Ferdinand Marcos

RULER OF PHILIPPINES
WRITTEN BY:

 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Alternative Title: Ferdinand Edralin Marcos

Ferdinand Marcos, in full Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, (born September 11, 1917, Sarrat,
Philippines—died September 28, 1989, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.), Philippine lawyer and
politician who, as head of state from 1966 to 1986, established an authoritarian regime in
the Philippines that came under criticismfor corruption and for its suppression of democratic
processes.
Marcos attended school in Manila and studied law in the late 1930s at the University of the
Philippines, near that city. Tried for the assassination in 1933 of a political opponent of his
politician father, Marcos was found guilty in November 1939. But he argued his case on
appeal to the Philippine Supreme Court and won acquittal a year later. He became a trial
lawyer in Manila. During World War IIhe was an officer with the Philippine armed forces.
Marcos’s later claims of having been a leader in the Filipino guerrilla resistance movement
were a central factor in his political success, but U.S. government archives revealed that he
actually played little or no part in anti-Japanese activities during 1942–45.

From 1946 to 1947 Marcos was a technical assistant to Manuel Roxas, the first president of
the independent Philippine republic. He was a member of the House of Representatives
(1949–59) and of the Senate (1959–65), serving as Senate president (1963–65). In 1965
Marcos, who was a prominent member of the Liberal Party founded by Roxas, broke with it
after failing to get his party’s nomination for president. He then ran as the Nationalist
Party candidate for president against the Liberal president, Diosdado Macapagal. The
campaign was expensive and bitter. Marcos won and was inaugurated as president on
December 30, 1965. In 1969 he was reelected, becoming the first Philippine president to
serve a second term. During his first term he had made progress in agriculture, industry,
and education. Yet his administration was troubled by increasing student demonstrations
and violent urban guerrilla activities.
On September 21, 1972, Marcos imposed martial law on the Philippines. Holding that
communist and subversive forces had precipitated the crisis, he acted swiftly; opposition
politicians were jailed, and the armed forces became an arm of the regime. Opposed by
political leaders—notably Benigno Aquino, Jr., who was jailed and held in detention for
almost eight years—Marcos was also criticized by church leaders and others. In the
provinces Maoist communists (New People’s Army) and Muslim separatists (notably of
the Moro National Liberation Front) undertook guerrilla activities intended to bring down the
central government. Under martial law the president assumed extraordinary powers,
including the ability to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Marcos announced the end of
martial law in January 1981, but he continued to rule in an authoritarian fashion under
various constitutionalformats. He won election to the newly created post of president
against token opposition in June 1981.
Marcos’s wife from 1954 was Imelda Romuáldez Marcos, a former beauty queen. Imelda
became a powerful figure after the institution of martial law in 1972. She was often criticized
for her appointments of relatives to lucrative governmental and industrial positions while she
held the posts of governor of Metropolitan Manila (1975–86) and minister of human
settlements and ecology (1979–86).
Marcos’s later years in power were marred by rampant government corruption, economic
stagnation, the steady widening of economic inequalities between the rich and the poor, and
the steady growth of a communist guerrilla insurgency active in the rural areas of the
Philippines’ innumerable islands.

By 1983 Marcos’s health was beginning to fail, and opposition to his rule was growing.
Hoping to present an alternative to both Marcos and the increasingly powerful New People’s
Army, Benigno Aquino, Jr., returned to Manila on August 21, 1983, only to be shot dead as
he stepped off the airplane. The assassination was seen as the work of the government and
touched off massive antigovernment protests. An independent commission appointed by
Marcos concluded in 1984 that high military officers were responsible for Aquino’s
assassination. To reassert his mandate, Marcos called for presidential elections to be held
in 1986. But a formidable political opponent soon emerged in Aquino’s widow, Corazon
Aquino, who became the presidential candidate of the opposition. It was widely asserted
that Marcos managed to defeat Aquino and retain the presidency in the election of February
7, 1986, only through massive voting fraud on the part of his supporters. Deeply discredited
at home and abroad by his dubious electoral victory, Marcos held fast to his presidency as
the Philippine military split between supporters of his and of Aquino’s legitimate right to the
presidency. A tense standoff that ensued between the two sides ended only when Marcos
fled the country on February 25, 1986, at U.S. urging. He went into exile in Hawaii, where
he remained until his death.
Evidence emerged that during his years in power Marcos, his family, and his close
associates had looted the Philippines’ economy of billions of dollars through
embezzlements and other corrupt practices. Marcos and his wife were subsequently
indicted by the U.S. government on racketeering charges, but in 1990 (after Marcos’s
death) Imelda was acquitted of all charges by a federal court. She was allowed to return to
the Philippines in 1991, and in 1993 a Philippine court found her guilty of corruption
(the conviction was overturned in 1998).
Born: September 11, 1917
Sarrat, Philippines
Died: September 28, 1989
Honolulu, Hawaii
Filipino president and politician
Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos began his career in politics with the murder of Julio Nalundasan in
1935, and ended it after the murder of Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983. Some believe his entire life was based
on fraud, deceit, and theft, and his time as president has come to represent one of the prime examples of
a corrupt government.

Youth and family

Ferdinand Edralin Marcos was born on September 11, 1917, in Sarrat, a village in the Ilocos North region
of the island of Luzon in the Philippines. His parents, Josefa Edralin and Mariano Marcos, were both
teachers from important families. In 1925 Mariano Marcos became a congressman, surrounding the
young Ferdinand in a political atmosphere at an early age. Mariano also had a strong influence on what
was to become Ferdinand's competitive, win-at-all-costs nature. Mariano and Josefa pushed Ferdinand to
excel at everything, not only his studies at school, but also at activities such as wrestling, boxing, hunting,
survival skills, and marks-manship (skill with a gun or rifle). In college, Marcos's main interest was the .22-
caliber college pistol team.
Marcos's real father was not Mariano but a wealthy Chinese man named Ferdinand Chua. (Marcos would
claim that Chua was his "godfather.") Chua was a well-connected judge who was responsible for much of
Marcos's unusual good luck as a young man. Among other things, Chua paid for young Marcos's
schooling and later managed to influence the Philippine Supreme Court to overturn the young Marcos's
conviction for murder.
On September 20, 1935, Julio Nalundasan was at home celebrating his congressional election victory
over Mariano Marcos when he was shot and killed with a .22-caliber bullet fired by the eighteen-year-old
Ferdinand Marcos. Three years later, Ferdinand was arrested for Nalundasan's murder. A year later, after
having graduated from law school, he was found guilty of the crime. While in jail Marcos spent six months
writing his own appeal for a new trial. When the Supreme Court finally took up Marcos's appeal in 1940,
the judge in charge (apparently influenced by Judge Chua) threw out the case. Marcos was a free man.
The next day, he returned to the Supreme Court and took the oath to become a lawyer.

Wartime activities
Throughout Marcos's childhood, the Philippines had been a colony (a foreign region under the control of
another country) of the United States. However, the Philippines had been largely self-governing and
gained independence in 1946. This occurred only after fierce fighting in the country during World War II
(1939–45), the international conflict for control of large areas of the world between the Axis (Germany,
Japan, and Italy) and the Allies (United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and others).
During
World War II, the Philippines were invaded and occupied by the Japanese, while U.S. forces and Filipino
resistance fighters fought to regain control of the country.

Marcos emerged from World War II with a reputation as the greatest Filipino resistance leader of the war
and the most decorated soldier in the U.S. armed forces. However, he appeared to have spent the war on
both sides, lending support to both the Japanese and the United States. In early 1943 in Manila (the
capital of the Philippines), Marcos created a "secret" resistance organization called Ang Mga Maharlika
that he claimed consisted of agents working against the Japanese. In fact, the group consisted of many
criminals—forgers, pickpockets, gunmen, and gangsters—hoping to make money in the wartime climate.
At the war's end, Marcos took up the practice of law again. He often filed false claims in Washington,
D.C., on behalf of Filipino veterans seeking back pay (wages owed) and benefits. Encouraged by his
success with these claims, he filed a $595 thousand claim on his own behalf, stating that the U.S. Army
had taken over two thousand head of cattle from Mariano Marcos's ranch. In fact, this ranch never
existed, which made Washington conclude that the cattle never existed.

Political career
In December 1948 a magazine editor published four articles on Marcos's war experiences, causing
Marcos's reputation to grow. In 1949, campaigning on promises to get veterans' benefits for two million
Filipinos, Marcos ran as a Liberal Party candidate for a seat in the Philippine House of Representatives.
He won with 70 percent of the vote. In less than a year he was worth a million dollars, mostly because of
his American tobacco subsidies (financial assistance to grow tobacco), a huge cigarette smuggling
operation, and his practice of pressuring Chinese businesses to cooperate with him. In 1954 he formally
met Imelda Romualdez (1929–) and married her.
Marcos was reelected twice, and in 1959 he was elected to the Philippine Senate. He was also the
Liberal Party's vice-president from 1954 to 1961, when he successfully managed Diosdado Macapagal's
(1911–1997) run for the Philippine presidency. As part of his arrangement with Marcos, Macapagal was
supposed to step aside after one term to allow Marcos to run for the presidency. When Macapagal did not
 do this, Marcos joined the opposition Nationalist Party and became their candidate in the 1965 election
against Macapagal and easily won. Marcos was now president of the Philippines.
In 1969 Marcos became the first Philippine president to win a second term. However, not all Filipinos
were happy with his presidency, and the month following his reelection included the most violent public
demonstrations in the history of the country. Three years later, facing growing student protest and a
crumbling economy, Marcos declared martial law, a state of emergency in which military authorities are
given extraordinary powers to maintain order. Marcos's excuse for declaring martial law was the growing
revolutionary movement of the Communist New People's Army, which opposed his government.
During the next nine years of martial law, Marcos tripled the armed forces to some two hundred thousand
troops, guaranteeing his grip on government. When martial law was lifted in 1981, he kept all the power
he had been granted under martial law to himself. Meanwhile the economy continued to crumble while
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos became one of the richest couples in the world. As Marcos's health began
to fail and U.S. support for him lessened, opposition to Marcos grew in the Philippine middle class.

Final years
The Marcos regime began to collapse after the August 1983 assassination (political killing) of Benigno S.
Aquino Jr. (1933–1983), who had been Marcos's main political rival. Aquino was shot and killed when he
arrived at the Manila airport after three years in the United States. The killing enraged Filipinos, as did
authorities' claim that the murder was the work of a single gunman. A year later, a civilian investigation
brought charges against a number of soldiers and government officials, but in 1985 none of them were
found guilty. Nevertheless, most Filipinos believe that Marcos was involved in Aquino's killing.
Marcos next called for a "snap [sudden] election" to be held early in 1986. In that election, which was
marked by violence and charges of fraud, Marcos's opponent was Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino.
When the Philippine National Assembly announced that Marcos was the winner, a rebellion in the
Philippine military, supported by hundreds of thousands of Filipinos marching in the streets, forced
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to flee the country.
Marcos asked for U.S. aid but was given nothing more than an air force jet, which flew him and Imelda to
Hawaii. He remained there until his death on September 28, 1989. The Marcoses had taken with them
more than twenty-eight million cash in Philippine currency. President Aquino's administration said this
was only a small part of the Marcoses' illegally gained wealth. (encyclopedia of world biography)

department of agrarian reform

President Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986). Proclamation No. 1081 on September 21, 1972 ushered the Period of the New Society.
Five days after the proclamation of Martial Law, the entire country was proclaimed a land reform area and simultaneously the
Agrarian Reform Program was decreed.

President Marcos enacted the following laws:

 Republic Act No. 6389, (Code of Agrarian Reform) and RA No. 6390 of 1971 -- Created the Department of Agrarian Reform and the
Agrarian Reform Special Account Fund. It strengthen the position of farmers and expanded the scope of agrarian reform.

 Presidential Decree No. 2, September 26, 1972 -- Declared the country under land reform program. It enjoined all agencies and
offices of the government to extend full cooperation and assistance to the DAR. It also activated the Agrarian Reform Coordinating
Council.
 Presidential Decree No. 27, October 21, 1972 -- Restricted land reform scope to tenanted rice and corn lands and set the retention
limit at 7 hectares.

THE MARCOSIAN IDEOLOGY: A BLOG-IOGRAPHY

“I did not become President to preside over the death of the Philippine Republic.”─FM

I’m not an apologist for the human rights violations committed during the Marcos regime. Nor a blinded loyalist
whose claim for credibility greatly derives from personal biases owing to my father’s ethnic origins. I was barely
five years old when Ferdinand Marcos was ousted from power which he held twenty long years. Now, having
said this, could I really write something positive about a man speciously detested by history─ disowned by his
countrymen?

Over the years, I have accumulated books on Philippine political history. A chunk of my collection goes to
martial law literature. I must say that like any other mainstream bookshops, I too have a handful of anti-Marcos
books in my shelves. Along with a plethora of Supreme Court landmark cases that were assigned to us in law
school, the anti-Marcos views─ the left and the right─ took solace in the corners of my mind. I learned so many
egregious things about Marcos like his idiosyncrasies as a political persona; the way he mangled the
constitution to suit his brand of revolution; rigged elections and even marital peccadilloes. But as a fledgling
student of history, I know I was merely looking at one side of the coin. What’s the other side all about I thought.
Not to be melodramatic or anything, but somehow my curiosity led me to a metal trash bin.

There it lay, alongside with dead insects. It was a little blue book and its pages were stamped with indelible
water stains. The front and back cover were hardly recognizable but the signature at the bottom was somewhat
classy and all too familiar. Later I came to know that the book in my hands titled “Notes on the New
Society” was penned by no less than the man himself─ Ferdinand E. Marcos. That very same book, which I still
have in my possession, relatively changed my life on two major fronts. It propelled my own political awakening
as a citizen on the one hand, and inspired me to excel as a law student on the other. Being the vociferous
reader that I once was, I craved for more. As of this writing, my Marcos book collection is almost complete. I’m
bound to keep it for posterity and pass it on to my child in my old age. But more than its value as an antique
collection the thoughts inside those books are gems. No right-thinking Filipino except perhaps the yellow school
ideologues can quarrel with the fact that Ferdinand E. Marcos is/was a genius and a first rate Filipino leader to
have ever walked in the annals of our history.

My salient purpose is not to convince anyone that Marcos is a saint or a hero for that matter. Like any
other visionary in the entire universe, Marcos was all too human; imperfect and susceptible to the whims and
caprices of his mundane existence. But he was bold and daring ─Machiavellian in a way─ and those
characteristics are part and parcel of his sense of nationalism that unfortunately caused his spiral downfall in
the contours of history. Why has this happened? What were his thoughts when he used martial law to
radicalize society? Lessons must be learned from the Marcos experience for Filipinos can benefit a lot from his
didactic thoughts and visions of greatness.

Fearing that the younger generation would not know anything about Marcos’s sage thoughts behind his brand
of a “Democratic Revolution,” I attempted to present a discourse on this subject, not as complex or esoteric as
one could readily imagine, but I offered it in the vernacular to invite healthy discussions. To encapsulate the
Marcos ideology in a nutshell is not an easy task. It takes prodigious effort to be able to do it. But somehow
owing to my fiery admiration for the man whom I consider the foremost Filipino thinker of our contemporary
political history, I felt that his ideology deserves consideration be it for academic purposes or otherwise.
Although the man had passed on to the great beyond for more than two decades now, his visions and ideals
are immortalized in his scholarly written books and speeches. Sadly, the books are now out of print. Except for
a few dedicated souls, who either obtained copies of his books in an antique shop (at a very high price) or
through online booksellers, the Marcos ideology as embodied in those literature I’m afraid, is on the brink of
extinction.

This article is my modest effort to fill the void so that young Filipinos, vulnerable as they are from the lessons
taught by the ‘yellow’ school of history, would come to see Ferdinand E. Marcos in a different light; through his
piercing ‘ideals’ and profound ‘visions’ for the Filipino nation. For a single moment, let us demystify ourselves
and deal solely with his thoughts.

Mandate for Greatness

Ferdinand E. Marcos was not only an ideologist and the most historic minded of Filipino Presidents. In a
broader sense, he was the classical nationalist leader summoning his people at every opportunity to recover
their past greatness. In his first inaugural speech entitled, “Mandate for Greatness,” Marcos spelled out the
blueprint of his vision for the nation and the path that he would take to achieve these insurmountable goals.
Armed with his finest oratorical skills and a sonorous voice, Marcos was forthright when he declared that his
election is a mandate not merely for change but for greatness. Then he delivered the coup de grace when he
said: This nation can be great again! Not one hero alone do I ask from you, but many, nay all. I ask all of you to
be heroes of our nation. Offering all our efforts to our Creator, we must drive ourselves to the great again. This
is your dream and mine. By your choice you have committed yourselves to it. Then in the most dramatic way,
he concluded with these poignant words: “Come then, let us march together towards the dream of greatness!”

More than a politician and a lawyer, Marcos too was a scholar, a fervent student of Philippine history. This is
why during his reign Marcos had been both writing and supporting the study and research of Philippine history,
especially in those neglected areas of the past where traditional historians and textbook writers neglected or
barely touched on (e.g., second century of Spanish colonization in the archipelago). In hindsight, Marcos’
dream of greatness for the Filipino nation takes its roots from history itself and not purely rhetorical as others
would argue to this day. As evidenced in his well-researched book entitled “Tadhana: The History of the Filipino
People” Marcos, the historian spoke about the dangers of disunity and the value of unity for the Filipino nation.
For instance, to further emphasize his point, he elevated previously disregarded historical figures like Sultan
Kudarat and Sirongan as heroes of the whole Filipino people and not merely confined to Maguindanao
muslims. He also argued, contrary to conventional Western thought, that the concept of pre-Conquest “ethnic
states” claims for the early Filipinos a degree of political sophistication. Later on, his keen sense of history
would greatly benefit grassroots political institutions (e.g., barangay assemblies) of the nation by empowering
them with a vast degree of participation in the conduct of government. Admittedly though, I only read portions
of Tadhana because the book is quite voluminous but the intention of the writer is quite clear right from the
start: to disengage from the hoaxes of Western historians and of Filipino historians schooled in their texts.

It is imperative to understand at this point why Marcos demanded the standard of ‘greatness’ not only to himself
but to his people, as well. Of course, not everybody could have attained the heroic proportions called for by
Marcos in his yearning to form a New Society. To be a man is one thing, and to be a hero is another. But
Marcos’ call for ‘greatness’ was ostensibly an invitation, or to put it more bluntly, a soaring challenge to the
people to join him in his quest for excellence─ the motive force for greatness. It was his way of arousing the
sense of patriotism among the people, reminding them that like their forebears, they too could attain heroism by
believing and living the moral ethos of a useful citizen. He urged every Filipino to become a repository of
heroism; a symbol of the revolution in the struggle against colonialism and oppression, who, having overcome
the economic and political difficulties has become the emergent generation, a contemporary hero in the
tradition of Rizal, Mabini and Bonifacio. Why national greatness? Marcos, in one of his speeches,
intoned: Because armed with nothing but raw courage and a passionate intelligence and patriotism, our
predecessors built the noble edifice of the first Asian republic. In another light, Marcos’ sense of history
provides a vital linkage of the past and the emerging New Filipino. The modern day Filipino, which he
envisioned under the New Society, is one who is well aware that he is the product of a brave and historic past
and has a stake at his country’s future.

The Impetus of a Constitutional Revolution

With the declaration of martial law, President Marcos singlehandedly led a ‘crisis government,’ which is
supposedly a transition government in the real sense. Designed extensively to steer the ship of state from crisis
to normalcy, martial law served as the transition period; a precursor to the revolutionary reforms he was about
to make. Clearly, it began with the installation of martial law and ended with the formation of the New Society.
For indeed what lies at the core of Marcos’ September 21 Movement was not merely to stamp out lawless
elements of society or the reestablishment of the social order but an aspiration to lead his people toward a
“democratic revolution.”

The concept of a “Democratic Revolution” was judiciously explained by Marcos himself in his book “The
Democratic Revolution in the Philippines,” a synthesis of his two previous books: Today’s Revolution:
Democracy and Notes on the New Society. To begin with, Marcos deliberately fused two seemingly
incongruent buzzwords “democratic” and ‘revolution,” a choice he made to dispel the traditional negative
connotation of its day. At height of the Cold War, the Marcos presidency was drawn right onto the vortex of this
phenomenon and the government seemed impotent at that time to stop the rise of communism in the
Philippines. Marcos, the man of the hour so to speak, fought communism on two visible fronts: first, through the
imposition of martial law and second, by discrediting communism as a foreign ideology unsuitable to Filipinos.
Because ‘communism’ at one time was highly regarded as the wave of the future, the term ‘revolution’ was
fashioned as the exclusive franchise of the “progressive” left. Thus, all revolutions with the exclusion of the
“conservative” right perhaps, were being trumpeted as having necessarily Marxist origins. Ferdinand Marcos
obviously disagreed. For Marcos, the use of the phrase ‘democratic revolution’ had something to with his own
unique conception, contrary to the prevailing opinion at that time, of a revolution proceeding from the “Center.”

The term ‘Center’ here refers both the center of the political spectrum and the center of society that, according
to Marcos─ is the state. “Government in a democracy,” he expounded, “stands at the center of ─ not above─
the political community. It governs, and the men in government may constitute a governing class, but only in
the democratic sense that the masses, sovereign as they are, cannot govern.” More than anything else, Marcos
wanted to stress ‘democratic,’ a stark contrast to the kind of violent revolution sponsored by the left and the
right, a revolution aimed at the existing government and seeking for its overthrow. In fact, what really Marcos is
trying to say by “Revolution from the Center” is nothing more but a revolution undertaken by the existing
government itself. In An Ideology for the Filipinos, Marcos articulated this concept in a simplified manner, he
said:

We have characterized the democratic revolution as ‘revolution from the center,’ because it is a revolution
initiated by the government, which stands at the center of society and not above the people. Ours is a
revolution neither from the left nor the right, neither from above nor below: but a revolution or, better still, a
radicalization of existing social arrangements, initiated not simply by a duly constituted authority but by the only
authority morally bound to act in behalf of the people.

Suffice it to say that Marcos did not intend to lead a unilateral movement, meaning proceeding from the
President alone. The revolution that he was leading, and he mentions this numerous times in his writings, is the
culmination of the “rebellion of the poor.” In other words, it is a joint revolution of the people and the leadership.
But to do this, Marcos believes that the first task of the government under the ‘democratic revolution’ is to
establish once again its credibility as an autonomous institution. Necessarily, it must free itself from the
shackles of the old society that used to identify the government as a party to a grand conspiracy of the rich
against the poor. The government must exert its own will if it were to genuinely preside over the interaction
between the rich and the poor, and the democratization of both wealth and opportunity. Without credibility and
autonomy, the government is bereft of any justification whatsoever to lead the ‘revolution from the center,’ let
alone to supress the rebellion of the poor. To conceive of it in this manner would be a most grievous mistake to
make.

But there is an added dimension to Marcos’ brand of revolution because for one, it partakes of a character that
is essentially constitutional.

Marcos and the 1935 Constitution

Did President Marcos correctly use martial rule when it was declared in 1972? Were his actions consistent with
the commander-in-chief provision under the 1935 Constitution? By all accounts, I think these questions remain
unanswered conclusively to this day. Queries such as these could still very well spark fierce oratory between
the antis and the loyalists.

When Marcos declared martial law through Proclamation 1081, one of the justifications cited was the
burgeoning communist insurgency which according to President Marcos poses a grave danger to the republic.
Martial law, as understood in its classic sense, is an instrument for insuring public safety in times of emergency
and for protecting the continuance of normal civil government. It was meant to be a weapon for stability, the
final resort of the government to maintain the status quo. In 1972, the year when martial law was first used in
the Philippines, President Marcos ostensibly navigated deftly through these uncharted constitutional
boundaries. Ultimately, his actions were challenged before the Supreme Court and the president submitted to
its jurisdiction despite the turmoil that looms ahead. Certainly, President Marcos did not impose martial law if he
knew that his actions were in violation of the constitution. He was, after all, a skilled trial lawyer and a
constitutionalist in his own right. To make sure that his actions as the commander-in-chief had firm
constitutional basis, protracted studies had been made by legal luminaries of his time before he resorted to the
suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus then later on, to martial law.

It is a settled principle of law that the power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and
declaration of martial law flow directly from the commander-in-chief provision of the Organic law. The
determination of the existence of the conditions for the exercise of the martial law powers belongs exclusively
to the executive arm of the government, which makes it essentially a presidential prerogative. Under the
system of separation of powers─ and as a matter of policy─ neither the legislature nor the judiciary can curtail
or review the martial powers of the president without violating the constitution. In legal parlance, lawyers call it
the ‘political question’ doctrine. Even so, President Marcos voluntarily submitted his actions before the high
tribunal when the validity of Proclamation 1081 was challenged on constitutional grounds. How did the
Supreme Court rule on this issue? The question must be answered in the context of pre-1987 Constitution
concept of separation of powers. It will be recalled that when President Marcos placed the entire Philippines
under martial law, he acted in accordance with the commander-in-chief provision of the 1935 Constitution,
which was later supplanted by the 1973 Constitution. Prior to Proclamation 1081, President Marcos had
already utilized one of his commander-in-chief powers by suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus
in 1971. This was not the first time that a Philippine president resorted to such constitutional measure. In 1949,
the late President Elpidio Quirino also invoked the same power in order to quell the escalating Huk insurgency
in some parts of Luzon. In the case of President Marcos, the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus was made in the wake of the Plaza Miranda bombing which nearly killed Liberal Party stalwarts present
during the rally. Of course, the opposition quickly pointed its fingers on President Marcos as the alleged
mastermind behind the bombing. But as it turns out, the Plaza Miranda bombing was just part of a larger
conspiracy between the communists and some desperate members of the opposition in its quest to overthrow
the existing government.

When his actions were elevated to the Supreme Court in Lansang v. Garcia, one of the issues raised was
whether the Supreme Court had the power to review the acts of the President in the exercise of his
commander-in-chief powers. Albeit it was an established rule at that time that the actions of the president
proceeding from his commander-in-chief powers were beyond the pale of judicial review ─a political question
─the Supreme Court this time, modified its previous rulings. It went on to rule that the power to suspend the
privilege of the writ was not conclusive upon the courts and therefore subject to constitutional
limitations like any other governmental powers. However, the Court made a categorical pronouncement
that the scope of judicial inquiry was limited only to the degree of determining whether the President
acted arbitrarily. Now whether the judgment of the president was indeed correct, the Court said that this is not
within its power to decide.
This was exactly President Marcos’ central argument when his actions were challenged in the legal arena
almost immediately after he declared martial law on September 21, 1972. Fortunately for President Marcos,
this was also the prevailing legal doctrine at that time when constitutional strictures on martial law were merely
in its nascent form. Lawyers in those days had to fall back on American jurisprudence to try to understand it
much less the ordinary citizens. In the end, President Marcos received the nod of the Supreme Court, the final
arbiter of all legal questions, courtesy of Aquino Jr. v. Ponce Enrile. It ruled that the declaration of martial law
was validly made based on an existing rebellion and that the President did not act arbitrarily in the exercise of
his power. Now, whether Aquino Jr. and its companion martial law cases (e.g., Javellana v. Executive
Secretary) are indeed a bad judicial precedent is, of course, another story.

Theory behind the formation of the New Society

Marcos could have stopped right there and then. But he goes farther. He was after all “destined to sit, along
with his people, on top of a social volcano,” to borrow the words of an eminent Filipino diplomat. Marcos went
beyond the traditional meaning and limits of martial law; he had clearly expanded the scope of martial law to
unimagined heights. Indeed, martial law was never conceived to attain revolutionary or radical reforms, it was
meant simply to freeze the ballgame and return to normalcy when the emergency ceases. Afterward, it is
business as usual as they say. History now tells us, that Marcos had intended all along to hold on to power no
matter what. Even before his meteoric ascent to power, Marcos was already ostracized by the ruling clique as
power-mad, reviled for his ruthlessness in the use of power. Yet, critics and history writers, the supposed
articulate segment of Philippine society, did not bother to objectively understand Marcos’ central motivation. All
they could see from which to anchor their conclusion is the fact that along with the declaration of martial law
comes the outright dismantlement of the legislature; the closing down of all mass media; and the imprisonment
of the alleged enemies of the state. On top of that, Marcos called for a constitutional convention to draft a new
constitution that would reflect his visions and reforms under the “New Society.” By virtue of the 1973
Constitution, ratified by no less than the barangay assemblies all over the country, Marcos wielded
considerable powers that had the semblance of a one-man-rule. He exercised legislative powers under the
‘crisis government,’ passing laws, reorganizing the bureaucracy, and cushioning anti-democratic institutions
which to his mind were vestiges of the old society. These gradual developments undertaken during those
precarious times were nothing more but a façade with what he was trying to achieve for the nation. What was
President Marcos’ central motivation in utilizing martial law to build a ‘New Society’ for Filipinos? In a word,
Marcos envisioned greatness. Not for himself but for the Filipino nation. He did this, not out of sheer joy of
enjoying the privileges of his position, nor to hold power for power’s sake rather he was compelled by destiny to
transform society and make it scale the heights of greatness that he had envisaged. At the very least, he
seized martial law as the only constitutional route, an opportunity that would engender the radical reforms he
envisioned. Surely, to wipe out the rebellion and social disorder are just palliative measures that would continue
to haunt the nation in the near future because the root causes are yet to be identified. What President Marcos
really wanted was to identify the sources that spawned the rebellion like the communist threat; absorb them
within the democratic system and try to approximate their desires as concrete expressions of democratic
ideals.

In The Democratic Revolution in the Philippines, Marcos admitted that while he appreciates the social and
economic benefits that communism could bring to society, his dissent lies mainly on the underlying claim of
Marxism that it is the only path towards a genuine democratic order. He intimated the inconsistencies, the
fallacies of communism as against the conventional norms of democracy. Marcos, now the prolific scholar
wrote a scathing remark designed to unmask the fickleness of communism as a genuine democratic dogma, he
quipped:

I can see and appreciate the social and economic good of communism. But I find it difficult to understand how
its political society can be called democratic when a single party, the Communist party, or a group of men who
control it, has a monopoly of political power. ‘The party knows best,’ is the simplified dictum of the communist
political order.

As if hitting the nail right on its head, Marcos continued: Obviously, this form of government does not accept the
fact, which I shall discuss shortly, that the people have an inherent right to remove their rulers, alter their
government, or discard policy. On the contrary, the logic in the communist view is that the people cannot rebel
against themselves. This, of course, is a romantic fallacy. Then he went for the jugular, he averred: In actual
fact, the people are never the government and the government never the people. What joins them together is
the principle of consent. In a communist polity, the people do not merely consent─ they must consent! An alien
ideology that supports a revolution that is destructive of human freedom is definitely not the solution for Marcos.
What the nation needs, according to him, is an awakened political authority that coincides with the revolutionary
demands of the masses; a ‘democratic’ revolution to be initiated by the existing government itself─ a revolution
from the center.

President Marcos had a unique way of envisioning his reforms; he conceptualized everything on the basis of an
eclectic ideology that he himself had formulated and weaved specifically for his people. Pundits sum up
Marcos’ “New Society,” as an ideology that puts emphasis on individual and national discipline, and the
sacrifice of personal liberties for economic development. We must understand at this point that Marcos was
leading a transition government, and in a way sacrifices have to be made to achieve the ‘end’ goals of so-called
‘democratic revolution.’ For Marcos, in order to achieve authentic democratic process which rests on such
ideals as freedom of speech, the challenge, however, is to first of all establish the credibility of government as
an institution oriented; one that concerns primordially with the welfare of the many and not of the few. Marcos
made it clear that under the “New Society,” there is no trade off so to speak in terms of economic rights over
personal liberties─ but to “emphasize one, as dictated by the real aspirations of the people,” without
necessarily denying the other. It has to be so, because Marcos critique of the old society rests on the
assumption that political power becomes an end in itself, and not, as the democratic theory would have it, a
means to an end. Marcos expounded on this observation in An Ideology for the Filipinos, he argued: A great
deal of emphasis was placed on political liberties, and hardly anything on survival. One does not wonder, then,
why all talk about political rights hardly moves the poor: the element that would make political rights meaningful
is absent.

Passion for Excellence

Stories abound that Marcos had literally planned to become president since childhood. But this is an
understatement, a brazen lie to be sure. Marcos did not just want to be president. He wanted to be the best
president ever. I would have no fear about Marcos’ place in history. No Philippine President had tried harder─
and with greater amount of passion, to go against the tide of history than Ferdinand E. Marcos. He was an
exceptional leader, a crisis-man, one who rarely comes in a century. Marcos had a vision, the range of which
can only be matched by his political sophistication and unremitting passion for excellence. The strength of his
character was first exhibited in one of the monumental episodes in his life when he was accused to have shot
his father’s political rival, Julio Nalundasan. The young Marcos overturned this single misfortune by defending
himself in the Supreme Court that eventually earned him an acquittal. In jail, barely past the flush of youth, he
reviewed for the bar and subsequently topped it, garnering the highest rating in the history of Philippine bar
examinations.

Ferdinand Marcos lived what he preached. On the day of his first inaugural, President Marcos had indeed
issued a tall order for his compatriots. He demanded─ nay─ inspired national greatness. He reminded them
incessantly of the noble and heroic toils of their forebears, their selflessness and sacrifice. Above all this,
Marcos urged them to always strive for excellence because the nation deserved nothing less. He earnestly
believed in ‘creativity,’ and the capacity of Filipinos to chart their own destiny free from the countervailing force
of entrenched power of vested interests. One of the best reforms instituted by President Marcos at the
inception of the “New Society” was the revitalization of bureaucracy. He dubbed it as “Technocracy for the
People.” It is in this realm that President Marcos truly injected revolutionary components ─change in attitude
and perspectives─ that reflected his character as a radical visionary. First, he reformed the entire bureaucracy
by instilling, among others, meritocracy and discipline in government ranks. He then established the
Tanodbayan and the Sandiganbayan to secure this noble objective, and as part of the normalization process
under the New Society. Second comes the upgrading of the Cabinet─ the first line of civil servants in any given
bureaucracy. The Cabinet, in Marcos’ vocabulary, is what determines the character of the government while at
the same time dramatizes the personality of the leader. President Marcos knew for a fact that as the chief
executive of the nation, he had the first claim over the best human resources in the country. He clearly took
advantage of this privilege by enticing men of talents known for their technical expertise and academic
preparation in their respective field. Formidable names such as those of Carlos P. Romulo, Cesar Virata, Blas
Ople, Onofre D. Corpuz, Roberto Ongpin, Vicente Paterno, Ricardo C. Puno, Conrado Estrella and Juan Ponce
Enrile graced the roster of Marcos’ Cabinet. Again, the composition of his Cabinet was perhaps a record
breaker in our political history. It was the rarest─ if not the best─ combination of the brightest minds to have
assembled in one setting purposively held in bondage by a common vision─ excellence in public service.

Perhaps, it can be said now that what Marcos demanded from the people mirrored the same standards that he
had demanded of himself. Not because of ambition, I personally believe that President Marcos’ relentless
passion for excellence was not only a direct result of his pride in being a Filipino but his iron determination to
put the Philippines on the map. He did actually accomplish his lifelong quest, warts and all. Even on the
international plane, President Marcos made giant strides in bringing the country, and the whole of Southeast
Asia to the forefront of global consciousness. Filipinos, both here and abroad, during the Marcos years did
exude confidence to stand proudly before the world. His eloquence, the speeches he delivered in neighbouring
countries and world organizations had left enduring impressions in the international scene. At the risk of being
redundant, I say it again, that in terms of local and international stature, no Philippine President of the post war
era had tried harder, and with greater success, than Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Conclusion

Much can be learned from the thoughts of Marcos, not the tyrant or the despot that children of this generation
came to know about. But in my case, I would like to know Marcos as the true Filipino visionary, ideologist and
nation-builder who tried to bend the contours of history all for the sake of nationalism. Once or twice, I had the
occasion to cross swords with friends, proud disciples of the yellow school of history, who castigated me for
‘defending’ Ferdinand Marcos despite glaring human rights abuses under his regime. Some even went to the
extent of blaming Marcos as the mastermind behind that infamous Plaza Miranda bombing in 1971, a prelude
to the declaration of martial law a year after. I refused to take the challenge head on because their observation
is clearly beside the point. True. Marcos might have miscalculated his actions, overstepped his boundaries as
he dared to revolutionize the government but those ‘aberrations’ are not the core of the ‘Marcosian’ ideology if
taken to its logical conclusion. Judging a philosophy by its abuse, a caveat uttered by a great seminal thinker,
will definitely drag us away from the objective realm of an honest and intellectual examination of the Marcosian
ideology.

In time, history will be kinder to Marcos because leaders of today, and of the succeeding generations to come,
will be able to rise taller as they step on the foundational work laid down by him. I don’t think Ferdinand E.
Marcos had the inkling whatsoever that all his dreams for the nation will come true in his lifetime. He is but
mortal and his flesh will not endure for all eternity─ but his philosophy will.

SOURCES FROM CLARO ENRIQUE D. BONOAN MINI-LIBRARY:

Marcos, Ferdinand E., The Democratic Revolution in the Philippines. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice Hall
International, 1974.

Marcos, Ferdinand E., An Ideology for the Filipinos. Manila. 1980.

Cruz, Isagani A. and Datu, Cynthia C., Res Gestae: A Brief History of the Supreme Court., Rex Publishing.
2000.
Marcos, `Ferdinand E., Tadhana: The History of the Filipino People. Vol.1. Part II., 1979.

Malaya, Eduardo J., and Malaya, Jonathan E., So Help Us God: The Presidents of the Philippines and Their
Inaugural Addresses. Manila. Anvil Publishing, 2005.

Tumbokon, Jose T., Marcos: The Builder., Manila. Persuaders Inc., 1981.

Bernas, Joaquin G., The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines: A Commentary., Rex Publishing.
1996 edition.