvar su vida después de que Marcos le permitiera salir de Filipinas para recibir atención médica. Antes de su cirugía cardíaca, Ninoy, junto con sus dos coacusados, los líderes del NPA Bernabe Buscayno (Comandante Dante) y el teniente Victor Corpuz, fueron condenados a muerte por una comisión militar por cargos de asesinato, posesión ilegal de armas de fuego y subversión. [198]
Unos meses antes de su asesinato, Ninoy había decidido regresar a Filipinas después de que terminara su beca de investigación en la Universidad de Harvard . La oposición culpó directamente a Marcos por el asesinato, mientras que otros culparon a los militares y a su esposa, Imelda. La especulación popular señaló a tres sospechosos; el primero era el propio Marcos a través de su jefe militar de confianza, Fabián Ver; la segunda teoría apuntaba a su esposa Imelda, que tenía su propia ambición ardiente ahora que su marido enfermo parecía estar debilitándose, y la tercera teoría era que Danding Cojuangco planeó el asesinato debido a sus propias ambiciones políticas. [238] Las absoluciones en 1985 del Jefe del Estado Mayor, el general Fabián Ver, así como de otros oficiales militares de alto rango acusados del crimen, fueron vistas ampliamente como un encubrimiento y un error judicial.
El 22 de noviembre de 2007, Pablo Martínez, uno de los soldados condenados por el asesinato de Ninoy Aquino, afirmó que Danding Cojuangco, un amigo de Marcos , había ordenado el asesinato de Ninoy Aquino Jr. mientras Marcos se recuperaba de su trasplante de riñón. Cojuangco es primo de la esposa de Aquino, Corazón Cojuangco Aquino. Martínez también afirmó que sólo él y Galman sabían del asesinato y que Galman fue el verdadero tirador, lo que no está corroborado por otras pruebas del caso. [239]
Después de que la revolución del Poder Popular de febrero de 1986 llevara a la viuda de Aquino a la presidencia, la Corte Suprema ordenó un nuevo juicio por el asesinato de Aquino. [240] [241] El Sandiganbayan condenó a 16 militares por el asesinato, dictaminando que el agente de primera clase Rogelio Moreno, uno de los escoltas militares asignados a Aquino, "disparó el tiro fatal" que mató a Aquino, no a Galman. [242] [240]
En agosto de 1985, 56 asambleístas firmaron una resolución pidiendo el impeachment del Presidente Marcos por presunto desvío de ayuda estadounidense para uso personal, [243] citando una exposición del San Jose Mercury News de julio de 1985 sobre las inversiones multimillonarias y las propiedades de Marcos en los Estados Unidos.
Las propiedades que supuestamente acumuló la Primera Familia fueron el Crown Building, Lindenmere Estate y varios apartamentos residenciales (en Nueva Jersey y Nueva York), un centro comercial en Nueva York, mansiones (en Londres, Roma y Honolulu), la finca Helen Knudsen en Hawái y tres condominios en San Francisco, California.
La Asamblea también incluyó en la denuncia el uso indebido y la mala utilización de fondos "para la construcción del Centro de Cine de Manila , donde se exhiben películas pornográficas y de clasificación X [ cita requerida ] , contrarias a la moral pública y a las costumbres y tradiciones filipinas". Sin embargo, el intento de impeachment obtuvo poca tracción real, incluso a la luz de esta acusación incendiaria; el comité al que se remitió la resolución de impeachment no lo recomendó, y cualquier impulso para destituir a Marcos mediante procesos constitucionales pronto se desvaneció. [ cita requerida ]
Durante su tercer mandato, la salud de Marcos se deterioró rápidamente debido a dolencias renales, como complicación de una enfermedad autoinmune crónica, el lupus eritematoso . Recibió un trasplante de riñón en agosto de 1983, y cuando su cuerpo rechazó el primer trasplante de riñón, se sometió a un segundo trasplante en noviembre de 1984. [244] El régimen de Marcos era sensible a la publicidad de su condición; un médico de palacio que alegó que durante uno de estos períodos Marcos se había sometido a un trasplante de riñón fue encontrado poco después asesinado. La policía dijo que fue secuestrado y asesinado por rebeldes comunistas. [244] Mucha gente cuestionó si todavía tenía capacidad para gobernar, debido a su grave enfermedad y al creciente malestar político. [245] Con Marcos enfermo, su poderosa esposa, Imelda, emergió como la principal figura pública del gobierno. Marcos desestimó las especulaciones sobre su mala salud, ya que solía ser un ávido golfista y aficionado al fitness al que le gustaba mostrar su físico.
By 1984, US President Ronald Reagan started distancing himself from the Marcos regime that he and previous American presidents had strongly supported even after Marcos declared martial law. The United States, which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, was crucial in buttressing Marcos's rule over the years,[246] although during the Carter administration the relationship with the US had soured somewhat when President Jimmy Carter targeted the Philippines in his human rights campaign.
The 21-year period of Philippine economic history during Ferdinand Marcos's regime – from his election in 1965 until he was ousted by the People Power Revolution in 1986 – was a period of significant economic highs and lows.[249][236][106]
Philippine Annual Gross Domestic Product grew from $5.27 billion in 1964 to $37.14 billion in 1982, a year prior to the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. The GDP went down to $30.7 billion in 1985, after two years of economic recession brought about by political instability following Ninoy's assassination.[250] A considerable amount of this money went to the Marcos family and friends in the form of behest loans.[251]
Susan Quimpo recounts that times were hard financially during the Marcos regime, so much so that citizens had to line up for rice rations due to rice shortage, and that the government told citizens to consume corn instead.[252]
In The Making of the Philippines, Frank Senauth (p. 103) says:[253]
Marcos himself diverted large sums of government money to his party's campaign funds. Between 1972 and 1980, the average monthly income of wage workers had fallen by 20%. By 1981, the wealthiest 10% of the population was receiving twice as much income as the bottom 60%.[254]
To help finance a number of economic development projects, the Marcos government borrowed large amounts of money from international lenders.[255][256] The external debt of the Philippines rose more than 70-fold from $360 million in 1962 to $26.2 billion in 1985,[257] making the Philippines one of the most indebted countries in Asia.[255]
The country's total external debt rose from US$2.3 billion in 1970 to US$26.2 billion in 1985 during Marcos's term. Marcos's critics charged that policies have become debt-driven with rampant corruption and plunder of public funds by Marcos and his cronies. This held the country under a debt-servicing crisis which is expected to be fixed by only 2025. Critics have pointed out an elusive state of the country's development as the period is marred by a sharp devaluing of the Philippine Peso from 3.9 to 20.53. The overall economy experienced a slower growth GDP per capita, lower wage conditions and higher unemployment especially towards the end of Marcos's term after the 1983–1984 recession. Economists have noted that poverty incidence grew from 41% in the 1960s at the time Marcos took the Presidency to 59% when he was removed from power.[258][259][260]
As a former colony of the United States, the Philippines was heavily reliant on the American economy to purchase agricultural goods such as sugar,[261] c.[262][page needed][263]
According to World Bank Data, the Philippine's Annual Gross Domestic Product quadrupled from $8 billion in 1972 to $32.45 billion in 1980, for an inflation-adjusted average growth rate of 6% per year, while debt stood at US$17.2 billion by the end of 1980.[250][258] According to The Heritage Foundation in the United States, the Philippines enjoyed its best economic development since 1945 between 1972 and 1979.[264] The economy grew amidsts two severe global oil shocks following the 1973 oil crisis and 1979 energy crisis – oil price was $3 / barrel in 1973 and $39.5 in 1979, or a growth of 1200%. By the end of 1979, debt was still manageable, with debt to Debt-GNP ratio about the same as South Korea, according to the US National Bureau of Economic Research.[258]
Foreign capital was invited to invest in certain industrial projects. They were offered incentives, including tax exemption privileges and the privilege of bringing out their profits in foreign currencies. One of the most important economic programs in the 1980s was the Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran (Movement for Livelihood and Progress). This program was started in September 1981. It aimed to promote the economic development of the barangays by encouraging its residents to engage in their own livelihood projects. The government's efforts resulted in the increase of the nation's economic growth rate to an average of six percent or seven percent from 1970 to 1980.[265]
The Philippine economy, heavily reliant on exports to the United States, suffered a great decline after the Aquino assassination in August 1983.
In an attempt to launch a national economic recovery program and despite his growing isolation from American businesses, Marcos negotiated with foreign creditors including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for a restructuring of the country's foreign debts – to give the Philippines more time to pay the loans. Marcos ordered a cut in government expenditures and used a portion of the savings to finance the Sariling Sikap (Self-Reliance), a livelihood program he established in 1984.
However, the economy continued to shrink despite the government's recovery efforts due to a number of reasons. Most of the so-called government development programs failed to materialize. Government funds were often siphoned off by Marcos or his cronies. American investors were discouraged by the Filipino economic elite who were against the corruption that by now had become endemic in the Marcos regime.[266][page needed] The failure of the recovery program was further augmented by civil unrest, rampant graft and corruption within the government, and Marcos's lack of credibility.[citation needed] The unemployment rate increased from 3.9% in 1975 to 12.6% in 1985.[267]
In 1981, Ferdinand Marcos issued Letter of Instructions No. 1107 mandating the Central Bank of the Philippines to analyze the probability of establishing and funding the operation of a credit bureau in the Philippines due to the disturbing increase of failures on corporate borrowers.[268]In adherence to the order, Central Bank of the Philippines organized the Credit Information Exchange System under the department of Loans and Credit. It was created to engage in collating, developing and analyzing credit information on individuals, institutions, business entities and other business concerns. It aims to develop and undertake the continuing exchange of credit data within its members and subscribers and to provide an impartial source of credit information for debtors, creditors and the public. On April 14, 1982, Credit Information Bureau, Inc. was incorporated as a non-stock, non-profit corporation. CIBI was created pursuant to LOI No. 1107 dated February 16, 1981, and was further strengthened by PD No. 1941 which recognizes and supports CIBI as a suitable credit bureau to promote the development and maintenance of rational and efficient credit processes in the financial system and in the economy as a whole. In 1997, Credit Information Bureau, Inc. was incorporated and transformed into a private entity and became CIBI Information, Inc. CIBI is a provider of information and intelligence for business, credit and individuals.[269] The company also supplies compliance reports before accrediting suppliers, industry partners and even hiring professionals.[270]
In late 1985, in the face of escalating public discontent and under pressure from foreign allies, Marcos called a snap election with more than a year left in his term. He selected Arturo Tolentino as his running mate. The opposition to Marcos united behind two American-educated leaders, Aquino's widow, Corazon, and her running mate, Salvador Laurel.[271][272]
It was during this time that Marcos's World War II medals for fighting the Japanese Occupation were first questioned by the foreign press. During a campaign in Manila's Tondo district, Marcos retorted:[273]
You who are here in Tondo and fought under me and who were part of my guerrilla organization—you answer them, these crazy individuals, especially the foreign press. Our opponents say Marcos was not a real guerrilla. Look at them. These people who were collaborating with the enemy when we were fighting the enemy. Now they have the nerve to question my war record. I will not pay any attention to their accusation.
— Ferdinand Marcos, January 1986
Marcos was referring to both presidential candidate Corazon Aquino's father-in-law Benigno Aquino Sr. and vice presidential candidate Salvador Laurel's father, former president José P. Laurel.
The elections were held on February 7, 1986.[274] The official election canvasser, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), declared Marcos the winner. The final tally of the COMELEC had Marcos winning with 10,807,197 votes against Aquino's 9,291,761 votes. On the other hand, the partial 69% tally of the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), an accredited poll watcher, had Aquino winning with 7,502,601 votes against Marcos's 6,787,556 votes. Cheating was reported on both sides.[275] This electoral exercise was marred by widespread reports of violence and tampering of election results.
The fraud culminated in the walkout of 35 COMELEC computer technicians to protest their claim that the official election results were manipulated to favor Ferdinand Marcos, at least based from their testimonies which were never validated. The walkout of computer technicians was led by Linda Kapunan[276] and the technicians were protected by Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) officers led by her husband, Lt. Col. Eduardo "Red" Kapunan.
In the last months of Marcos's administration, the Soviet Union had stepped up long lasting relations and was the only major country to officially congratulate Marcos on his disputed election victory.[277][278] Marcos had provided favors to the Soviets such as allowing the banned Philippine Communist Party to visit the Soviet Union for consultations.[277][279][135] A UPI article from March 1986 reported that "Diplomats in Moscow believe the Soviet government totally misjudged Marcos' power to control events. They speculate that Moscow considered his control of legal bodies and his readiness to be 'ruthless' would thwart any popular opposition."[277]
The failed election process gave a decisive boost to the "People Power movement". Enrile and Ramos would later abandon Marcos and switch sides and seek protection behind the 1986 People Power Revolution, backed by fellow-American educated Eugenio Lopez Jr., Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, and the old political and economic elites. RAM, led by Lt. Col. Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan and backed by Enrile had plotted a coup d'état to seize Malacañang and kill Marcos and his family.[280]
At the height of the revolution, Juan Ponce Enrile revealed that a purported and well-publicized ambush attempt against him years earlier was in fact faked, and in his claim, it was in order for Marcos to have a pretext for imposing martial law. Enrile would later take retract this statement, and in 2012, he claimed that the ambush actually happened.[281] Despite all this, Marcos never ceased to maintain that he was the duly elected and proclaimed president of the Philippines for a fourth term, but unfairly and illegally deprived of his right to serve it. On February 25, 1986, rival presidential inaugurations were held,[282] but as Aquino supporters overran parts of Manila and seized state broadcaster PTV-4, Marcos was forced to flee.[283]
At 15:00 PST (GMT+8) on February 25, 1986, Marcos talked to United States Senator Paul Laxalt, a close associate of the United States President, Ronald Reagan, asking for advice from the White House. Laxalt advised him to "cut and cut cleanly", to which Marcos expressed his disappointment after a short pause.[284] In the afternoon, Marcos talked to Enrile, asking for safe passage for him and his family, and included his close allies like General Ver. Finally, at 9:00 p.m., the Marcos family was transported by four Sikorsky HH-3E helicopters[285] to Clark Air Base in Angeles City, about 83 kilometers north of Manila, before boarding US Air Force C-130 planes bound for Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, and finally to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii where Marcos arrived on February 26.
When he fled to Hawaii by way of Guam,[286] he also brought with him 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of assorted jewelry with undetermined value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems contained in Pampers diaper boxes, 65 Seiko and Cartier watches, a 12 by 4 ft box crammed full of real pearls, a 3 ft solid gold statue covered in diamonds and other precious stones, $200,000 in gold bullion and nearly $1 million in Philippine pesos, and deposit slips to banks in the US, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands worth $124 million, which he all amassed during his dictatorship.[287]
Initially, there was confusion in Washington as to what to do with Marcos and the 90 members of his entourage.[288] Given the special relations Marcos nurtured with Reagan, the former had expectations of favorable treatment. However, Reagan was to distance himself from the Marcoses. The State Department in turn assigned former Deputy Chief of Mission to Manila, Robert G. Rich Jr. to be the point of contact. The entourage were first billeted inside the housing facilities of Hickam Air Force Base. Later on the State Department announced the Marcoses were not immune from legal charges, and within weeks hundreds of cases had been filed against them.[289]
Throughout his stay in Hawaii, he and his family enjoyed a high life, living in a luxurious house in Makiki Heights while shopping and eating in one of the state's most expensive sections, as his wife Imelda entertained guests through various costly parties,[290] while Filipinos back in the Philippines suffered from the debt the Marcos family incurred during their rule, which experts say may be fully paid only by 2025, almost four decades after the downfall of the Marcos authoritarian regime.[291]
Other specifics about the things Marcos brought to Hawaii were also identified through the 23-page US Customs record. These include 23 wooden crates; 12 suitcases and bags, and various boxes, whose contents included enough clothes to fill 67 racks; 413 pieces of jewelry; 24 gold bricks, inscribed "To my husband on our 24th anniversary"; and more than 27 million Philippine pesos in freshly printed notes. The jewelry included 70 pairs of jewel-studded cufflinks; an ivory statue of the infant Jesus with a silver mantle and a diamond necklace. The total value of these items was $15 million.[292] Meanwhile, when protestors stormed Malacañang Palace shortly after their departure, it was famously discovered that Imelda had left behind over 2,700 pairs of shoes in her closet.[293] The protesters who stormed Malacañang Palace would later loot it, many would steal documents, jewelries, food from the pantries, typewriters, and so on. Other than looting, cases of vandalism and destruction also took place.[294]
The Catholic hierarchy and Manila's middle class were crucial to the success of the massive crusade. Contrary to the widely-held notion that the protests were secluded only within Metro Manila, protests against Marcos also occurred in the provinces and islands of Visayas and Mindanao.[295][296]
More than a year after the People Power Revolution, it was revealed to the United States House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in 1987 that Marcos held an intention to fly back to the Philippines and overthrow the Aquino government. Two Americans, namely attorney Richard Hirschfeld and business consultant Robert Chastain, both of whom posed as arms dealers, gained knowledge of a plot by gaining Marcos's trust and secretly tape recorded their conversations with the ousted leader.
According to Hirschfeld, he was first invited by Marcos to a party held at the latter's family residence in Oahu, Hawaii. After hearing that one of Hirschfeld's clients was Saudi Sheikh Mohammad Fassi, Marcos's interest was piqued because he had done business with Saudis in the past. A few weeks later, Marcos asked for help with securing a passport from another country, in order to travel back to the Philippines while bypassing travel restrictions imposed by the Philippines and United States governments. This failed, however, and subsequently Marcos asked Hirschfeld to arrange a $10-million loan from Fassi.
On January 12, 1987, Marcos stated to Hirschfeld that he required another $5-million loan "in order to pay 10,000 soldiers $500 each as a form of "combat life insurance". When asked by Hirschfeld if he was talking about an invasion of the Philippines, Marcos responded, "Yes". Hirschfeld also recalled that the former president said that he was negotiating with several arms dealers to purchase up to $18 million worth of weapons, including tanks and heat-seeking missiles, and enough ammunition to "last an army three months".
Marcos had thought of being flown to his hometown in Ilocos Norte, greeted by his loyal supporters, and initiating a plot to kidnap Corazon Aquino. "What I would like to see happen is we take her hostage", Marcos told Chastain. "Not to hurt her ... no reason to hurt her ... to take her."
Learning of this plan, Hirschfeld contacted the US Department of Justice, and was asked for further evidence. This information eventually reached President Ronald Reagan, who placed Marcos under "island arrest", further limiting his movement.[297][298]
In response, the Aquino government dismissed Marcos's statements as being a mere propaganda ploy.[299]
Within two weeks of his arrival to the United States, the Marcos family and their cronies received hundred of criminal and civil cases filed in Hawaii, San Francisco, and New York.[289] Marcos made personal appeals with Pres. Ronald Reagan to intervene and put a stop to these cases. In June 1988 National Security Advisor Colin Powell recommended proceeding with the indictment of the Marcoses, as he reviewed the cases as forwarded by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudy Giuliani. Pres. Reagan gave his tacit approval to this.[300] On August 4, Marcos stated that he had head of state immunity to resist the subpoenas by a federal grand jury to produce his finger and palm prints, and failed to consent to investigators to go into his foreign bank accounts. By August 18, a bench warrant of arrest was released against the Marcoses. By October that year, Pres. Reagan personally wrote to Marcos informing him that he believed his innocence of the charges against him, but reminding him that the case was out of his hands. He also assured him that they will have every opportunity to prove their innocence in the US justice system.[301]
Rudy Giuliani pressed for indicting of the Marcoses for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The RICO Act focuses specifically on racketeering and allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing, closing a perceived loophole. For example, before RICO, a person who instructed someone else to murder could be exempt from prosecution because they did not personally commit the crime. In his next letter to Pres. Reagan on October 20, Marcos complained that Giuliani was giving them nothing but an ultimatum to plead guilty, and even to testify against others including his own family.[301]
Marcos was admitted to the hospital on January 15, 1989, with pneumonia and underwent a series of operations.[302] In his dying days, Marcos was visited by Vice President Salvador Laurel.[303] During the meeting with Laurel, Marcos offered to return 90% of his ill-gotten wealth to the Filipino people in exchange for being buried back in the Philippines beside his mother, an offer also disclosed to Enrique Zobel. However, Marcos's offer was rebuffed by the Aquino government and by Imelda Marcos.[304][305][306]
Marcos died at St. Francis Medical Center in Honolulu at 12:40 a.m (HST) on September 28, 1989, of kidney, heart, and lung ailments, 17 days after his 72nd birthday.[307] Moments after, the younger Ferdinand eulogised his late father by stating, "Hopefully friends and detractors alike will look beyond the man to see what he stood for his vision, his compassion and his total love of country".[308]
Marcos was interred in a private mausoleum at Byodo-In Temple on the island of Oahu where his remains were visited daily by the Marcos family, political allies and friends.
The Aquino government refused to allow Marcos's body to be brought back to the Philippines. The body was only brought back to the Philippines four years after Marcos's death during the term of President Fidel Ramos.[309]
From 1993 to 2016, Marcos's remains were interred inside a refrigerated, frozen crypt in Batac, Ilocos Norte, where his son, Ferdinand Jr., and eldest daughter, Imee, have since become the local governor and congressional representative, respectively. A large bust of Ferdinand Marcos (inspired by Mount Rushmore) was commissioned by the tourism minister, Jose Aspiras, and carved into a hillside in Benguet. It was subsequently destroyed; suspects included left-wing activists, members of a local tribe who had been displaced by construction of the monument, and looters hunting for the legendary Yamashita treasure.[310]
On November 18, 2016, the remains of Marcos were buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani ordered by President Rodrigo Duterte despite opposition from various groups. The burial came as unexpected to many, as the Supreme Court's ruling still allowed 15 days for the opposition to file a motion for reconsideration. On the morning of November 18, using Philippine Armed Forces helicopters, his family and their supporters flew his remains from Ilocos to Manila for a private burial. There has been actual controversy as to the physical interment, for the body in frozen display at Batac was then said to be a hoax and the real body was already sent to Taguig. However, according to lawyer Chel Diokno and in other media coverage, there were no reports, records, or sightings of any actual transfer of the frozen body in Batac to the Libingan ng Mga Bayani, thereby raising speculation as to the truth of the location of Marcos's real remains.[1]
In the months prior, opinion on Marcos's burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani had been split: 50 percent of the 1,800 respondents of a survey conducted by SWS in February 2016 said Marcos "was worthy to be buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani" while the other half rejected a hero's burial, calling him a "thief".[311]
Various protest groups formed immediately upon hearing the news of the unexpected burial. Among those who gathered to oppose the burial were youth groups and opponents of the burial of Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The League of Filipino Students described the transfer of Marcos's remains as being done like "a thief in the night". They also criticized the government's involvement in the burial of the former president who they described as a "fascist dictator". The Kabataan Partylist also condemned the burial, labeling it as a "grave travesty" and as "galawang Hokage" in reference to the burial of Marcos being planned and conducted unbeknownst to the public.[312][313]
Rogelio Roxas, a Filipino treasure hunter, discovered a 3-foot-tall golden Buddha statue in tunnels under the Baguio General Hospital in 1971. Roxas was later arrested and tortured by members of the military, and the statue was taken away. Upon exile of the Marcoses, Roxas assigned his rights to a friend in the United States and formed the Golden Buddha Corporation (GBC) who pursued the case against the former president. In 1996, the lower court awarded US$22 billion in favor of GBC, making this the largest award in any civil case in the history of the United States. In November 1998, the Hawaii Supreme Court overturned the ruling, but still maintained the award of US$6 million for the illegal arrest and torture experienced by Roxas.[314][315]
On November 9, 2018, Imelda Marcos was found "guilty beyond reasonable doubt" by the Sandiganbayan of seven counts of graft for the private organizations set up in Switzerland during her active duty as a government official from 1968 to 1986. In less than 20 days however, the Sandiganbayan listed Imelda's "advanced age" and health condition as considerations for allowing the accused to post bail. The Fifth Division's (of the Sandiganbayan) ruling read that "the fact that she is of advanced age and for health reasons, consistent with the doctrine in Enrile vs Sandiganbayan, bail is allowed for these seven cases."[316] The Supreme Court of the Philippines affirms that the Marcoses' assets, that are beyond the legal and declared government salaries, are considered as ill-gotten wealth. In 1998 however, the Supreme Court acquitted Imelda Marcos of corruption charges from a previous graft conviction in 1993.
Some US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit confirmed a contempt judgement in relation to the assets of Imelda and her son Bongbong in the United States. Although on a different subject matter, this judgement awarded $353.6 million to human rights victims, which was arguably the largest contempt award ever affirmed by an appellate court.
In 1995, some 10,000 Filipinos won a US class-action lawsuit filed against the Marcos estate. The claims were filed by victims or their surviving relatives consequent on torture, execution, and disappearances.[317][318]
The Swiss government, initially reluctant to respond to allegations that stolen funds were held in Swiss accounts,[319] has returned $684 million of Marcos's stash.[320][321][322]
Corazon Aquino repealed many of the repressive laws that had been enacted during Marcos's dictatorship. She restored the right of access to habeas corpus, repealed anti-labor laws and freed hundreds of political prisoners.[323]
From 1989 to 1996, a series of suits were brought before US courts against Marcos and his daughter Imee, alleging that they bore responsibility for executions, torture, and disappearances. A jury in the Ninth Circuit Court awarded US$2 billion to the plaintiffs and to a class composed of human rights victims and their families.[324] On June 12, 2008, the US Supreme Court (in a 7–2 ruling penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Republic of Philippines v. Pimentel) held that: "The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions to order the District Court to dismiss the interpleader action." The court dismissed the interpleader lawsuit filed to determine the rights of 9,500 Filipino human rights victims (1972–1986) to recover US$35 million, part of a US$2 billion judgment in US courts against the Marcos estate, because the Philippines government is an indispensable party, protected by sovereign immunity. The Philippines government claimed ownership of the funds transferred by Marcos in 1972 to Arelma S.A., which invested the money with Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., in New York.[325][326][327] In July 2017, the Philippine Court of Appeals rejected the petition seeking to enforce the United States court decision that awarded the $2 billion in compensation to human rights victims during the term of former president Ferdinand Marcos.[328]
In 2013, Philippine Congress passed Republic Act 10368 or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013.[329] The law created the Human Rights Violations Claims Board and provided reparations to victims of summary execution, torture, enforced disappearances, and other human rights violations committed under the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.[330] Compensation came from P10 billion of stolen wealth seized by the government from the Marcoses.[331] A total of 11,103 victims of human rights violations under Martial Law received compensation in 2018.[329] A bill filed in Congress in 2020 proposes to compensate tens of thousands of people who are still not officially recognized as victims of state-sponsored violence during the Marcos regime.[330]
Marcos left an economic legacy of debt, hardship and excess of dictatorship.[332]
While Ferdinand Marcos was not the first Philippine executive to institute an authoritarian form of government, he was the first to do so since the immediate post-WWII era, and the first to do so throughout the whole archipelago since the war itself.[14]
Comparisons have been made between Ferdinand Marcos and Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian style of governance and Singapore's success,[333] but in his autobiography, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965–2000, Lee relates:
It is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics.
— Lee Kuan Yew[334]
As many student activists like Edgar Jopson and Rigoberto Tiglao, farmers like Bernabe Buscayno, journalists like Satur Ocampo, legal political opposition (Ninoy Aquino[335] and fellow candidate in 1978 election Alex Boncayao[223]), and priest and nuns joined or developed relationships with communist rebels,[336] many farmers,[337] student protesters,[338] leftists,[211] political opponents,[339] journalists and members of the media[340][341] accused of being members or sympathizing with the CPP, NPA or MNLF[342] or of plotting against the government were frequent targets of human rights violations. Victims would simply be rounded up with no arrest warrant nor reading of prisoners' rights and kept indefinitely locked up with no charges filed against them.[134] In a keynote speech at the University of the East, journalist Raissa Robles described how anyone could just be arrested (or abducted) with ease through pre-signed Arrest Search and Seizure Orders (ASSO),[343] which allowed the military or police to detain victims on trumped up charges or unclear allegations according to Rappler research.[344] Anybody could be picked up at any time for any reason by the military or the police, according to Raissa's husband, journalist Alan Robles.[345][346]
A 1976 Amnesty International report had listed 88 government torturers, including members of the Philippine Constabulary and the Philippine Army, which was respectively under the direct control of Major General Fidel V. Ramos and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile.[23][347] According to torture victim Rigoberto Tiglao, nearly all of the human rights abuses President Marcos has been accused of were undertaken by Philippine Constabulary units, especially through its national network of "Constabulary Security Units", whose heads reported directly to Fidel V. Ramos. The most dreaded of these was the Manila-based 5th Constabulary Security Unit (CSU), which featured the dreaded torturer Lt. Rodolfo Aguinaldo,[24][134] credited with capturing most of the Communist Party leaders including Jose Ma. Sison and the communist's Manila-Rizal Regional Committee he headed,[348] the Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group (MISG)[344] under the command of Col. Rolando Abadilla,[24] and the Intelligence Service, Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP).[134]
There are various statistics for human rights abuses committed during the Marcos regime.
Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) has recorded:[349]
Amnesty International reports:[350]
Historian Alfred McCoy gives a figure of 3,257 recorded extrajudicial killings by the military from 1975 to 1985, 35,000 tortured and 70,000 incarcerated.[24][351] The newspaper Bulatlat places the number of victims of arbitrary arrest and detention at 120,000, the extrajudicial execution of activists under martial law at 1,500 and Karapatan (a local human rights group)'s records show 759 involuntarily disappeared with their bodies never found.[352]
According to the late Susan Quimpo, co-author of Subversive Lives, 80,000 was a low figure for the number of persons incarcerated during the Marcos regime.[252]
In addition to these, up to 10,000 Moro Muslims were killed in massacres by the Philippine Army, Philippine Constabulary, and the Ilaga pro-government paramilitary group.[353]
Victims were often taken to military "safehouses",[354] a euphemism for hidden places of torture,[355] often blindfolded.[134][356] In a document titled "Open Letter to the Filipino People", martial law martyr Edgar "Edjop" Jopson described safehouses as such: "Safehouses usually have their windows always shut tight. They are usually covered with high walls. One would usually detect [safehouses] through the traffic of motorcycles and cars, going in and out of the house at irregular hours. Burly men, armed with pistols tucked in their waists or in clutch bags, usually drive these vehicles."[357]
Various forms of torture were used by the military, and these forms of torture were usually combined with each other.[339]
Summary executions were prevalent during the martial law era with bodies being recovered in various places and often bearing signs of torture and mutilation.[357][359] Such cases were referred to as "salvaging" with the term widely believed to have originated from the Spanish word salvaje, meaning savage.[360] Mutilated remains were often dumped on roadsides in public display in order to spread a sense of fear and to intimidate opponents from encouraging actions against the government – turning the Philippines into a theater state of terror.[24]
Anyone could be "salvaged": communist rebels, suspects, innocent civilians and priests included. TFDP documented 1,473 "salvage" cases from 1980 to 1984 alone.[134][358]
Victims included Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila student Liliosa Hilao,[361] Archimedes Trajano and Juan Escandor.[134] Also included in the list of summary execution victims was 16-year-old Luis Manuel "Boyet" Mijares, who was tortured brutally with his body found with burn marks, all his nails pulled and removed, 33 ice pick wounds around his body, skull bashed in, eyeballs gouged out, and genitals mutilated before being dropped from a helicopter.[362][363][134]
Enforced disappearances, also known "desaparecidos" or "the disappeared" – people who suddenly went missing, sometimes without a trace and with bodies never recovered.[364]
Victims include Primitivo "Tibo" Mijares,[362] Emmanuel Alvarez, Albert Enriquez, Ma. Leticia Ladlad, Hermon Lagman,[362] Mariano Lopez, Rodelo Manaog, Manuel Ontong, Florencio Pesquesa, Arnulfo Resus, Rosaleo Romano, Carlos Tayag, Emmanuel Yap,[365] Jan Quimpo,[362] Rizalina Ilagan, Christina Catalla, Jessica Sales and Ramon Jasul.[366]
While the numbers of political detainees went down, the number of people killed rose and spiked in 1981, the year martial law was officially lifted by Marcos according to Task Force Detainees of the Philippines. According to Senator Jose W. Diokno, "As torture (cases) declined, a more terrible tactic emerged; unofficial executions" – suspected dissidents were simply arrested and vanished.[134]
Murder victims include:
It is hard to judge the full extent of massacres and atrocities that happened during the Marcos regime due to a heavily censored press at the time.[368]
Some of the civilian massacres include the following:
The Marcos regime had started to kill hundreds of Moros even before the imposition of martial law in 1972.[374] Thousands of Moros were killed during the Marcos regime, prompting them to form insurgent groups and separatist movements such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which became more radical with time due to atrocities against Muslims.[375] According to the study The Liberation Movements in Mindanao: Root Causes and Prospects for Peace, a doctoral dissertation by Marjanie Salic Macasalong, the number of Moro victims killed by the Army, Philippine Constabulary, and the Ilaga (a notorious government-sanctioned[376] terrorist cult known for cannibalism and land grabbing that served as members of the CHDF)[371] reached as high as 10,000 lives.[353]
Some of the massacres include:
Members of the Marcos family deny that human rights violations happened during the Marcos administration.[380]
On the stories of human rights abuses, Bongbong Marcos describes them as "self-serving statements by politicians, self-aggrandizement narratives, pompous declarations, and political posturing and propaganda."[381][382]
His older sister, Imee, denies that human rights abuses occurred during her family's regime and called them political accusations. According to her, "If what is demanded is an admission of guilt, I don't think that's possible. Why would we admit to something we did not do?"[383]
The Philippine Supreme Court considers all Marcos assets beyond their legally declared earnings/salary to be ill-gotten wealth[384] and such wealth to have been forfeited in favor of the government or human rights victims.[385]
According to Presidential Commission on Good Government, the Marcos family and their cronies looted so much wealth from the Philippines that, to this day, investigators have difficulty determining precisely how many billions of dollars were stolen.[386] The agency has estimated that Marcos stole around $5 billion to $10 billion from the Philippine treasury[387][388][389][390] during his presidency from 1965 to 1986, while earning an annual salary equivalent to only US$13,500.00.[292]
Adjusted for inflation, this would be equivalent to about US$11.16 billion to US$22.3 billion or over 550 billion to 1.1 trillion Philippine pesos in 2017.[391]
Among the sources of the Marcos wealth are alleged to be diverted foreign economic aid, US government military aid (including huge discretionary funds at Marcos disposal as a "reward" for sending some Filipino troops to Vietnam) and kickbacks from public works contracts over a two-decades-long rule.[392]
In 1990, Imelda Marcos, his widow, was acquitted of charges that she raided the Philippine's treasury and invested the money in the United States by a US jury. Imelda was acquitted not because she did not commit any crime but because the United States jury deemed that the charges and trial did not belong in a US court.[393][394] In 1993, she was convicted of graft in Manila for entering into three unfavorable lease contracts between a government-run transportation agency and another government-run hospital.[395] In 1998, the Philippine Supreme Court overturned the previous conviction of Imelda Marcos and acquitted her of corruption charges.[396] In 2008, Philippine trial court judge Silvino Pampilo acquitted Imelda Marcos, then widow of Ferdinand Marcos, of 32 counts of illegal money transfer[397] from the 1993 graft conviction.[398] In 2010, she was ordered to repay the Philippine government almost $280,000 for funds taken by Ferdinand Marcos in 1983.[399] In 2012, a US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit upheld a contempt judgement against Imelda and her son Bongbong Marcos for violating an injunction barring them from dissipating their assets, and awarded $353.6 million to human rights victims.[400] As of October 2015, she still faced 10 criminal charges of graft, along with 25 civil cases,[401][402] down from 900 cases in the 1990s, as most of the cases were dismissed for lack of evidence.[403][needs update]
In the 2004 Global Corruption Report, Marcos appeared in the list of the world's most corrupt leaders, listed in second place behind Suharto, the former president of Indonesia.[404] But one of Marcos's own former Ministers of industry, Vicente Paterno,[405] notes that while "the amount of theft perpetrated by Marcos's regime was probably less than that by Suharto on Indonesia", it "harmed our country more because the sums stolen by Marcos were sent out of the country, whereas Suharto's loot mostly were invested in Indonesia."[405]
During the ICIJ's (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) exposé of offshore leaks in April 2013, the name of his eldest daughter, Imee Marcos, appeared on the list of wealthy people involved in offshore financial secrecy. It was revealed that she is hiding parts of her father's ill-gotten wealth in tax havens in the British Virgin Islands.[406][407]
In 2014, Vilma Bautista, the former secretary of Imelda Marcos was sentenced to prison for conspiring to sell a Monet, Sisley, and other masterpiece artworks belonging to the Republic of the Philippines for tens of millions of dollars.[408][409]
On May 9, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the searchable database from Panama Papers.[410] His two daughters, Imee Marcos Manotoc and Irene Marcos Araneta,[411] have been named, along with his grandsons Fernando Manotoc, Matthew Joseph Manotoc, Ferdinand Richard Manotoc, his son-in-law Gregorio Maria Araneta III,[412] including his estranged son-in-law Tommy Manotoc's relatives Ricardo Gabriel Manotoc and Teodoro Kalaw Manotoc.[413]
On September 3, 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte said the family of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was "ready to return" their stolen wealth to the government, possibly through a settlement.[414] In January 2018, a draft House Bill proposing a compromise settlement and immunity for the Marcoses submitted by the late Ferdinand Marcos's legal counsel Oliver Lozano was revealed on social media[415] to have been received by the Duterte government in July 2017.[416]
The overseas properties of Marcos and his associates created an empire spanning places as diverse as California, Washington, New York, Rome, Vienna, Australia, Antilles, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Singapore. The more popular properties among those in this empire are the multimillion-dollar New York real estate investments, California banks and Swiss bank accounts; lesser known ones are villas in Austria, London, and Rome, gold and diamond investments in South Africa, and banks and hotels in Israel.[417]: 423
There were 10 prominent Filipinos, led by Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos, who acquired, presumably illegally, various extensive properties in the US. They were Roberto Benedicto, Antonio Floirendo, Juan Ponce Enrile, Jose Yao Campos, Eduardo Cojuangco, Roman Cruz Jr., Geronimo Velasco, and Rodolfo Cuenca.[418][page needed] Other nominees who were noted as having been crucial in considerable overseas transactions were Ricardo Silverio, Herminio Disini, Nemesio Yabi, and Edna Camam.[418][page needed] Dewey Dee, one of Marcos's main nominees, as well as Jose Yao Campos would later reveal how they fronted Marcos's investments both locally and abroad via at least 25 interlocking corporations set up for this purpose.[citation needed]
The process by which Marcos laundered dirty money abroad was very comprehensive and difficult to track. First, overseas bank accounts were established in order to have easy access to the funds without concern for Philippine exchange laws. Often, cronies would choose distinguished US law firms that specialized in offshore real investment in US jurisdictions.[418][page needed] Then, a lawyer or accountant would be contacted to establish an offshore corporation, usually in Hong Kong, to serve as the managing director of the corporation. A "shell" company, organized solely for the purpose of moving and hiding the true ownership of assets served as a channel for transferring funds from the Philippines inconspicuously.[418][page needed][417][page needed] As this happened, another lawyers, often in the US, would be hired for a fee of $200 to $3,000 to arrange for the incorporation of another offshore corporation through accounting firms in Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles.[418][page needed] This would become the significant link between the real estate investment and the client. By this point, it would be more and more convoluted, becoming in the process much more difficult to track. One San Francisco lawyer, who represented affluent Filipino investors in California land deals, said "You'll never find out who the principals are. Every time I have ever dealt with these guys, I have never dealt with a document signed by a principal." The Marcos group used this very complicated and developed "laundering" process of involving multiple layers of dummy corporations scattered internationally to acquire and establish several multimillion assets in various US locations.[418][page needed]
Marcos, through different international banks, was able to launder money abroad. Crocker National Bank in San Francisco, for example, had to settle with the US Treasury Department, because they failed to report $4 billion in cash deposits from 1980 to 1984 from six Hong Kong-based banks.[417][page needed] Hong Kong was a favorite among Filipino launderers. Due to the absence of foreign exchange controls in Hong Kong, it was impossible to determine the origin of the money.[citation needed]
Crocker merely stated that the money came from "various Asian countries".[417][page needed] The compliance of private banks with anonymous individuals looking to deposit their money enabled money laundering. Consequently, money laundering is an integral part of private banking. Marcos would later go on to seek the help of other private banks in Switzerland, Hong Kong, Austria, Panama, Liechtenstein, and the Netherlands Antilles. The Swiss are known for their mastery in money laundering thanks to the central role of secrecy in their society.[417][page needed] Austria, which also has its own tradition of banking secrecy, allowed accounts to be opened without the client ever revealing his or her name, something Swiss banks did not even allow.[417][page needed] Hong Kong, more conveniently located for the Philippines, has developed facilities for the movement of money and the ready availability of various British lawyers who offer services of opening front or shell corporations for a fee. Panama is noted for its corrupt politicians and convenient transit point to the US.[417][page needed] The Netherlands Antilles served as the home for more than 35,000 shell companies of Marcos in order to invest anonymously in overseas financial markets and US real estate.[417][page needed] Throughout the entire process, highly paid lawyers, accountants, investment consultants and portfolio managers were hired in order to organize shell corporations and acquire overseas properties.[417][page needed]
The Marcoses invested a lot in the US East and West coasts, but there were also important investments in Texas and Washington state.[417][page needed] Most of the major real estate investments were Imelda's purchases of real estate in New York, Jose Campos Yao's investments in Texas and Seattle, and crony purchases in California.[417][page needed]
Jose Campos Yao, a Marcos ally and crony, along with his associates, purchased a whole city block in Seattle, Washington, in 1983. He used the Unam Investment Corp., a shell corporation based in Netherlands Antilles and a corporation he is the president of, and purchased the Seattle real estate worth S9,178,215 on May 13, 1983.[417][page needed][419] Included in the acquisition are 600 Pike Street, 614 Pike Street, 1506 Sixth Avenue, 1520 Sixth Avenue, 151 Seventh Avenue, 1521 Seventh Avenue and 1575 Seventh Avenue. Throughout the entire process of the purchase, Yao and his associates hid their identities from the Seattle attorney and worked through Simeon Dee until the final negotiations.[417][page needed]
In Texas, Yao also purchased 5,000 acres of prime land in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The land included Tarrant County, Dallas as well as in San Antonio and Corpus Christi. The land would be valued at $51 million.[417][page needed]
Geronimo Velasco, Marcos's Minister of Energy, and Rodolfo Cuenca, one of the Philippine cronies who dominated the construction industry, were both connected to several real estate purchases in California.[417][page needed] Velasco, using either Decision Research Management, a shell company in Hong Kong, or through Velasco's nephew, Alfredo de Borja, purchased several expenses properties in California, including a mansion in Woodside for $1.5 million (price as of 1986), a condominium in Los Angeles for $675,000 (price as of June 3, 1982) and a luxury condominium in San Francisco for $400,000 (price as of 1984).[417][page needed] Cuenca, on the other hand, purchased different real estates properties in San Francisco through TRA Equities Inc., a shell corporation registered in Delaware. His purchases included a condominium, a home, two office buildings and an annex in San Francisco, as well as a home in San Bruno.[417][page needed]
In New Jersey while she was still studying, Imee Marcos, President Ferdinand Marcos's eldest daughter, was given an 18th-century estate to live in. The estate was purchased on October 26, 1982, and includes a mansion and 13 acres of land.[420] The Marcos family spent approximately $3 million to $5 million in furnishings and improvements. As for President Ferdinand Marcos's only son, Ferdinand Jr., he was given a house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, purchased for $119,000, while he was studying in the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. Another property was bought for $90,000 in the area for the servants and security that was serving his son on November 23, 1978.[417][page needed][421]
Imelda, in purchasing estate properties in Manhattan, organized many shell corporations based in Hong Kong, Panama and the Netherlands Antilles. She elicited the help of key individuals such as Gliceria Tantoco, one of Imelda's closest friends and business associates, Antonio Floirendo, who was instrumental in Imelda's involvement in the lucrative sugar trading business in New York and the purchase of the Olympic Towers, Rolando Gapud, one of Marcos's financial advisers, Fe Roa Gimenez and Vilma H. Bautista, personal assistants of Imelda, and Joseph and Ralph Bernstein, who played key roles in helping the Marcoses purchase and conceal ownership of their Manhattan properties.[417][page needed]
Imelda Marcos purchased five expensive Manhattan condominiums at the Olympic Towers, located on 5th Avenue, New York.[417][page needed] The first three condominiums were purchased by Thetaventure Ltd., a Hong Kong-based shell corporation, for a total of $688,000 and was remodelled for $3.75 million. The fourth and fifth condominium were bought for $270,000 and $1.1 million respectively. Imelda also purchased her own resort, the Lindenmere Estate in Center Moriches, Suffolk County, Long Island. It was estimated to be between $19 million and $20 million after renovations were done. The restorations was paid for by Vilma Bautista, Imelda's personal assistant and Luna 7 Development Corp., a corporation registered in New York.[417][page needed] The Townhouse at 13–15 East 66th, New York City, is quite a different case from the other properties, because it was not purchased by a shell corporation but by the Philippine Consulate and the Philippine National Bank. The sixth floor of the townhouse was converted into a private disco where the guests can have fun and play with giant pillows. It also housed the expensive art Imelda collected over the years.[417][page needed] Imelda would also purchase Herald Center, a shopping center worth $70 million, 200 Madison, an office building acquired for $50 million, Crown Building, a large edifice located at 730 Fifth Avenue bought for $51 million through Lasutra Corp. N.V., and 50 Wall Street, a large historic building in New York's financial district bought for $71 million through NYLand (CF8) Ltd., a shell corporation based in the Netherlands Antilles.[417][page needed]
All of these properties and investments are only a fraction of the entire Marcos empire. The Center for Research and Communication, a Philippine private think-tank, estimated that Marcos and his cronies took away not only $10 million but $30 billion since the 1950s.[418][page needed][422]: 175
In 1986, following the overthrow of the Marcos regime, it was discovered that as early as 1968,[423] Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, under the pseudonyms William Saunders and Jane Ryan,[423] opened bank accounts in Swiss banks, with one account having a balance of $950,000.[424] Ferdinand Marcos's salary then was only around $5,600 a year[424] while Imelda Marcos did not have any visible means of income.
Eventually, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the body created by the government of President Corazon Aquino to recover the Marcos "hidden wealth" would determine that the late dictator stole between $5 billion and 10 billion from the Philippine treasury.[418][page needed] Dr. Bernardo Villegas of the Center for Research and Communication, meantime, affirmed that the total amount probably came closer to $13 billion.[425]: "27"
The initial deposit of under $1 million grew into hundreds of millions, especially after Marcos declared martial law in 1972.[418][page needed] Marcos and his cronies milked major sectors of the economy, extorted business establishments, skimmed from international loans, borrowed from banks without collateral, established phony companies, and siphoned off vital capital funds to overseas donations.[418][page needed]
In March 1986, the Philippine government had identified an $800 million Swiss bank account held by Marcos, which at the time was the largest asset of Marcos and his wife, Imelda, yet made public.[426] But another commission member, Mary C. Bautista, said the commission actually had information on more than one account held by Marcos in Switzerland.[426] The commission is seeking to regain five buildings in New York worth an estimated $350 million that it asserts are secretly owned by the Marcoses.
Switzerland's federal tribunal ruled in December 1990 that cash in Swiss banks would be returned to the Philippine government only if a Philippine court convicted her. In December 1997 (Reuters 1997:3), Switzerland's highest court ordered the Swiss banks to return $500 million of Marcos's secret accounts to the Philippine government, marking a major step forward in efforts to recover the Marcos's hidden wealth.[418][page needed] That same year, the Philippine Senate, through its Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Franklin Drilon, has revealed the existence of 97 alleged accounts of Ferdinand Marcos in 23 banks in Europe, the United States, and Asia, suspected to be depositories of wealth looted from the Philippine treasury. Thirteen of the 23 banks mentioned by Drilon are in Switzerland, namely: Swiss Credit Bank, Swiss Bank Corp., Bankers Trust AG, Banque Paribas, Affida Bank, Copla, S.A., Lombard Odier et Cie, Standard Chartered Bank, Swiss Volkabank, Bank Ricklin, Compaigne Banque Et d'Investissements, Compaigne de Gestion Et De Banque Gonet Sa Nyon, and Bank Hoffman AG.[418][page needed]
The Sandiganbayan 5th Division has recently convicted Imelda Marcos of seven counts of graft for creating and maintaining private foundations in Switzerland, violating the anti-graft law that prohibits public officials from having pecuniary interests in private businesses.[427] As the Sandiganbayan's decision reads, "Though named as a foundation, the evidence shows that these entities were put up primarily for the entrepreneurial activity of opening bank accounts and deposits, transferring funds, earning interests and even profit from investment, for the private benefit of the Marcos family as beneficiaries". For example, in the creation of the Maler Foundation, Imelda and Ferdinand created it but appointed Andre Barbey and Jean Louis Suiner as attorneys, administrators, and managers of the foundation. Imelda then conducted business to get investments amounting to at least US$75 million.[427]
Marcos's administration spawned new oligarchs in Philippine society who became instant millionaires.[428] These oligarchs plundered government financing institutions to finance their corporate raiding, monopolies and various takeover schemes. Marcos's cronies were awarded timber, mining and oil concessions and vast tracts of rich government agricultural and urban lands, not to mention lush government construction contracts. During his martial law regime, Marcos confiscated and appropriated by force and duress many businesses and institutions, both private and public, and redistributed them to his cronies and close personal friends. A presidential crony representing Westington won for its principal the $500 million bid for the construction of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in Bagac. The crony's commission was $25 million or $200 million representing five percent of the total bid price. These new oligarchs were known to be insatiable and more profligate than the oligarchs of pre-martial law days.[152] Two of Marcos's friends were Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco Jr., who would go on to control San Miguel Corporation, and Ramon Cojuangco, late businessman and chairman of PLDT, and father of Antonio "Tony Boy" Cojuangco (who would eventually succeed his father in the telecommunications company), both happened to be cousins of Corazon Aquino. These associates of Marcos then used these as fronts to launder proceeds from institutionalized graft and corruption in the different national governmental agencies as "crony capitalism" for personal benefit. Graft and corruption via bribery, racketeering, and embezzlement became more prevalent during this era.[429][430] Marcos also silenced the free press, making the press of the state propaganda the only legal one, which was a common practice for governments around the world that sought to fight communism.[citation needed]
Marcos and his close Rolex 12 associates like Juan Ponce Enrile used their powers to settle scores against old rivals such as the Lopezes who were always opposed to the Marcos administration. Enrile and the Lopezes (Eugenio Lopez Sr. and Eugenio Lopez Jr]) were Harvard-educated Filipino leaders. Leading opponents such as senators Benigno Aquino Jr., Jose W. Diokno, Jovito Salonga and many others were imprisoned for months or years. This practice considerably alienated the support of the old social and economic elite and the media, who criticized the Marcos administration endlessly.[431] The old social and economic elite, all of whom relied on trade and agricultural and industrial exports to the United States such as the families of Enrile, Lopez, Cojuangco, and Aquino, sought a free-market economy. At this point, Marcos controlled both the oligarchy and the oligopoly.[citation needed]
According to Jovito Salonga, monopolies in several vital industries were created and placed under the control of Marcos cronies, such as the coconut industries (under Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. and Juan Ponce Enrile), the tobacco industry (under Lucio Tan), the banana industry (under Antonio Floirendo), the sugar industry (under Roberto Benedicto), and manufacturing (under Herminio Disini and Ricardo Silverio).[citation needed] The Marcos and Romualdez families became owners, directly or indirectly, of the nation's largest corporations, such as the Philippine Long Distance Company (PLDC), of which the present name is Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), Philippine Airlines (PAL), Meralco (an electric company), Fortune Tobacco, numerous newspapers, radio and TV broadcasting companies (such as ABS-CBN Corporation), several banks (most notably the Philippine Commercial and Industrial Bank; PCIBank of the Lopezes [now BDO after merging with Equitable Bank and after BDO acquired the merged Equitable PCI]), and real estate in New York, California and Hawaii.[432][additional citation(s) needed] The Aquino government also accused them of skimming off foreign aid and international assistance.[citation needed]
One of the first acts of Imelda Marcos as the governor of Metro Manila was to legalize gambling to raise revenue for the new metropolis. A floating casino was allowed to operate exclusively inside the Manila Bay. It is owned and operated by "mysterious" stockholders according to the major daily. However, the people of Manila are aware that behind the floating casino management was the brother of Imelda Marcos. One of the most lucrative gambling managements back then was the Jai-Alai, managed by a corporation that received its franchise from the pre-war Commonwealth government. As soon as its franchised expired, a new corporation took over management of Jai-Alai. It was immediately under the control of the First Lady's brother. This new management was allowed to perform operations denied from the former, and it is estimated that the take between the Jai-Alai fronton and the floating casino is PHP2 million a day.[152]
Reports of the US Senate and the US Securities and Exchange Commission have described massive million-dollar bribes to officials of the government-backed Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company by the General Telephone and Electric Co. of New York in exchange for supply contracts. The officials of PLDT needed to be investigated for violations of foreign currency regulations and unearned income. However, different stakeholders were kept silent. As one PLDT official boasted "an exposé will only hurt the Palace." In the US and Japan, presidents have been driven out of office for similar misconduct.[152]
The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) was one of the largest corporations in the Philippines before the declaration of martial law. It was owned and controlled by the Lopez family. After martial law was imposed, it became the prime target for takeover by the Marcos-Romualdez family. Among the first things the clan did was to arrest the eldest son of Eugenio Lopez Sr., the major stockholder of Meralco for allegedly plotting the assassination of Ferdinand Marcos.
In the years 1973–1974, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) started applying the oil prize squeeze. As a public utility that supplies power needs of the metro, Meralco was caught in a vicious vice. Its fuel costs started to double, triple, and quadruple but the government refused to allow them to charge higher consumer rates. Within a year, Meralco was at the brink of bankruptcy. Government financing institutions refused to guarantee Meralco's foreign loans. As a result, the company was pushed to the edge of massive defaults in loans.
It was here that the Marcos-Romualdez clan stepped in. According to Eugenio Lopez Sr., he was promised the release of his eldest son from prison in exchange for the sale of his control in Meralco to the Marcos-Romualdez group. After several months of negotiations and with the increasing loan defaults, Mr. Lopez conceded defeat. He even died without seeing his son Eugenio Jr. released from the Marcos martial law prison.
After the Marcos-Romualdez takeover, the government allowed Meralco to increase consumer rates. The government gave huge subsidies to the company. On the fifth anniversary of martial rule, Jesus Bigornia of Bulletin Today wrote that Meralco rose as one of the top earners. Around Php 200 million in net income was recorded. This was 168% more than the previous year. Aside from being allowed to raise electricity rates, Meralco was also exempted from paying the duty of oil imports, which is a form of indirect subsidy it should share with poor consumers.[152]
Massive foreign loans enabled Marcos to build more schools, hospitals and infrastructure than all of his predecessors combined,[13] but crippled the Philippine economy.[citation needed] Today, according to Ibon Foundation, Filipino citizens are still bearing the heavy burden of servicing public debts incurred during Marcos's administration, with ongoing interest payments on the loan schedule by the Philippine government estimated to last until 2025–59 years after Marcos assumed office and 39 years after he was deposed.[433][434]
Corazon Aquino had an opportunity to default and not pay foreign debt incurred during the Marcos administration. However, due to Finance Secretary Jaime Ongpin's warning[435] on the consequences of a debt default, which includes isolating the country from the international financial community and hampering the economic recovery, Corazon Aquino honored all the debts incurred during the Marcos Administration,[436] contrary to expectations of left-learning organizations such as Ibon Foundation that advocated for non-payment of debt.[433] Jaime Ongpin, who is a brother of Marcos trade minister Roberto Ongpin, was later dismissed by Cory Aquino and later died in an apparent suicide after "he had been depressed about infighting in Aquino's cabinet and disappointed that the 'People Power' uprising which had toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos had not brought significant change".[437]
Marcos projected himself to the Philippine public as having spent a lot on construction projects, and his record upholds that reputation.[106]: 128 A 2011 study by University of the Philippines School of Economics indicated that at the time of the study, Marcos was the president that spent the most on infrastructure, not just because he stayed in power for nearly two and a half decades, but in terms of actual per-year spending. By the time of the study, Marcos had only been outspent in infrastructure building for a period of one year, during the term of Fidel Ramos.[438]
These included hospitals[439] like the Philippine Heart Center, Lung Center, and Kidney Center, transportation infrastructure like San Juanico Bridge (formerly Marcos Bridge), Pan-Philippine Highway, North Luzon Expressway, South Luzon Expressway,[440] and Manila Light Rail Transit (LRT). Cultural and heritage sites like the Cultural Center of the Philippines], Nayong Pilipino, Philippine International Convention Center and the disastrous and ill-fated Manila Film Center were built as well.
This focus on infrastructure, which critics saw as a propaganda technique, eventually earned the colloquial label "edifice complex".[441][442][108]
Most of these infrastructure projects and monuments were paid for using foreign currency loans[443][441] and at great taxpayer cost.[442][444]: 89 This greatly increased the Philippines' foreign deficit – from $360 million when Marcos became president, to around $28.3 billion when he was overthrown.[445]
The Marcos administration's spending on construction projects expanded even more with the construction of prominent building projects,[446] mostly meant to build up Imelda Marcos's power base within the administration by projecting her as a patroness of the arts.[447]: 169 This shift in the prioritization of projects was so significant that by 1977–1980, projects in the "conspicuous capital outlays" category had ballooned to 20% of the Philippines' capital outlays – up from a negligible percentage at the beginning of the Marcos administration.[444]: "88–89"
Critics contrasted this with the fact that poverty in the countryside was a much more pressing economic issue of the time.[448][445]
In addition, Imelda's "edifice complex" projects were typically constructed on a rush basis,[447]: 169 resulting in some of them not being safe for long-term use.[445]
The following is a list of some of the most controversial projects constructed during the Marcos era.
The CCP Complex is a 77-hectare[449] reclaimed property in Pasay designed by Leandro Locsin. It includes the CCP main building, the Folk Arts Theater, the Philippine International Convention Center, the Manila Film Center and the Coconut Palace (also called the Tahanang Pilipino).[450] It was established as a result of Ferdinand Marcos's issuance of Executive Order No. 30 s. 1966, which stated that "the preservation and promotion of Philippine culture in all its varied aspects and phases is a vital concern of the State."[451] Following this issuance, he appointed a seven-member board of trustees, who then unanimously elected Imelda Marcos as its chair.[450]
On September 8, 1969, the CCP main building was inaugurated as the "country's premier arts institution".[452] The inauguration was originally set in January 1969, but was postponed because funds were running out from campaign overspending. The projected budget for the construction of CCP was P15 million, but by December 1968 the cost had already reached P48 million, and the construction was not even complete yet. Because of this, Imelda Marcos loaned $7 million from the National Investment Development Corporation to finance the remaining amount. By 1972, debt for the construction of the theater alone has reached P63 million.[450]
The San Juanico Bridge is part of the Pan-Philippine Highway and links the provinces of Leyte and Samar through Tacloban City and Santa Rita, Samar. Having a total length of 2.16 kilometres (1.34 mi), it is the longest bridge over a body of water in the Philippines.[453] It is said to be Ferdinand Marcos's gift to his wife Imelda, whose hometown was Leyte.[454]
Construction of the bridge began in 1969. It was inaugurated on July 2, 1973, in time for Imelda Marcos's birthday. The cost of the construction reached $22 million and was acquired through the Japanese Official Development Assistance loans.[455]
At the time the project was conceived, there was not a need yet for a bridge that connects Leyte and Samar, for both of these provinces were still relatively underdeveloped. There was not enough traffic between these two islands to warrant a bridge to be constructed there. It is for this reason that the San Juanico Bridge remains to be one of the costliest white elephant projects during the Marcos era.[455]
Construction of the Manila Film Center began in January 1981 and was spearheaded by Imelda Marcos. It cost $25 million.[445][456]
Construction work was compressed to just 10 months so it could be used as a venue for the first Manila International Film Festival scheduled on January 18, 1982.[450] To meet the deadline, around 4,000 workers were employed to work three 24-hour nonstop shifts. The lobby, which would normally take 6 weeks to finish, was constructed in 72 hours by 1,000 workers.[445]
As a result of the rushed construction, a scaffolding collapsed on a group of workers on November 17, 1981, two months before the deadline.[450] Despite the accident, work continued, and the bodies of the workers were buried in cement. Rescuers and ambulances were only permitted to enter the site 9 hours after the incident.[445]
Following the tragedy, then Prime Minister Cesar Virata disapproved the $5 million subsidy, which was intended for the film festival.[457] The expenses incurred during opening night and the Film Center's operations ended up being shouldered by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (then the Central Bank).[450]
Marcos's signature agricultural program, Masagana 99, was thus launched on May 21, 1973,[458][459] as an effort to address a nationwide rice shortage arising from the various natural disasters and pest infestations in 1972.[460]
Its goal was to promote Philippine rice self-sufficiency by raising the Philippines' average palay crop yield from 40 cavans per hectare to 99 cavans (4.4 tons)[461] per hectare. The program planned to achieve this by pushing farmers to use newly developed technologies including high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, low-cost fertilizer, and herbicides.[460]
Masagana 99 also included a supervised credit scheme, which was supposed to provide farmers with the funds needed to pay for the program's technology package. The Central Bank designed subsidized rediscounting facilities for public and private credit institutions throughout the country, encouraging them to give loans to farmers without collateral or other usual borrowing requirements.[460]
The program achieved initial success by encouraging farmers to plant new "Miracle Rice" (IR8) variety of rice,[462] which the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the UP College of Agriculture through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Laguna,[463]: 7 had been developing since 1962, during the administration of President Carlos P. Garcia.[464]
While this rise of industrialized, chemical agriculture to the Philippines[462] resulted in annual rice production in the Philippines increasing from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades and made the Philippines a rice exporter for the first time in the 20th century,[465][466][461] the switch to IR8 required more fertilizers and pesticides. This and other related reforms resulted in high profits for transnational corporations, but were generally harmful to small, peasant farmers who were often pushed into poverty.[467]
Economists[468] generally acknowledge Masagana 99 to have failed because the supervised credit scheme it offered to farmers proved unsustainable.[468] The program is said to have catered to rich landowners and has been criticized for leaving poor farmers in debt[468] and for having become a vehicle of political patronage.[460][469][470]: 20
Although Masagana 99 showed promising results, the years from 1965 to 1986 showed a complete paradox of events. The income per capita rose, the economy was growing, yet people were impoverished. The American economist James K. Boyce calls this phenomenon "immiserizing growth", when economic growth, and political and social conditions, are such that the rich get absolutely richer and the poor become absolutely poorer.[471][better source needed]
From 1972 to 1980, agricultural production fell by 30%. After declaring martial law in 1972, Marcos promised to implement agrarian reforms. However, the land reforms served largely to undermine Marcos's landholder opponents, not to lessen inequality in the countryside,[472] and encouraged conversion to cash tenancy and greater reliance on farm workers.[473]
While the book claimed that agricultural production declined by 30% in the 1970s and suggested that timber exports were growing in the same period, an article published by the World Bank on Philippine Agriculture says that crops (rice, corn, coconut, sugar), livestock and poultry and fisheries grew at an average rate of 6.8%, 3% and 4.5%, respectively from 1970 to 1980, and the forestry sector actually declined by an annual average rate of 4.4% through the 1970s.[474]
The Marcos administration marked a period of intense logging exportation,[475] with commercial logging accounting for 5% of the gross national product during the first half of the 1970s. This was the result of intense demand created by a construction boom in Japan.[476][477] Timber products became one of the nation's top exports but little attention was paid to the environmental impacts of deforestation as cronies never complied with reforestation agreements.[478][479]
By the early 1980s, forestry collapsed because most of the Philippines' accessible forests had been depleted – of the 12 million hectares of forestland, about 7 million had been left barren."[478][479] This was such a severe drop in the Philippines' forest cover that most Philippine logging companies had transferred their operations to Sarawak and other nearby areas by the 1980s.[480]: 117
Data from the Philippines' Forest Management Bureau indicates that the rate of forest destruction in the Philippines was about 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) per year during the 1960s and 1970s, such that by 1981, the Food and Agriculture Organization classified 2 million hectares of Philippine forests "severely degraded and incapable of regeneration".[481]
In 1979, Marcos put a range of 11 heavy industrialization projects[482] on the Philippines' economic agenda.
The eleven priority projects were:[482] the construction of an aluminum smelter, a copper smelter,[483] an integrated petrochemical complex,[484] an integrated pulp and paper plant, an integrated steel mill, and a phosphatic fertilizer plant; the development of an alcogas industry; the expansion of the country's cement industry; the integration of the country's coconut industry; the promotion of diesel engine manufacturing; and the construction of a nuclear power plant.
Other industrialization projects during the Marcos administration included 17 hydroelectric[485][486] and geothermal power plants[487][488] to lessen the country's dependency on oil.[489] With the commissioning of the Tongonan 1 and Palinpinon 1 geothermal plants in 1983, the Philippines became the second largest producer of geothermal power in the world.[487][490]
The Philippine economy began to go in decline in 1981 because of excessive debt,[236] however, and finally went into a tailspin in 1984.[236][491] This resulted in the closure of factories, massive layoffs, and the end of work on Marcos's industrialization projects until he was finally deposed two years later.[491]
The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) is one of the six nuclear power plants that the Marcos regime planned to build.[492] It stands in Morong, Bataan, atop Napot Point that overlooks the South China Sea. Construction of the BNPP began in 1976 and was completed in 1985.[493]
Controversy surrounding the BNPP began well after its construction. In 1974, National Power was already negotiating with General Electric to get the order. However, Westinghouse, another energy company, hired a lobbyist: Herminio Disini, a friend of Ferdinand Marcos. Using Disini's close ties to Marcos, Westinghouse made a direct offer to Marcos and his cabinet to supply a plant with two 620 MW reactors at a base price of $500 million. The estimated total price was raised to around $650 million because of other charges like fuel and transmission lines.[492] Soon after, the negotiations with General Electric were scrapped, and Westinghouse won the deal. By March 1975, Westinghouse's contract price increased to $1.1 billion for interest and escalation costs.[492]
There were numerous issues regarding its safety and usability. After the Three Mile Island incident in the United States, construction of the nuclear power plant was stopped. A safety inquiry was done subsequently, which revealed over 4,000 defects.[492] The site chosen for the nuclear plant was also dangerous, as it was built near the open sea and the then-dormant Mount Pinatubo, and was within 25 miles of three geological faults.[492] The nuclear plant was discontinued in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster.[445] Its goal of generating 620 MW of electricity was never achieved.[494]
Its cost reached over $2.3 million and was only paid off by the government in April 2017, 31 years after the beginning of its construction. However, government spending for the BNPP continues long after that. Maintaining the plant costs the government P40 million a year. In 2011, the government had to reimburse P4.2 billion to National Power Corporation for the plant's maintenance. To contribute to the cost of its maintenance, it was transformed into a tourist attraction.[445]
Recognizing the value Filipino culture placed on education, Marcos emphasized the construction of educational infrastructure as early as during his first presidential term. By being more willing than those previous presidents to use foreign loans to fund construction projects, he was able to achieve construct more roads and schoolbuildings than any previous administration.[106]: 128
47 of the Philippines' state colleges and universities were established during Marcos's 21-year administration.[495] Two of these, the Mariano Marcos State University in Ilocos Norte,[496] and the Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University in La Union,[497] were named after Marcos's father Mariano.
The Philippine education system underwent two major periods of restructuring under the Marcos administration: first in 1972 as part of the ideology of the Bagong Lipunan (New Society) alongside the declaration of martial law; and second in 1981 when the Fourth Philippine Republic was established.[498]
The 1972 restructuring marked the first major restructuring of Philippine education since the arrival of the Americans at the turn of the 20th century.[498] It reoriented the teaching of civics and history[498][499] so that it would reflect values that supported the Bagong Lipunan and its ideology of constitutional authoritarianism.[202][15]: 414 In addition, it attempted to synchronize the educational curriculum with the administration's economic strategy of labor export.[498]
Changes sought by the second restructuring in 1981 was not extensively implemented as the administration was stymied by economic crises, and was eventually deposed.[498]
In 1975, Marcos issued Presidential Decree No. 824, placing the four cities and thirteen municipalities in the immediate vicinity of the Province of Manila under the administration of the Metro Manila Commission (MMC), which would serve as the central government of the capital.[500]
The head of the MMC was called a "governor", but the position was an appointive rather than an elected one.[501] Marcos appointed his wife Imelda Marcos as governor.[502]
The governorship of Metro Manila was the second most powerful office in the republic. Given that Metro Manila accounts for around 20% of the country's population, it is estimated to be responsible for at least 70% of gross national receipts. It is the seat of the national government and some 90% of the national government's offices and instrumentalities are located within its environs. Its budget is second to the national government.[152][better source needed]
This increase in Imelda's political power was so dramatic that it led former UN General Assembly President Carlos P. Romulo to describe her as the Philippines' "de facto vice president".[502]
The country crafted a large number of decrees, laws, and edicts during Marcos's term.[503] From 1972 to 1986, the Marcos Administration codified laws through 2,036 Presidential Decrees,[504] an average of 145 per year during the 14-year period. To put this into context, only 14, 12, and 11 laws were passed in 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively.[505] A large number of the laws passed during the term of Marcos remain in force today and are embedded in the country's legal system.[503] According to Imee Marcos in 2006, many of the thousands of proclamations, decrees, and executive orders Marcos issued were still in force, and few have been repealed, revoked, modified or amended.[506]
Many people who rose to power during Marcos's 21-years as president continued to remain in power or even ascended higher after his exile, thus leaving a further imprint on present-day Filipino affairs. One of these was Fidel Ramos, a general promoted by Marcos who supervised many terror killings and tortures, who later switched sides and subsequently became president himself through free elections.[507]
All five American presidents from 1965 to 1985 were unwilling to jeopardize the US–Marcos relationship, mainly to protect and retain access of the US military bases in the Philippines. However, at the same time, for the US the Philippines was just one of its many allies, and for the Philippines, the US was its only patron. Therefore, Marcos worked to identify himself closely with the US in order to secure a strong bargaining position with their government. Indeed, he had manipulated this American connection to sustain him during his two decades of power. US support was believed to be the only reason why Marcos remained in power.[508]
Over his term, Marcos was able to strengthen his ties to the US government. Johnson received two engineer battalions bought with the Philippine's American aid as a form of Philippines military participation in the Vietnam War. After the fall of South Vietnam, Gerald Ford demanded better security assistance from allies, such as the Philippines, while Carter wanted to retain the US military bases in the Philippines to project military power in the Indian Ocean to guard the West's oil supply line from the Middle East.[508] All of which, Marcos granted.
To obtain additional aid, Marcos often leveraged on threats that caught the attention of the US government. To secure additional aid for his campaign, Marcos threatened to search every visiting American naval vessel. The US responded by assisting his campaign indirectly, injecting several million dollars into the government banking system.[509]
In another instance, when the issues of military bases heated up in the Philippines during 1969, Marcos secretly assured the US he had no desire for an American withdrawal. Yet he received warnings from the Philippine embassy in Washington that "provisions should now be made in anticipation of a possible phasing out or minimization of US aid to the Republic of the Philippines, both for military aid and non-military items, considering the evolving temper of the American Congress." Afraid, Marcos began to suggests threats again. In one of his presidential speeches, he stated that the bases were a threat to regional peace and security, while reminding the United States of its "solemn obligation" to continue aid. He warned that the bases could "imperil more than they serve our interests."[510] In the last weeks of the Ford administration, Marcos had rejected the US compensation, Kissinger's package, of $1 billion in mixed grants and loans for being too small.
A number of books were published under Marcos's name during his term from 1970 to 1983, and a final book was published in 1990 posthumously.[511] Those published during his term are believed to have been written by ghostwriters,[512] notably Adrian Cristobal.[513][514]
Chief Commander of the Philippine Legion of Honor (11 September 1972)[515]
Knight Grand Cross of Rizal of the Order of the Knights of Rizal.[517]
Gabon: Grand Cross of the Order of the Equatorial Star
Japan: Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum (20 September 1966)[518].svg/1280px-Flag_of_Romania_(1965%E2%80%931989).svg.png){kind=small}
Romania: Order of the Star of the Romanian Socialist Republic (9 April 1975)[519]
Singapore: First Class (Honorary) of the Order of Temasek (15 January 1974)[520].svg/1280px-Flag_of_Spain_(1945%E2%80%931977).svg.png){kind=small}
Spain:
Thailand: Knight of the Most Auspicious Order of the Rajamitrabhorn (15 January 1968)[522]
Indonesia: First Class (Adipurna) of the Star of the Republic of Indonesia (12 January 1968)[523]Marcos and his wife, Imelda, were jointly credited in 1989 by Guinness World Records with the largest-ever theft from a government (an estimated 5 billion to 10 billion US dollars),[524] a record they still hold today.[64]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)In a study released by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) on Independence Day last year, it said that Marcos lied about receiving three of his US medals: the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Order of the Purple Heart.
Marcos' fabricated heroism was one of the reasons the state agency on the preservation of Philippine history disputed his burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
A doubtful record, it argued, does not serve as a sound basis of historical recognition, let alone burial in a space for heroes.
"The rule in history is that when a claim is disproven—such as Mr. Marcos's claims about his medals, rank, and guerrilla unit—it is simply dismissed", NHCP said.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The PKP viewed Marcos as a "nationalist capitalist" exercising a degree of independence from Washington. It made a negotiated settlement with Marcos in 1974. Thereafter, Marcos publicly announced the agreement as the surrender of the PKP. On the other hand, the PKP said that it achieved legality that it had long sought.
Hanggang huling hantungan, galawang magnanakaw pa rin itong si Marcos. Sa salita nga ng mga millennial, galawang Hokage (Up to his final resting place, Marcos moves like a thief. Or in the words of the millennial, moves like a Hokage)
{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)the President conferring on PM Lee the Ancient Order of Sikatuna, rank of Rajah, and PM Lee giving him the Order of Temasek
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