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Philippines Marcos and the Road to Martial Law, 1965-72
In the presidential election of 1965, the Nacionalista
candidate, Ferdinand E. Marcos (1917-90), triumphed over
Macapagal. Marcos dominated the political scene for the next two
decades, first as an elected president in 1965 and 1969, and then
as a virtual dictator after his 1972 proclamation of martial law.
He was born in llocos Norte Province at the northwestern tip of
Luzon, a traditionally poor and clannish region. He was a
brilliant law student, who successfully argued before the
Philippine Supreme Court in the late 1930s for a reversal of a
murder conviction against him (he had been convicted of shooting
a political rival of his father). During World War II, Marcos
served in the Battle of Bataan and then claimed to have led a
guerrilla unit, the Maharlikas. Like many other aspects of his
life, Marcos's war record, and the large number of United States
and Philippine military medals that he claimed (at one time
including the Congressional Medal of Honor), came under
embarrassing scrutiny during the last years of his presidency.
His stories of wartime gallantry, which were inflated by the
media into a personality cult during his years in power,
enthralled not only Filipino voters but also American presidents
and members of Congress.
In 1949 Marcos gained a seat in the Philippine House of
Representatives; he became a senator in 1959. His 1954 marriage
to former beauty queen Imelda Romualdez provided him with a
photogenic partner and skilled campaigner. She also had family
connections with the powerful Romualdez political dynasty of
Leyte in the Visayas.
During his first term as president, Marcos initiated
ambitious public works projects--roads, bridges, schools, health
centers, irrigation facilities, and urban beautification
projects--that improved the quality of life and also provided
generous pork barrel benefits for his friends. Massive spending
on public works was, politically, a cost-free policy not only
because the pork barrel won him loyal allies but also because
both local elites and ordinary people viewed a new civic center
or bridge as a benefit. By contrast, a land reform program--part
of Marcos's platform as it had been that of Macapagal and his
predecessors--would alienate the politically all-powerful
landowner elite and thus was never forcefully implemented.
Marcos lobbied rigorously for economic and military aid from
the United States but resisted pressure from President Lyndon
Johnson to become significantly involved in the Second Indochina
War. Marcos's contribution to the war was limited to a 2,000-
member Philippine Civic Action Group sent to the Republic of
Vietnam (South Vietnam) between 1966 and 1969. The Philippines
became one of the founding members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), established in 1967. Disputes
with fellow ASEAN member Malaysia over Sabah in northeast Borneo,
however, continued, and it was discovered, after an army mutiny
and murder of Muslim troops in 1968 (the "Corregidor Incident"),
that the Philippine army was training a special unit to
infiltrate Sabah
(see Relations with Asian Neighbors
, ch. 4).
Although Marcos was elected to a second term as president in
1969--the first president of the independent Philippines to gain
a second term--the atmosphere of optimism that characterized his
first years in power was largely dissipated. Economic growth
slowed. Ordinary Filipinos, especially in urban areas, noted a
deteriorating quality of life reflected in spiraling crime rates
and random violence. Communist insurgency, particularly the
activity of the Huks--had degenerated into gangsterism during the
late 1950s, but the Communist Party of the Philippines-Marxist
Leninist, usually referred to as the CPP, was "reestablished" in
1968 along Maoist lines in Tarlac Province north of Manila,
leaving only a small remnant of the orgiinal PKP. The CPP's
military arm, the New People's Army (NPA), soon spread from
Tarlac to other parts of the archipelago. On Mindanao and in the
Sulu Archipelago, violence between Muslims and Christians, the
latter often recent government-sponsored immigrants from the
north, was on the rise. In 1969 the Moro National Liberation
Front (MNLF) was organized on Malaysian soil. The MNLF conducted
an insurrection supported by Malaysia and certain Islamic states
in the Middle East, including Libya.
The carefully crafted "Camelot" atmosphere of Marcos's first
inauguration, in which he cast himself in the role of John F.
Kennedy with Imelda as his Jackie, gave way in 1970 to general
dissatisfaction with what had been one of the most dishonest
elections in Philippine history and fears that Marcos might
engineer change in the 1935 constitution to maintain himself in
power. On January 30, 1970, the "Battle of Mendiola," named after
a street in front of the Malacañang Palace, the presidential
mansion, pitted student demonstrators, who tried to storm the
palace, against riot police and resulted in many injuries.
Random bombings, officially attributed to communists but
probably set by government agents provocateurs, occurred in
Manila and other large cities. Most of these only destroyed
property, but grenade explosions in the Plaza Miranda in Manila
during an opposition Liberal Party rally on August 21, 1971,
killed 9 people and wounded 100 (8 of the wounded were Liberal
Party candidates for the Senate). Although it has never been
conclusively shown who was responsible for the bombing, Marcos
blamed leftists and suspended habeas corpus--a prelude to martial
law. But evidence subsequently pointed, again, to government
involvement.
Government and opposition political leaders agreed that the
country's constitution, American-authored during the colonial
period, should be replaced by a new document to serve as the
basis for thorough-going reform of the political system. In 1967
a bill was passed providing for a constitutional convention, and
three years later, delegates to the convention were elected. It
first met in June 1971.
The 1935 constitution limited the president to two terms.
Opposition delegates, fearing that a proposed parliamentary
system would allow Marcos to maintain himself in power
indefinitely, prevailed on the convention to adopt a provision in
September 1971 banning Marcos and members of his family from
holding the position of head of state or government under
whatever arrangement was finally established. But Marcos
succeeded, through the use of bribes and intimidation, in having
the ban nullified the following summer. Even if Marcos had been
able to contest a third presidential term in 1973, however, both
the 1971 mid-term elections and subsequent public opinion polls
indicated that he or a designated successor--Minister of National
Defense Juan Ponce Enrile or the increasingly ambitious Imelda
Marcos--would likely be defeated by his arch-rival, Senator
Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino.
Data as of June 1991
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