ferdinand marcos as a leader essay

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Ferdinand Marcos as a Leader: Impact of Martial Law on Philippines

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Published: Aug 31, 2023

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Introduction, ferdinand marcos: golden era illusion, dark legacy of ferdinand marcos as a leader.

• Amnesty International. (1982). 'The Philippines: Torture in the Marcos Era.' Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA35/001/1982/en.
• World Bank Data. (1980s). Retrieved from World Bank database.
• National Historical Commission of the Philippines. (n.d.). 'The Martial Law Years.' Retrieved from https://www.nhcp.gov.ph/resources/online-resources/martial-law-years/.

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The People Power Revolution, Philippines 1986

• Mark John Sanchez

For a moment, everything seemed possible. From February 22 to 25, 1986, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos gathered on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue to protest President Ferdinand Marcos and his claim that he had won re-election over Corazon Aquino.

Soon, Marcos and his family were forced to abdicate power and leave the Philippines . Many were optimistic that the Philippines, finally rid of the dictator, would adopt policies to address the economic and social inequalities that had only increased under Marcos’s twenty-year rule. This People Power Revolution surprised and inspired anti-authoritarian activists around the world.

Ferdinand Marcos had been president of the Philippines since 1965. After declaring martial law in 1972, he suspended and eventually rewrote the Philippine constitution, curtailed civil liberties, and concentrated power in the executive branch and among his closest allies. Marcos had tens of thousands of opponents arrested and thousands tortured, killed, or disappeared.

The Sunday Express headline from September 24, 1972 shortly after Marcos declared martial law.

For two decades, Filipinos lived under authoritarian rule while Marcos and his allies enriched themselves through ownership of Philippine press and industry outlets and through the siphoning of funds from U.S., World Bank , and International Monetary Fund loans.

The People Power movement had been building since well before Marcos’s declaration of martial law. Committed activists who organized underground in the Philippines, in exile, and in the diaspora worked tirelessly to broadcast news of the Marcoses’ human rights violations and ill-gotten wealth globally.

For many years, however, much of the world—the U.S. government in particular—was perfectly willing to overlook the corruption of the Marcoses in exchange for an anti-Communist bulwark in Southeast Asia.

By the mid-1980s, however, foreign policy calculations had shifted against Marcos in crucial ways.

Senator Benigno Aquino in an interview with Pat Robertson before his assassination in 1983.

The August 1983 assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. was seen by many around the world as a particularly brazen act of political retribution. Furthermore, rumors about Marcos’s health (he was suffering from lupus and regularly undergoing dialysis at the time) led many of his allies in the Philippines and beyond to begin speculating about the dictator’s successors.

When Ferdinand Marcos boldly called for a “snap election” in a 1985 interview with David Brinkley, Marcos’s opponents weighed whether this was an opportunity or a trap. Many times before, Marcos had tipped the electoral balances in his favor, through a rewriting of laws, outright violence, and other forms of manipulation and intimidation.

Much of the Philippine Left decided to boycott the election, fearful that participation would only serve to further legitimize the regime. The remainder of the opposition movement eventually coalesced around the widow of Senator Aquino, Corazon “Cory” Aquino.

Just as many feared, Marcos claimed victory in the election. This time, though, Filipinos refused to accept this lie. On February 22, citizens took to the streets on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA). Cardinal Jaime Sin, the Archbishop of Manila, called upon Filipinos to support the peaceful protests.

Cardinal Jaime Sin pictured in 1988.

Marcos ordered the military to repress the mass action. However, a faction of military officers refused to clamp down on the protestors and chose instead to defect. This group included soldiers who had grown frustrated with corruption in the military and the Marcos regime and had earlier formed the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM).

When Marcos ordered the military to arrest detractors, Cardinal Sin called upon the people to shield them. The Catholic radio organ, Radio Veritas , became a major control center for protest communications during the People Power movement.

Close Marcos ally President Ronald Reagan eventually sent word through Senator Paul Laxalt that it was time to “cut, and cut cleanly,” signaling that Marcos no longer had the backing of his most powerful ally. On the evening of February 25, the U.S. government facilitated Marcos’s escape to Hawaii, where he would remain until his death in 1989.

Later that same night, protestors stormed Malacañang Palace, exposing the opulent wealth that the Marcos family had amassed during their time in power. As Corazon Aquino was sworn in as President, Filipinos were hailed around the world as an example of peaceful revolution and the restoration of democracy.

Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as the 11th president of the Philippines on February 25, 1986 at Sampaguita Hall.

The road ahead would not be so simple, however. In the years since 1986, the legacy of the People Power Revolution has remained uncertain. Aquino faced several coup attempts during her time in power, many of them led by the very same RAM that had helped facilitate her rise to power.

The agricultural and economic reform that many Filipinos hoped for in a post-Marcos world did not come. Peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines dissolved and leftists continued to be maligned, attacked, and hunted.

Many Filipinos expressed nostalgia for the very dictator that had been overthrown. And there have been ongoing projects of historical revisionism in the Philippines that sanitized the Marcos years.

The Marcos family have returned to the Philippines and to positions of political prominence: Ferdinand Marcos’s widow Imelda became a congresswoman and his daughter Imee a governor. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the dictator’s son and evident successor to his father’s legacy, ran for vice president in 2016 and finished a close second. Bongbong refused to concede and, to this day, continues his legal challenges to the election.

President Rodrigo Duterte talks to Imee Marcos at a wedding ceremony in Manila, September, 2016.

The most concerning outcome of the 2016 Philippine elections, however, was the election of Rodrigo Duterte as president. A close ally of the Marcoses, Duterte has drawn upon Marcos’s script for authoritarian power. He has arrested prominent opponents, curtailed civil liberties, and claimed that discipline is what is most needed for the Philippine nation.

Most infamously, Duterte launched a campaign that has resulted in tens of thousands of extrajudicial murders committed by police and military forces.

The People Power Movement offers several lessons. We can see the courageous solidarities and coalitions that might mobilize against authoritarian restrictions on civil liberties. But we must also look at the importance of finding ways to build anew and address the grievances and injustices that have made such authoritarians so popular in the first place.

The EDSA protests in 1986 were a remarkable moment in Philippine history, a moment filled with the sense of unlimited hope and possibility. And for those with democratic dreams, it provides both a lesson and a warning for the battles ahead.

Published daily by the Lowy Institute

What a Marcos Jr presidency in the Philippines means for geopolitics

A policy-free campaign in Asia’s oldest democracy results in a guessing game in the region for where next.

• Philippines

The offspring of strongmen were the clear winners in last Monday’s Philippine national election. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr is set to follow in the footsteps of his father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and expected to be sworn in as President in July. Next to him will be the new Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of departing president Rodrigo Duterte, whose championing of a police killing spree of alleged drug addicts has attracted international notoriety.

The Marcos-Duterte ticket was undoubtedly central to the outcome. Running separately in the presidential race, as originally looked likely, would have left open a window of possibility of victory for outgoing VP and liberal presidential candidate Leni Robredo. As it was, Robredo’s pink campaign placed a distant second, winning fewer than half of the Marcos vote.

The Marcos family’s return to Malacañang Palace is shocking, but not surprising. For three decades the family have been taking advantage of the information vacuums about the martial law period left by uncritical history textbooks. A carefully crafted and actively disseminated folklore about a golden era under Marcos Sr filled the void. The experience amounts to a cautionary tale about the careful and strategic forgetting of episodes of grand atrocities and abuses of power, stewarded by those responsible.

Questions now turn, domestically and abroad, to the kind of leader Marcos Jr will be. Truth be told, it’s a guessing game, as the Marcos campaign avoided all debates and refused to be interviewed by credible journalists, preferring instead to disseminate campaign messages as memes via TikTok influencers and vloggers on YouTube.

While it is difficult to predict the new administration’s foreign policy positions in any detail, due in large part to the campaign’s deliberate obfuscation, there is no doubt the Philippines represents a significant piece in the puzzle of shifting geopolitical allegiances in the region.

What we do know is that the election was one of the most consequential in half a century. The Philippines might be Asia’s oldest democracy, but the continued appetite for strongman rule demonstrates a deep ambivalence about liberal democracy’s promises of political equality and rule of law and the likely continuation of the public’s acceptance of the autocratic practices that characterised Duterte’s presidency.

The new leadership is also consequential to how growing ties to China will be balanced with the country’s historical alliance with the United States. While it is difficult to predict the new administration’s foreign policy positions in any detail, due in large part to the campaign’s deliberate obfuscation, there is no doubt the Philippines represents a significant piece in the puzzle of shifting geopolitical allegiances in the region.

Duterte steered the country towards China, stirring anti-US sentiment at home to invoke nationalist fervour. He threatened to rescind bilateral military agreements with Washington, despite US support for the country’s territorial claims against China in the West Philippine Sea. Duterte’s term exemplified the challenges faced by the United States in promoting democracy and human rights in Southeast Asia, and strengthening alliances to counter China’s rise, against the undertow of anti-Western sentiment.

It is easy to imagine Marcos Jr, as his late father also did, continuing to court closer ties with Chinese leadership. He has done so before. In 2007, as provincial governor, he was pivotal in the establishment of a Chinese consulate in the northern Philippines . In 2016 he praised Duterte for “moving in the right direction” by cultivating closer ties with Moscow and Beijing.

However, Marcos faces a growing negative sentiment towards China at home. Polls reported Filipinos to be overwhelmingly dissatisfied by the Duterte administration’s inaction in the face of increasing Chinese aggression in the West Philippine/South China Sea, while other surveys paint a mixed picture of local attitudes toward China. Unwilling to engage with the arbitration ruling of the Hague, Duterte had promised to take the matters of territorial dispute directly to China’s President Xi Jinping ( via jet ski ), but as with most of Duterte’s pledges related to Chinese partnership, including new big infrastructure projects, nothing tangible has emerged.

Another constraint on a Marcos administration’s further pivot towards Beijing is the fact that, despite his strong rhetorical stance against the United States (and a demonstrable personal resentment towards the West), Duterte was ultimately persuaded by the country’s security establishment to soften its stance . The Pentagon and the Philippine military have maintained robust cooperation during the last six years.

With its strategic location in the South China Sea, US military cooperation with the Philippines underpins its alliance system in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, a democracy promotion agenda in the region is under immense strain. Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar have all strengthened ties with China . If the Philippines slides further into electoral autocracy, only Indonesia is left flying the flag for democratic government in Southeast Asia.

The sins of the father will have no bearing on how Beijing will engage with the new Philippine government. How Washington engages with another Marcos administration is yet to be seen. But here, history is instructive. As I detailed in my recent book , Chasing Freedom: The Philippines Long Journey to Democratic Ambivalence , the archipelago has long found itself at the centre of US foreign policy misalignment, between its democracy agenda and its geopolitical goals. In 1979, when US-backed dictators elsewhere in the world began to topple, Washington’s support for Marcos Sr’s martial law regime remained strong, much to the dismay of the opposition. The sentiment was candidly captured at the time by the US Secretary of State, and most likely still reigns. For as long as the US has military bases in the Philippines, Cyrus Vance said , the human rights and political freedoms of Filipinos will have to “yield to overriding US security considerations”.

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A Marcos returns to power in the Philippines

Subscribe to the center for asia policy studies bulletin, mely caballero-anthony mely caballero-anthony head - the centre for non-traditional security studies, s. rajaratnam school of international studies, nanyang technological university.

May 13, 2022

And so the unimaginable happened — the result of the Philippines’ long-awaited 2022 presidential elections is that Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., will becoming the country’s 17th president, succeeding the controversial Rodrigo Duterte in June. Marcos Jr.’s victory in one of the Philippines’ most consequential elections since the 1986 People Power Revolution brought back democracy to the country after 21 years of Marcos Sr.’s rule — 14 of them under martial law — has alarmed people who lived through one of the darkest periods in Philippine history.

After more than three decades, however, the historical memories which could have prevented the return of another Marcos to power were lost to an assiduous and systematic revisionist campaign successfully orchestrated by the Marcos team, using different social media platforms . The efforts, reported to be a decade in the making, led to an unprecedented landslide victory for Marcos with over his nemesis, Vice President Leni Robredo, and the other candidates.

As Ferdinand Marcos Jr. prepares to assume office, what is in store for the Philippines?

Political dynasties vs. People Power 2.0

The 2022 presidential elections forced the Filipinos to confront their checkered historical understanding of the Marcos martial law regime in early 1980s, known for its human rights abuses and corruption which bankrupted the country and made the Philippines the “sick man of Asia.” The elections also saw a replay of contests of political dynasties. On one side is Marcos Jr. and Vice President-elect Sara Duterte (daughter of the current president), and on the other is the reformist group led by Robredo. During the 2016 elections, Robredo faced off with Marcos Jr. in the contest for the vice presidency and won. Robredo represented the Liberal Party of then-President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino Jr., son of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Sr., the archrival of Marcos Sr.

Aquino Sr. was assassinated in 1983 upon his return to the Philippines from exile in the United States. His death triggered massive demonstrations across the country, led by his widow, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, and culminated in the People Power Revolution that led to the ouster of Marcos Sr. in 1986, forcing the dictator and his family to live in exile in Hawaii. Corazon Aquino was elected president the same year. Marcos Sr. died in 1989 and his family was allowed to return to the Philippines in 1992.

Since 1992, the Marcos family had made no secret of its plans to reclaim political power and influence and reestablish the so-called Marcos “legacy.” Marcos Jr., was elected governor in the family’s bailiwick northern province of Ilocos Sur in 1992, became a senator in 2010, and ran for the vice presidency in 2016 only to lose to Robredo. Despite Marcos Jr.’s defeat, his vice-presidential bid was said to be a dry run for a presidential campaign in 2022. Having prepared the groundwork much earlier, Marcos clearly had the advantage over Robredo and other opposition candidates. His strategic partnership with Sara Duterte as a running mate (though the positions are elected separately) allowed him to significantly strengthen his support base. In contrast, Robredo’s presidential bid came late and was under resourced, relying more on grassroot support and volunteerism. And while the Robredo campaign may have captured the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of her supporters who came in droves to her “pink” rallies organized by mainly young people, drawing comparisons to the “yellow” People Power rallies in 1986, it was dwarfed by the immensity and the reach of the Marcos-Duterte resources. With a head start, massive resources, and the strategic partnership with the Dutertes backed by a strong political machinery, Marcos Jr.’s victory was not unexpected. With a decisive mandate, Marcos Jr. is now set to reverse his family’s fortunes. He has promised to bring back the “good old days” of the old Marcos regime, which according to his revisionist campaign was prosperous and stable.

How will Marcos govern

Apart from the dark pall cast over Marcos Jr.’s presidency by his family’s history of repression, cronyism, and kleptocracy, much of the concern expressed not only by the opposition but also particularly by certain quarters of the Philippines’ policy community , have much to do with the lack of clarity of his platform. With the candidate having snubbed all presidential debates, many are left guessing how the Marcos administration is going to address the many challenges facing the Philippines. There are also fears that with Sara Duterte as vice president, Marcos Jr. will protect his predecessor from investigations and possible prosecution for human rights violations and extrajudicial killings carried out during his “war on drugs” policy .

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To be sure, Marcos Jr.’s simple message of “unity” conveyed throughout his campaign has failed to outline any concrete policies on how, for example, he is going to steer the country into economic recovery after the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other pressing issues — like the growing food crisis , compounded by the ongoing war in Ukraine; water and resource scarcity; growing energy demands; and the urgent need to marshal adequate resources to address the multifaceted impact of climate change on people’s safety from more frequent and severe natural disasters — also need clear policy direction.

Philippine foreign policy

It is not only the lack of information on Marcos Jr.’s plans for governing the country that is worrying. Foreign policy was basically absent from his campaign. This lacuna is particularly concerning given the critical issues affecting the country’s security and its relations with the United States, China, and its Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) neighbors.

One of these issues is the future of the West Philippines Sea, the official designation by the government of the Philippines of the parts of the South China Sea that are included in the country’s exclusive economic zone, and China’s refusal to respect the arbitral ruling that gives Philippine sovereignty over this disputed territory. The outgoing Duterte administration has taken a non-confrontational approach toward China and to a certain extent adopted an almost fatalistic attitude on the West Philippine Sea issue, choosing instead to lean more on Beijing’s promise of more trade and investments to the country. Marcos Jr. is reported to want to continue with Duterte’s friendly policy toward China, and has declared that the country should “engage with China” to the fullest , while careful at the same time not to get drawn into U.S.-China competition.

This brings to question how Marcos Jr. would deal with the U.S. and the future of the U.S.-Philippine alliance. During the old Marcos regime, the military partnership remained resilient despite vocal U.S. opposition to martial law, even after the assassination of Aquino Sr. Although the strategic environment has significantly changed since the 1980s, one would expect more continuity than change in U.S.-Philippines relations. And unlike President Duterte who had borne a personal grudge against the U.S. and was vocal about it , Marcos Jr. has no known baggage. Given Marcos Jr.’s “cosmopolitan” background , he would perhaps be less insular and more inclined to pursue closer relations with the U.S. while adopting a balanced position in dealing with the U.S.-China rivalry. Moreover, most Filipinos have a more favorable view of the U.S. than China . Given the kind of transnational economic and security challenges facing the Philippines, one would also want to see whether and how the Marcos administration will support multilateralism both regionally and globally.

While the Philippines’ ASEAN neighbors may be too preoccupied with their own problems, particularly as they emerge from the brunt of the pandemic, it would be interesting to see how they will engage with the new Philippine administration. That Marcos Jr. was democratically elected regardless of his political baggage is a welcome development for ASEAN, particularly when stacked against the ongoing crisis in Myanmar. With pronouncements of returning the Philippines to its “past glory” as a leading country in Southeast Asia, Marcos Jr. may want to be seen as being more present than Duterte in ASEAN meetings and add his country’s voice to regional and global issues. Many of Marcos Jr.’s foreign policy decisions will also depend on who he brings into his cabinet, particularly in the foreign policy and defense portfolios.

As Marcos Jr. takes over the presidency in June 2022, many questions remain. Will he provide a better life for Filipinos and unite a polarized country? Can he allay growing fears about the return of dictatorship, and guarantee that human rights will be protected and democracy will prevail? Will he ensure that the country’s sovereignty and national interests will not be compromised vis-à-vis worries of Chinese aggression? Can he restore confidence and assure the country’s external partners, particularly the U.S. and Japan, of the Philippines’ commitment to a rules-based international order? With many more questions to come, time will tell if Marcos Jr. will rise to the occasion.

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Timely Daring: The United States and Ferdinand Marcos

Cite this chapter.

• Theodore Friend  

What lessons can be drawn from American policy toward the Philippines in the crisis of 1983–1986? Maybe none, and that is unfortunate because at the climax of the crisis the United States government acted with timely daring to strengthen democratic forces in the Philippines, extract the autocratic Marcos from the situation, and minimize bloodshed. But such a success can not readily be repeated elsewhere. For policy daring to be both timely and effective, one must know well the culture, history and leaders with whom one is dealing. One must also possess suasive force backed by naked power, if necessary. Certainly among Asian nations, and perhaps among all nations, the Philippines has been unique in its susceptibility to American ideals and its proximity to American power.

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My view on the period 1983–1986 follows in part from conversations with several major actors, including the late Benigno Aquino, Jr., Jaime Cardinal Sin, General Fidel V. Ramos, Salvador P. Laurel, and American Ambassadors Michael Armacost and Stephen Bosworth. I have also benefitted from the criticism of John Bresnan and Stanley Kamow. Before publication of this article which is the basis of the present essay, “Marcos and the Philippines,” Orbis , Fall 1988, pp. 569–686, I offered President Marcos full opportunity for reply or correction. Only after publication did he provide a riposte: Ferdinand E. Marcos, “A Defense of My Tenure,” ( Orbis , Winter 1989, pp. 91–96). My own rejoinder, “What Marcos Doesn’t Say,” follows in the same issue (pp. 97–105). The exchange between us represents, to my knowledge, the only published engagement with a critic that President Marcos undertook during his exile. He died in Honolulu on September 28, 1989.

Google Scholar  

William C. Hamilton, “United States Policy in the Period Leading to the Declaration of Martial Law and Its Immediate Aftermath,” in Carl Landé, ed., Rebuilding A Nation: Philippine Challenges and American Policy (Washington D.C.: The Washington Institute Press, 1987), pp. 505–515.

See Raymond Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (New York: Times Books, 1987), pp. 98–99, 112–120, quotation p. 112. Richard Nixon has declared (in a letter to The New York Times , June 7, 1987) that Bonner is wrong. Stanley Kamow’s account of the declaration of martial law is best researched and reasoned: In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 356–360.

Primitivo Mijares, The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinandandlmelda Marcos (San Francisco, California: Union Square Publications, 1976). This book is now rare.

As evidence, however, that Mijares’s fate did not deter all other journalists, see Marcelo B. Soriano, ed., The Quiet Revolt of the Philippine Press (Manila: WE Forum, 1981).

Joaquin G. Bernas, S. J., “Constitutionalism after 1972,” in Ramon C. Reyes, ed., Budhi Papers , vol. 6 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila, 1985), pp. 190–203.

For discussions of the assassination and cover-up, see Sandra Burton, Impossible Dream: The Marcoses, the Aquinos, and the Unfinished Revolution (New York: Warner Books, 1989), chapters 5, 6, 9, 10, 14.

This account is condensed from Bryan Johnson, The Four Days of Courage (New York: The Free Press, 1987).

Richard Kessler, “Marcos and the Americans,” Foreign Policy , Summer 1986, p. 57.

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Friend, T. (1991). Timely Daring: The United States and Ferdinand Marcos. In: Pipes, D., Garfinkle, A. (eds) Friendly Tyrants. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21676-5_10

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Guest Essay

The Man Who Could Ruin the Philippines Forever

By Miguel Syjuco

Mr. Syjuco is a novelist from the Philippines.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as Bongbong, was convicted of tax evasion. He also lied about his academic degree, according to Oxford University . Victims of his father’s brutal regime — which lasted for 20 years until his ouster in 1986 — accuse the younger Mr. Marcos of whitewashing history.

Yet Mr. Marcos, the unapologetic heir of the family that plundered billions of dollars from us Filipinos, is — absent a major upset — poised to win the presidential election on May 9 .

This is possible only because our democracy has long been ailing. Disinformation is rewriting our past and clouding our present. Filipinos are disillusioned with our system of government. And the impunity of family dynasties in politics has gutted its two essential functions: to allow us to fairly choose our leaders and to hold them accountable for how they fail us. The return to power of the Marcoses may deal it the final blow.

It’s heartbreaking to remember what could have been. Thirty-six years ago, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s “ constitutional authoritarianism ,” as he described his government, came to an end when his family fled the country after millions of Filipinos united to support Corazon Aquino, the widow of an assassinated senator whose popularity had threatened the regime’s control. We flooded the streets and won back our freedom and, in 1987, wrote a new Constitution to guide our country. Democracy seemed to have repudiated autocracy.

But over the years, our leaders’ broken promises accumulated and led to our disenchantment. Administration after administration was blighted by dysfunction, corruption and injustice. Year after year, our elected representatives refused to pass laws prohibiting political dynasties, despite the fact that our Constitution had tasked them with doing so.

The new millennium eventually brought better governance and much-vaunted economic momentum, yet too many Filipinos remained marginalized. In 2011, for example, a mere 40 individuals reaped more than three-fourths of our country’s wealth increase. And a good part of our country’s economic growth came from the millions of Filipinos who were forced abroad to seek, and remit , their livelihood. All while crime, drugs and inequality persisted across our homeland.

Throughout those three decades of our hard-won democracy, its most vital function — letting the people choose who will represent us — was perverted by entrenched politicians. Call it the dictatorship of dynasties . As of 2019, some 234 families, in a country of nearly 110 million people, held 67 percent of the legislature, 80 percent of governorships and 53 percent of mayoralties.

Our democracy’s other main function — allowing us to hold our leaders accountable — has also been hijacked. When Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency in 2016 by promising to sacrifice democratic freedoms for bullet-fast results against crime and corruption, that came to include the dismantling of checks and balances that could prevent or punish his abuse of power.

Institutions that could hold him to account for the thousands of deaths from his drug war were stacked with lackeys. The coequal branches of the legislature and judiciary were brought under the presidency’s heel. Laws were weaponized to control speech and dissent. The news media was both kicked and muzzled as the public’s watchdog, and orchestrated falsehoods and historical revisionism now inundate the 92 million Filipinos on social media, who get our news mostly online.

In other ways, too, Mr. Duterte is responsible for normalizing authoritarianism, which may be yet another thing Mr. Marcos effortlessly inherits. One of Mr. Duterte’s first actions as president in 2016 was to transfer the elder Mr. Marcos’s preserved corpse from the family’s refrigerated mausoleum for burial in our national cemetery of heroes . And Mr. Duterte’s daughter, Sara, is now campaigning with the younger Mr. Marcos and is the leading candidate for vice president, who is elected separately from the president.

Despite the incumbent’s apparent disdain for Mr. Marcos — Mr. Duterte has implied that he is a weak leader and a drug user — their shared affinities are undeniable as the younger pair promises to continue Mr. Duterte’s grim legacy.

Their popularity indicates that our past fight for democratic freedom has been largely forgotten, with 56 percent of the Filipino voting population now between ages 18 and 41. A 2017 poll found that half of us Filipinos favor authoritarian governance, and an alarming number of us even approve of military rule. Yet the same poll showed that 82 percent of us say we believe in representative democracy. The contradiction seems to overlook what our history teaches about our giving leaders unchecked power.

No wonder we elected Mr. Duterte, who has bragged about being a killer . No wonder we’re poised to re-elect a family of thieves. And no wonder Mr. Marcos thrives as a mythmaker — varnishing himself and his family as harmless underdogs, victims of theft by an untouchable elite who stole his vice presidency, his parents’ tenure over our country’s so-called golden age and his family’s right to control their own narrative against what he calls “propaganda” and “fake news.”

Yet even as Mr. Marcos casts himself as the heir to his family’s dynasty, he refuses to acknowledge its many proven crimes, much less be held complicit for his role in defending the dictatorship. He has also pledged to protect Mr. Duterte from the International Criminal Court and has formed a political cartel with the Dutertes and two past presidents, who were both jailed for corruption. Worst of all, he has relentlessly shrugged off the facts of our nation’s history, telling everyone to “move on” from its long struggle against the authoritarianism he and his family led.

But as the present hurtles forward on May 9, the truths of our past matter more than ever. From that history, a martyred writer and our national hero, José Rizal, reminds us: “There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.” Yet so many of us have been shackled before by so many of those we freely elected to entrust our future to — from Adolf Hitler to Vladimir Putin to another brazen liar also named Ferdinand Marcos.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .

Miguel Syjuco is the author of the novel “Ilustrado” and a professor at New York University Abu Dhabi. @ MiguelSyjuco

Home / Essay Samples / Government / President / Why Ferdinand Marcos is a Great Leader of The Philippines

Why Ferdinand Marcos is a Great Leader of The Philippines

• Category: World , Government
• Topic: Philippines , President

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