I witnessed cruelty and corruption of Marcos’ rule...their son fooled a nation
I WAS in Manila when Philippines dictator President Ferdinand Marcos fled for his life 36 years ago.
I marched with millions as the “People Power” revolution swarmed the capital’s streets with joy, relief and disbelief at their liberation after years of tyranny.
I climbed the walls of Marcos’s opulent Malacañang Palace, filled with looted luxuries and his wife Imelda’s infamous collection of some 3,000 pairs of shoes.
And I saw the flag of freedom raised over the nation where Marcos had ruled with an iron fist for 20 years, 14 under harsh martial law.
Marcos ruthlessly killed political opponents, plundered £8billion from the nation’s coffers, and lived in splendour as millions of Filipinos deprived of basic human rights struggled to survive.
As the nation celebrated his ousting, the name Marcos seemed destined to endure in infamy.
Yet last week the unthinkable happened, as the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, 64, known to supporters by his childhood nickname “Bongbong,” was elected the new president of the Philippines in a landslide victory.
Marcos Jr returns to the Malacañang Palace riding a wave of revisionist history that used social media, online trolls and an Orwellian campaign of disinformation to whitewash his father’s crimes and corruption.
A new generation of Filipinos now look back on that time as one of peace and prosperity, even though it was no such thing. “A win based on a campaign built on blatant lies, historical distortions and mass deception is tantamount to cheating your way to victory,” stated the Campaign Against the Return of the
Marcoses And Martial Law. “This is not acceptable.” Former Human Rights Commission chairwoman Etta Rosales wept as a new Marcos swept to power. “I’m just one among many who were tortured,” she says. “Others were killed. I was raped.we suffered under the Marcos regime in the fight for justice and freedom – and this happens!”
Ferdinand Marcos came to power in 1965, and in 1972 declared martial law, reigning over a cruel dictatorship. An estimated 30,000 political opponents were killed or disappeared. Many more were arrested and tortured.
The Marcos clan epitomised greed and excess. In addition to her shoe fetish, Imelda turned a plane around mid-flight because she had forgotten to buy cheese in Rome.
A young Bongbong received an £8,200-a-month allowance, a mansion, a holiday villa, and key posts in his father’s administration.
Marcos fled in 1986 to Hawaii, offered asylum by US President Ronald Reagan, bringing with him millions in cash, stocks, 24 gold bars, and Imelda’s famed jewellery collection, while billions more were stashed in Swiss banks.
Yet the sins of the father have been wiped clean by Marcos Jr, supported by a legion of social media and Tiktok trolls whitewashing the nation’s darkest past.
A new generation of Filipinos has been persuaded the cruel regime was in reality a period of national harmony and plenty. It has been an effective strategy in a nation with more than half the electorate under 40. Tiktok is awash with polished videos portraying the Marcos clan as a glamorous political dynasty respected worldwide. One shows Imelda Marcos
meeting
Prince Charles. “They’re trying to win over a chunk of the population who never went through the economic difficulties and the human rights violations of the martial law years,” says Ronald Mendoza, dean of the Ateneo School of Government in Manila. “They’re being misled by a false nostalgia.”
And it worked, as young voters flocked to Bongbong.
“The Marcos family legacy was a golden age of peace and prosperity,” says student Korraine Mangaoang, 22. “Life was easier under Marcos. We had order and corruption was minimal. The accusations have never been proven in court.”
But that’s just more of Bongbong’s disinformation campaign.
After Ferdinand Marcos died in 1989, aged 72, a court ordered his estate to pay £1.63billion in damages to victims of murder, torture and imprisonment. Imelda, now 92, was sentenced to up to 11 years imprisonment in 2018 for hiding her ill-gotten wealth, yet remains free on bail. Once a global pariah, she could now become the de facto Queen Mother.
Dirty trick operatives are believed to be behind thousands of anonymous accounts posting pro-marcos content online. Bongbong’s closest rival, vice president Leni Robredo, was tormented by malicious sex videos falsely claiming to show her two daughters.
Even claims of widespread voter fraud cannot account for Marcos Jr polling double his opponent’s votes.
Bongbong takes office as president on June 30. Englisheducated, he attended Worth School in Sussex, and then Oxford University, where, despite his claims, he failed to complete his degree.
Marcos Jr refuses to apologise for his father’s calamitous legacy.
“What am I to say sorry about?” he asks, citing his father’s programmes boosting road-building, agriculture, power generation and literacy.
Asked about his father’s corruption, Bongbong adopts ex-us President Donald Trump’s favourite response: “Fake news.”
Days after Marcos’s overthrow I met with the new Philippines president Corazon Aquino, who spoke of her desire for a nation rising from poverty and corruption to fulfil its potential.
Even then it seemed starry-eyed and unrealistic. She freed political prisoners and repealed repressive laws, but endemic poverty and corruption could not be uprooted overnight.
For the past six years, the Philippines has buckled under the heel of tyrannical president Rodrigo Duterte, who declared a “war on drugs” and gave carte blanche to Filipinos to kill anyone involved in the drug trade, without trial or jury.
His daughter Sara was elected as Bongbong’s vice president, raising the spectre of two authoritarian dynasties returning South East Asia’s oldest democracy to despotic rule.
Ferdinand Marcos’s closest advisers were known as the Rolex 12. He handed out luxury watches as bribes. After the revolution, an Aquino aide gave me a Rolex with Marcos’s name in gold. Back in America a jeweller declared it “a fake”.
Marcos, with all his stolen billions, gave cheap replicas to his cronies.
Bongbong Marcos has sold his nation an equally phoney reimagining of his father’s legacy.
Only time will tell if he follows in the same corrupt and repressive footsteps.
‘A campaign based on blatant lies’