History 1

ON FERDINAND EDRALIN MARCOSA Written Report

ANTHONY RATERTACARMINA REBLE

GIL MICHAEL REGALADO

Early Life

Ferdinand E. Marcos was born on September 11, 1917 in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte. His parents, Mariano Marcos and Josefa Edralin, were both teachers. From 1923 to 1929, he attended the Sarrat Central School, Shamrock Elementary School in Laoag and the Ermita Elementary School in Manila. He finished high school and liberal arts course at the University of the Philippines. While still a student, he was commissioned as third lieutenant (apprentice officer) in the Philippine Constabulary Reserve after having been an ROTC battalion commander.

In 1935, Assemblyman Julio Nalundasan, a political rival of his father, was shot dead. Suspicion for the crime fell on the Marcoses. Ferdinand Marcos, who was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to murder, was tried, and found guilty in 1939. He argued his case on appeal to the Supreme Court, luckily winning an acquittal a year later.

In the summer of 1939 he received his bachelor’s degree, cum laude from the U.P. College of Law. He would have been a class valedictorian and magna cum laude had he not been imprisoned for the Nalundasan murder. The case prevented him from attending several weeks of classes. He reviewed for the bar examinations while in prison. He bailed himself out in order to take the examination, where he emerged topnotcher in November of the same year. He became trial lawyer in Manila. And during World War II, he served as an officer in the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Early Political Career

Marcos became senator after serving as member of the House of Representatives for three terms. In the Senate he served as minority floor leader before gaining the Senate presidency. He established a record for having introduced a number of significant bills, many of which found their way into the republic's statute books.

Presidency

From the start of Marcos’s presidency, escalating United States involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) made the U.S. military bases in the Philippines—Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base—critical staging areas for American forces. Consequently, the war funneled billions of dollars into the Philippine economy. Many public-works projects, financed by foreign loans, also helped the economy to develop rapidly. In addition, Imelda Marcos launched a series of prestige projects in Manila, including the building of museums and grand hotels.

In 1969, after campaigning on the slogan “Rice and Roads,” Marcos was reelected president with 74 percent of the vote. He was the first president of the Philippines to win a second term, which was the most allowed under the country’s constitution. The races for both houses of the Philippine Congress also went highly in favor of Marcos’s supporters and his Nationalist Party.

During his second term Marcos faced a host of domestic problems. Many university students and other Filipinos actively opposed the continued U.S. military presence in the Philippines and Marcos’s support for U.S. policy in Vietnam. The Communist Party of the Philippines also became more active, organizing widespread unrest among the urban and rural poor. In the southern Philippine islands, a Muslim separatist movement was building momentum. And as Marcos approached the end of his second term in office, it became increasingly clear that a constitutional convention charged with drafting a new, post

independence constitution did not intend to abolish the two-term limit for the presidency. Thus, Marcos faced the prospect of having to leave office after 1973.

Martial Law

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

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

Road to Revolution

In 1983 Aquino decided to return to the Philippines, even though he anticipated being rearrested. Aquino was shot in the back of the head and killed minutes after his arrival at Manila International Airport (now Ninoy Aquino International Airport). The government claimed the assassination was the work of a lone gunman, who had been killed by security police at the airport. A special commission subsequently concluded the murder was the result of a military conspiracy, but in 1985 a high court acquitted all of the officers charged with the crime.

By 1984, his close personal ally, U.S. 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. During the Carter administration the relation with the U.S. soured somewhat when President Jimmy Carter targeted the Philippines in his human rights campaign.

In the face of escalating public discontent and under pressure from foreign allies, Marcos called a snap presidential election for 1986, with more than a year left in his term. He selected Arturo Tolentino as his running mate. The opposition united behind Aquino's widow, Corazon, and her running mate, Salvador Laurel.

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

People Power Movement

On February 22 two of Marcos’s key military supporters publicly turned against him. Secretary of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos staged a military mutiny, seizing two vital military installations in suburban Manila. This mutiny presented Marcos with an immediate challenge that his cousin General Fabian Ver, the armed forces chief of staff, wanted to meet with decisive force.

Cardinal Sin, using Radio Veritas, summoned the Philippine people into the streets to block General Ver’s tanks. Thousands of civilians flocked into the streets and formed a human barricade on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), the main boulevard between the two military bases. Marcos’s troops lacked either the brutality or the political will to attack unarmed civilians, and they were effectively immobilized by the strong show of what Filipinos called “people power.”

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

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

Summary

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

Opinion

Although Marcos is recorded in History negatively by being one of most corrupt or having run the most corrupt government, there are still parts in Marcos’ leadership that we the Filipino people should be thankful. His desires to improve and develop the Philippines, although overshadowed by his wrongdoings are still noteworthy and very significant. A few of them has been very useful to the Filipino people until today.

I firmly believe that it was not only his abuse of his power that lead him to downfall but also the abuse of the people around him on their own powers and to him. And thus the combined effect of their irresponsibility caused the many uncontrollable scandals and issues in the country, especially the ever becoming militant University of the Philippines and the growth and encroachment of communism in the Philippines, both very influential entities.

Only if the Marcos government had a firm grip on the hearts and minds of the people even with their continued corruption, they could have stirred to country towards development. But instead the

Marcos government curtailed opposition and wrongly manipulated the aristocrats and oligarchies in the country. Because of this, a lot of the influential people in the Philippines including top opposition leaders and communist leaders became active in destabilizing the country in the hopes of forming a new government.

The ensuing destabilization of the country by very influential people and the killing of Ninoy gripped the hearts and minds of the people and inspired nationalism. And thus once again, the failure of the Marcos government to secure the people first by failing to stop or eradicate the main causes of the countries destabilization resulted to People Power and the downfall of Marcos regime.

The Marcos government’s failure to make it for their last term thinned the chance to repair all the damage done by the mess they themselves incurred to the country. The next government ran by the wife of the assassinated Ninoy Aquino being tasked to recover the Philippine economy honored the debt of the failed Marcos Government. Aquino’s failure to effectively handle the new revolutionary government leads to the continued indebtness of the Philippines until today.

Sources:

MSN Encarta, http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761557463_2/Ferdinand_Marcos.html

Philippine Senate Government Website, http://www.senate.gov.ph/senators/former_senators/ferdinand_marcos.htm

The Rise and Fall of the New Society by Adriel Obar Melmban

Think Quest Library, http://library.thinkquest.org/15816/thebeginning.article4.html

Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Marcos