Bongbong defiant on father’s legacy

On the verge of securing his family’s biggest victory since their humiliating downfall three decades ago, dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ son talks confidently about his political ambitions and his father’s legacy.

In an exclusive interview with AFP ahead of the May 9 elections, with surveys showing he could win the vice presidency, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. conceded there were “widespread human rights abuses” during his father’s rule.

But the 58-year-old insisted the Marcos name remained one of his strongest assets, as he stuck to a no-apology mantra that has been a key part of his family’s remarkable political resurrection.

“I think one of the things that is happening now is I am a beneficiary of the good work that was done in my father’s time,” Marcos said on Monday night at his campaign headquarters in the Philippine capital.

“There were so many different things that were initiated at that time that to this day are of benefit to the people.”

Marcos was a fresh-faced provincial governor in his father’s dictatorship when millions took to the streets in a famous 1986 “People Power” uprising that forced the family to give up two decades of power and flee into US exile.

The Marcos family and its business allies are accused of plundering billions of dollars during the patriarch’s rule, while the regime’s security forces allegedly killed and tortured thousands of critics.

However, after Marcos Sr. died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, his controversial wife, Imelda, and their children were allowed to return to the Philippines, and they slowly began rebuilding a power base.