Marcos Jnr to take oath at site where father was scorned
Venue the scene of 1970 protests by activists who accused ex-leader of cheating in 1969 election
At noon tomorrow, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jnr will take his presidential oath on the steps of the Philippines’ former legislature, where his late father was once confronted by student activists with a black papier-mâché coffin and a crocodile.
His inauguration as the nation’s 17th president would be “very solemn and simple”, event organisers said. “We will not stray from tradition,” Marcos Jnr said.
Historian Ambeth Ocampo surmised that the venue – the National Museum of Fine Arts building which used to house the Philippine Congress until Marcos Snr shut it down in 1972 – was chosen for its “optics”.
Its American colonial-style period columns mimic the backdrop for the inauguration of US presidents who take their oath on the steps of the Capitol.
Whoever picked the venue did not know Philippine history, said Ocampo, a former head of the National Historical Commission.
First, Ocampo said, all three presidents who took their oaths there – Manuel Quezon, Jose Laurel and Manuel Roxas – not only failed to finish their term, two of them – Quezon and Roxas – died while in office.
Second, “that is where the First Quarter Storm began”, said Ocampo, referring to the violent student protests following the 1969 election, in which Marcos Snr was accused of having cheated to win a second term.
Playwright Bonifacio Ilagan, 70, intends to spend inauguration day protesting Marcos Jnr’s assumption to the presidency, in the same way he protested against Marcos Snr 52 years ago when he delivered his State of the Nation Address on January 26, 1970, in the same building.
Ilagan said: “I don’t know if Marcos Jnr realises that the venue was a historic site for student unrest and radicalisation.”
Ilagan, who was jailed and tortured during Marcos Snr’s dictatorship, is the convenor of The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law.
Authorities have branded Ilagan and his ilk as agitators out “to embarrass” Marcos Jnr. “Ultimately, all they want is to overthrow the government through violent means to be followed by a socialist revolution,” said Jonathan Malaya, the outgoing spokesman of the Department of Interior and Local Governments.
The playwright said he would continue to protest the fact that Marcos Jnr was “not an innocent bystander” of his father’s crimes. He recalled “the iconic picture of him wearing a fatigue uniform” while his father addressed his loyal supporters from the palace balcony just before the family fled.
“Him in an army uniform, showed he was willing to defend his father who cheated” in the 1986 elections, he said.
Ilagan pointed out that Marcos Jnr was also the “chief administrator” of the Marcos estate, which consists of the “accumulated stolen wealth” of his parents, and his campaign song, The New Society, was about his father’s brutal dictatorship, during which Ilagan’s sister was also snatched by the military and never found.
Ilagan traced his political “radicalisation” and those of thousands of young activists to the afternoon of January 26, 1970, when as a 17-year-old political science student, he had hesitantly joined a 50,000-strong student protest in front of the legislature.
“When I saw the black papier-mâché coffin flying in the air towards Marcos Snr, followed by a crocodile, and Marcos Snr’s effigy burning, my first reaction was to retreat,” he recalled.
Coincidentally, trouble had started when two student leaders began wrestling over who should get the microphone to speak to the restless crowd.
When the Metropolitan Command – a special military unit created by Marcos Snr to quell unrest in the nation’s capital – started breaking up the crowd, pebbles from a nearby golf course started flying.
“I saw the Metrocom beat up students already lying on the street with their rattan sticks. I saw a woman trip and fall,” Ilagan said. As he ran to her to help her up, a member of the Metrocom landed a glancing blow on his arm, which immediately became swollen.
“I became furious. I was doing nothing wrong. That was the beginning of my radicalisation like the many who were there,” Ilagan recounted.