Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has actually been making headlines recently as the presidential race in the Philippines runs ever more detailed towards the 2022 elections in May. On the regional level, at the time of this writing, he keeps a commanding lead in polls and viewpoint studies despite opting out of public arguments versus other prospects. With frustrating support behind him, he is presently poised to win the elections and become the next president after Rodrigo Duterte.
To an audience versed in world history, Marcos’s name might encounter as familiar. He is possibly best known for being the boy and namesake of the extremely same totalitarian who declared martial law in the Philippines back in the 1970s. Marcos brands himself as a changemaker, and in some ways, he promises not to be like his daddy. It would admittedly be unfair to hold him totally responsible for the sins of another, even if the other individual in concern is next of kin.
However, any discussions about the different issues throughout the martial law years under the late President Ferdinand Marcos are often colored by political affiliations or differences in experiences and necessarily affect the instructions of the continuous project. Some rightfully decry the senior Marcos’s presidency as a ruthless regime plagued by human rights violations, cronyism, and financial lows, while others look back with fond however misplaced nostalgia on what they believe to have been a preferable golden age.
Supporters declaring that the martial law days were a grand time in Filipino history need to compete with the fact that financial data does not support this concept. It might be that not every region in the country was similarly impacted by the policies, leading some individuals in the varied citizenry to look upon martial law more positively. To set the record straight, however, martial law was not excellent for the Philippines, not from an economic perspective nor a humanitarian one.
A conversation paper drafted by economists from the University of the Philippines talks about these subjects more closely. Although it holds true that the Philippines tape-recorded high financial development after martial law for at least two years in the 1970s, parsing the data reveals those gains did little to prevent what followed. Poverty reached all-time heights, social discontent and cravings were widespread, the buying power of the peso fell, incomes diminished, and up until the healing in the early 2000s, it is said that as numerous as twenty years of possible development were lost under the authoritarian regime.
Economist Jan Carlo Punongbayan succinctly summarized what every Filipino must understand worrying the tragic case of the martial law date. It was not an economic golden era, life was not comfortable, and crony capitalism and corruption were prevalent. The Philippines did not rise throughout martial law, so any pledge to make it rise once again as in those days would be paradoxical and empty. Filipino earnings dragged those of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) next-door neighbors, and nationwide debt soared due to unsustainable loaning. Proof of the age’s failure in the country is both convincing and frustrating.
Naturally, one would be smart to take a look at such data and declarations with a little bit of suspicion, as aggregated figures and basic pronouncements do not constantly present an accurate view of reality. Yet setting these aside for the sake of argument, martial law in the Philippines was still a traditionally tough duration that was pricey not simply in regards to cash or financial losses, however likewise in lives: countless Filipinos who resisted or otherwise revealed discontent against the dictatorship were locked up, tortured, and killed under awful situations.
Even in the face of all this information and of these stories regarding the heinous acts that were devoted in those years, suspicious accounts still multiply that are evocative or simply propaganda. These consist of sweeping declarations about the era, such as the assertion that the Philippines was the second terrific Asian financial power, behind Japan, and the concept that German vehicles ended up being as common as taxis on the streets of Manila throughout that time. The spread of chosen sentimental memories that eventually lack financial subtlety is rather pernicious; it muddles the discourse and adds to covering the woes of the day, idealizing what was not at all suitable.
The truth of the matter is that the martial law period was no utopian time. While it might not have actually had similar or widely comparable consequences for every single Filipino, the constant fear caused by the hazard of the force utilized then, the various abuses of highly central power, and the decades-long damage to life and livelihoods left in its wake do not validate whatever supposedly favorable things happened just to the couple of or the favored.
Whether the upcoming elections lead to another Ferdinand Marcos being voted into the greatest position in the nation, it is not just the job of the boy to extricate the shadow of the father. The nation itself should leave the harmful idea that the heavy hand of an extreme rule is needed and appropriate to cultivate peace and prosperity in the Philippines. Any meaningful modification in this perception can only come through open communication that acknowledges and condemns the genuine horrors of martial law that Filipinos need to genuinely never forget.