Ferdinand Marcos Lets Make This Nation Great Again
THE Due southTRONGMAN
Ferdinand MarcosT HE Paradigm THAT LINGERS IS FROM 1986: AN AGING FERDINAND MARCOS, his face up swollen from kidney medication, proclaiming his presidency from the balustrade of Malaca�ang Palace, his family abreast him. Below are his cheering supporters. Non far away are the millions who accept joined the pop revolt that will afterward this day end his twenty-year grip on power. Those contradictions alive on. To well-nigh of the world, he was a despot who justly got his comeuppance. But to his many loyalists in his habitation region of Ilocos and elsewhere, Marcos was the all-time leader the Philippines ever had.
"The only negative thing most him is the alleged amassing of wealth, merely that notwithstanding has to exist proven," says lawyer Estelito Mendoza, who served Marcos equally solicitor-general. "He was the epitome of evil," counters Francisco Nemenzo, a political scientist imprisoned after Marcos alleged martial police force in 1972. Marcos prime government minister Cesar Virata is more judicious: "His presidency earlier 1982 should be given high marks. Afterward that, everything fell apart."
Indeed, for a considerable period the bright lawyer energized the Philippines. "This nation tin be great again," he declared in his sonorous baritone when he became, at 48, his country's youngest president in 1965. "He gave us a sense of nationhood and national identity," says bookish Alex Magno, who is inappreciably a Marcos fan. "The Filipino became more of import than the Ilocano or Cebuano."
Marcos drove the bespeak home with a bold strange policy. He established diplomatic relations with Beijing and Moscow long earlier the U.Southward. and others in ASEAN did. He refused to extend the Laurel-Langley Agreement that granted U.Due south. citizens many of the same rights in the Philippines as Filipinos themselves. And it was Marcos who cut the U.S. charter on military bases in his state from 99 to 25 years and began collecting rent.
In his first 4 years as president, he built more roads and installed more than ability lines than all his predecessors combined. He brought his country self-sufficiency in rice. He formulated a national ideology that stressed pride in the country'due south heritage. His greatest achievement, he told Asiaweek while in exile in Hawaii in 1987, was "the conversion of a mendicant, indolent, uninspired and resigned people and country into a vibrant society."
But the man who promised greatness likewise brought misery. Re-elected in 1969, Marcos was due to stride downward in 1973 because the Constitution allowed merely ii terms. He got effectually that past imposing martial rule in 1972, locking up newspapers and politicians alike. Yet he also bankrupt up more 200 private armies and produced annual economic growth of 6%-vii% in the late 1970s.
Marcos did call elections -- but carefully controlled them. He was a master political manipulator, always 2 steps ahead of his challengers. He was confident plenty to allow the existence of a vocal opposition, who constantly criticized him in foreign media that circulated freely. But with ability so full-bodied, the rot inevitably set in. His onetime defence force secretary, Juan Ponce Enrile, holds him accountable for corruption, imprudent strange borrowing, doling out business franchises to cronies and relatives -- and the 1983 bump-off of archrival Benigno Aquino. President Fidel Ramos, a distant Marcos cousin who served as his acting armed forces chief, says he misused the military to perpetuate his rule.
Eventually, information technology was the Americans who proved his undoing. In 1985 a California newspaper published a detailed story outlining his alleged "subconscious wealth." That undercut support for him and his free-spending wife Imelda at a disquisitional fourth dimension. Washington began to fear for its military bases as the state of affairs in Manila grew darker. Marcos later said that his greatest fault was to curve to intense U.Southward. pressure and phone call the "snap" presidential election of early 1986. Amongst the many ironies is that he might just have won it if his people had left it alone. Results were cervix and neck, simply the returns from Ilocos were so tainted that the count was never finished.
Airlifted into exile, Marcos died a biting man in 1989. "He led one of the virtually brilliant lives recorded in the annals of this nation or whatsoever nation," says Sen. Blas Ople, once a Marcos labor minister. "That it concluded in exile and disgrace volition brand information technology one of the most poignant stories told." Adds former House speaker Ramon Mitra, a staunch Marcos opponent: "He was a remarkable man whose deeds and misdeeds volition mark our lives." History's judgment of Ferdinand Marcos may non be kind, simply information technology is likely to be equally complex equally he was.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/95/20greats/marcos.html
0 Response to "Ferdinand Marcos Lets Make This Nation Great Again"
Post a Comment