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.
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.
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Proclamation 1081 and Martial Law
On September 21, 1972, Marcos issued Proclamation
1081, declaring martial law over the entire country. Under the president's command, the
military arrested opposition figures, including Benigno Aquino, journalists, student and
labor activists, and criminal elements. A total of about 30,000 detainees were kept at
military compounds run by the army and the Philippine Constabulary. Weapons were
confiscated, and "private armies" connected with prominent politicians and other
figures were broken up. Newspapers were shut down, and the mass media were brought under
tight control. With the stroke of a pen, Marcos closed the Philippine Congress and assumed
its legislative responsibilities. During the 1972-81 martial law period, Marcos, invested
with dictatorial powers, issued hundreds of presidential decrees, many of which were never
published.
Like much else connected with Marcos, the
declaration of martial law had a theatrical, smoke-and-mirrors quality. The incident that
precipitated Proclamation 1081 was an attempt, allegedly by communists, to assassinate
Minister of National Defense Enrile. As Enrile himself admitted after Marcos's downfall in
1986, his unoccupied car had been riddled by machinegun bullets fired by his own men on
the night that Proclamation 1081 was signed.
Most Filipinos--or at least those well positioned
within the economic and social elites--initially supported the imposition of martial law.
The rising tide of violence and lawlessness was apparent to everyone. Although still
modest in comparison with the Huk insurgency of the early 1950s, the New People's Army was
expanding, and the Muslim secessionist movement continued in the south with foreign
support. Well-worn themes of communist conspiracy--Marcos claimed that a network of
"front organizations" was operating "among our peasants, laborers,
professionals, intellectuals, students, and mass media personnel"--found a ready
audience in the United States, which did not protest the demise of Philippine democracy.
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The New Society
Marcos claimed that martial law was the prelude to
creating a "New Society" based on new social and political values. He argued
that certain aspects of personal behavior, attributed to a colonial mentality, were
obstacles to effective modernization. These included the primacy of personal connections,
as reflected in the ethic of utang na loob, and the importance of maintaining
in-group harmony and coherence, even at the cost to the national community. A new spirit
of self-sacrifice for the national welfare was necessary if the country were to equal the
accomplishments of its Asian neighbors, such as Taiwan and the Republic of Korea (South
Korea). Despite Marcos's often perceptive criticisms of the old society, Marcos, his wife,
and a small circle of close associates, the crony group, now felt free to practice
corruption on an awe-inspiring scale.
Political, economic, and social policies were
designed to neutralize Marcos's rivals within the elite. The old political system, with
its parties, rough-and-tumble election campaigns, and a press so uninhibited in its
vituperative and libelous nature that it was called "the freest in the world,"
had been boss-ridden and dominated by the elite since early American colonial days, if not
before. The elite, however, composed of local political dynasties, had never been a
homogeneous group. Its feuds and tensions, fueled as often by assaults on amor proprio
(self-esteem) as by disagreement on ideology or issues, made for a pluralistic system.
Marcos's self-proclaimed "revolution from the
top" deprived significant portions of the old elite of power and patronage. For
example, the powerful Lopez family, who had fallen out of Marcos's favor (Fernando Lopez
had served as Marcos's first vice president), was stripped of most of its political and
economic assets. Although always influential, during the martial law years, Imelda Marcos
built her own power base, with her husband's support. Concurrently the governor of Metro
Manila and minister of human settlements (a post created for her), she exercised
significant powers.
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During the first years of martial law, the economy
benefited from increased stability, and business confidence was bolstered by Marcos's
appointment of talented technocrats to economic planning posts. Despite the 1973 oil price
rise shock, the growth of the gross national product was respectable, and the oil-pushed
inflation rate, reaching 40 percent in 1974, was trimmed back to 10 percent the following
year. Between 1973 and the early 1980s, dependence on imported oil was reduced by domestic
finds and successful energy substitution measures, including one of the world's most
ambitious geothermal energy programs. Claiming that "if land reform fails, there is
no New Society," Marcos launched highly publicized new initiatives that resulted in
the formal transfer of land to some 184,000 farming families by late 1975. The law was
filled with loopholes, however, and had little impact on local landowning elites or
landless peasants, who remained desperately poor.
The largest, most productive, and technically most
advanced manufacturing enterprises were gradually brought under the control of Marcos's
cronies. For example, the huge business conglomerate owned by the Lopez family, which
included major newspapers, a broadcast network, and the country's largest electric power
company, was broken up and distributed to Marcos loyalists including Imelda Marcos's
brother, Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez, and another loyal crony, Roberto Benedicto.
Huge monopolies and semimonopolies were established in manufacturing, construction, and
financial services. When these giants proved unprofitable, the government subsidized them
with allocations amounting to hundreds of millions of pesos. Philippine Airlines, the
nation's international and domestic air carrier, was nationalized and turned into what one
author has called a "virtual private commuter line" for Imelda Marcos and her
friends on shopping excursions to New York and Europe.
Probably the most negative impact of crony
capitalism, however, was felt in the traditional cash-crop sector, which employed millions
of ordinary Filipinos in the rural areas. (The coconut industry alone brought income to an
estimated 15 million to 18 million people.) Under Benedicto and Eduardo Cojuangco,
distribution and marketing monopolies for sugar and coconuts were established. Farmers on
the local level were obliged to sell only to the monopolies and received less than world
prices for their crops; they also were the first to suffer when world commodity prices
dropped. Millions of dollars in profits from these monopolies were diverted overseas into
Swiss bank accounts, real estate deals, and purchases of art, jewelry, and antiques. On
the island of Negros in the Visayas, the region developed by Nicholas Loney for the sugar
industry in the nineteenth century, sugar barons continued to live lives of luxury, but
the farming community suffered from degrees of malnutrition rare in other parts of
Southeast Asia.
Ferdinand Marcos was responsible for making the
previously nonpolitical, professional Armed Forces of the Philippines, which since
American colonial times had been modeled on the United States military, a major actor in
the political process. This subversion occurred done in two ways. First, Marcos appointed
officers from the Ilocos region, his home province, to its highest ranks. Regional
background and loyalty to Marcos rather than talent or a distinguished service record were
the major factors in promotion. Fabian Ver, for example, had been a childhood friend of
Marcos and later his chauffeur, rose to become chief of staff of the armed forces and head
of the internal security network. Secondly, both officers and the rank and file became
beneficiaries of generous budget allocations. Officers and enlisted personnel received
generous salary increases. Armed forces personnel increased from about 58,000 in 1971 to
142,000 in 1983. Top-ranking military officers, including Ver, played an important
policy-making role. On the local level, commanders had opportunities to exploit the
economy and establish personal patronage networks, as Marcos and the military
establishment evolved a symbiotic relationship under martial law.
A military whose commanders, with some exceptions,
were rewarded for loyalty rather than competence proved both brutal and ineffective in
dealing with the rapidly growing communist insurgency and Muslim separatist movement.
Treatment of civilians in rural areas was often harsh, causing rural people, as a measure
of self-protection rather than ideological commitment, to cooperate with the insurgents.
The communist insurgency, after some reverses in the 1970s, grew quickly in the early
1980s, particularly in some of the poorest regions of the country. The Muslim separatist
movement reached a violent peak in the mid1970s and then declined greatly, because of
divisions in the leadership of the movement and reduced external support brought about by
the diplomatic activity of the Marcos government.
Relations with the United States remained most
important for the Philippines in the 1970s, although the special relationship between the
former and its ex-colony was greatly modified as trade, investment, and defense ties were
redefined. The Laurel-Langley Agreement defining preferential United States tariffs for
Philippine exports and parity privileges for United States investors expired on July 4,
1974, and trade relations were governed thereafter by the international General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). During the martial law period, foreign investment terms were
substantially liberalized, despite official rhetoric about foreign
"exploitation" of the economy. A policy promoting "nontraditional"
exports such as textiles, footwear, electronic components, and fresh and processed foods
was initiated with some success. Japan increasingly challenged the United States as a
major foreign participant in the Philippine economy.
The status of United States military bases was
redefined when a major amendment to the Military Bases Agreement of 1947 was signed on
January 6, 1979, reaffirming Philippine sovereignty over the bases and reducing their
total area. At the same time, the United States administration promised to make its
"best effort" to obtain congressional appropriations for military and economic
aid amounting to US$400 million between 1979 to 1983. The amendment called for future
reviews of the bases agreement every fifth year. Although the administration of President
Jimmy Carter emphasized promoting human rights worldwide, only limited pressure was
exerted on Marcos to improve the behavior of the military in rural areas and to end the
death-squad murder of opponents. (Pressure from the United States, however, did play a
role in gaining the release of Benigno Aquino in May 1980, and he was allowed to go to the
United States for medical treatment after spending almost eight years in prison, including
long stretches of time in solitary confinement.)
On January 17, 1981, Marcos issued Proclamation
2045, formally ending martial law. Some controls were loosened, but the ensuing New
Republic proved to be a superficially liberalized version of the crony-dominated New
Society. Predictably, Marcos won an overwhelming victory in the June 1981 presidential
election, boycotted by the main opposition groups, in which his opponents were
nonentities.
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From Aquino's Assassination to People's Power
Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino was, like his
life-long rival Ferdinand Marcos, a consummate politician, Philippine-style. Born in 1932,
he interrupted his college studies to pursue a journalistic career, first in wartime Korea
and then in Vietnam, Malaya, and other parts of Southeast Asia. Like Marcos, a skilled
manager of his own public image, he bolstered his popularity by claiming credit for
negotiating the May 1954 surrender of Huk leader Luis Taruc. The Aquino family was to
Tarlac Province in Central Luzon what the Marcos family was to Ilocos Norte and the
Romualdez family was to Leyte: a political dynasty. Aquino became the governor of Tarlac
Province in 1963, and a member of the Senate in 1967. His marriage to Corazon Cojuangco, a
member of one of the country's richest and most prominent Chinese mestizo families, was,
like Marcos's marriage to Imelda Romualdez, a great help to his political career. If
martial law had not been declared in September 1972, Aquino would probably have defeated
Marcos or a hand-picked successor in the upcoming presidential election. Instead, he was
one of the first to be jailed when martial law was imposed.
Aquino's years in jail--physical hardship, the fear
of imminent death at the hands of his jailers, and the opportunity to read and
meditate--seemed to have transformed the fast-talking political operator into a deeper and
more committed leader of the democratic opposition. Although he was found guilty of
subversion and sentenced to death by a military court in November 1977, Aquino, still in
prison, led the LABAN (Lakas Ng Bayan--Strength of the Nation) party in its campaign to
win seats in the 1978 legislative election and even debated Marcos's associate, Enrile, on
television. The vote was for seats in the legislature called the National Assembly,
initiated in 1978, which was, particularly in its first three years essentially a
rubber-stamp body designed to pass Marcos's policies into law with the appearance of
correct legal form. (The LABAN was unsuccessful, but it gained 40 percent of the vote in
Metro Manila.)
Allowed to go to the United States for medical
treatment in 1980, Benigno Aquino, accompanied by his wife, became a major leader of the
opposition in exile. In 1983 Aquino was fully aware of the dangers of returning to the
Philippines. Imelda Marcos had pointedly advised him that his return would be risky,
claiming that communists or even some of Marcos's allies would try to kill him. The
deterioration of the economic and political situation and Marcos's own worsening health,
however, persuaded Aquino that the only way his country could be spared civil war was
either by persuading the president to relinquish power voluntarily or by building a
responsible, united opposition. In his view, the worst possible outcome was a post-Marcos
regime led by Imelda and backed by the military under Ver.
Aquino was shot in the head and killed as he was
escorted off an airplane at Manila International Airport by soldiers of the Aviation
Security Command on August 21, 1983. The government's claim that he was the victim of a
lone communist gunman, Rolando Galman (who was conveniently killed by Aviation Security
Command troops after the alleged act), was unconvincing. A commission appointed by Marcos
and headed by jurist Corazon Agrava concluded in their findings announced in late October
1984, that the assassination was the result of a military conspiracy. Marcos's
credibility, both domestically and overseas, was mortally wounded when the Sandiganbayan,
a high court charged with prosecuting government officials for crimes, ignored the Agrava
findings, upheld the government's story, and acquitted Ver and twenty-four other military
officers and one civilian in December 1985.
Although ultimate responsibility for the act still
had not been clearly determined in the early 1990s, on September 28, 1990, a special court
convicted General Luther Custodio and fifteen other officers and enlisted members of the
Aviation Security Command of murdering Aquino and Galman. Most observers believed,
however, that Imelda Marcos and Fabian Ver wanted Aquino assassinated. Imelda's remarks,
both before and after the assassination, and the fact that Ver had become her close
confidant, cast suspicion on them.
For the Marcoses, Aquino became a more formidable
opponent dead than alive. His funeral drew millions of mourners in the largest
demonstration in Philippine history. Aquino became a martyr who focused popular
indignation against a corrupt regime. The inevitable outcome--Marcos's overthrow--could be
delayed but not prevented.
The People's Power movement, which bore fruit
in the ouster of Marcos on February 25, 1986, was broad-based but primarily, although not
exclusively, urban-based, indeed the movement was commonly known in Manila as the EDSA
REvolution. People's Power encompassed members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the
business elite, and a faction of the armed forces. Its millions of rural, working-class,
middle-class, and professional supporters were united not by ideology or class interests,
but by their esteem for Aquino's widow, Corazon, and their disgust with the Marcos regime.
After her husband's assassination, Corazon Aquino assumed first a symbolic and then a
substantive role as leader of the opposition. A devout Catholic and a shy and self-styled
"simple housewife," Mrs. Aquino inspired trust and devotion. Some, including top
American policy makers, regarded her as inexperienced and naive. Yet in the events leading
up to Marcos's ouster she displayed unexpected shrewdness and determination.
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Martial law had emasculated and marginalized the
opposition, led by a number of traditional politicians who attempted, with limited
success, to promote a credible, noncommunist alternative to Marcos. The most important of
these was Salvador H. "Doy" Laurel. Laurel organized a coalition of ten
political groups, the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO), to contest the
1982 National Assembly elections. Although he included Benigno Aquino as one of UNIDO's
twenty "vice presidents," Laurel and Aquino were bitter rivals.
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During the martial law and post-martial law periods,
the Catholic Church was the country's strongest and most independent nongovernmental
institution. It traditionally had been conservative and aligned with the elites. Parish
priests and nuns, however, witnessed the sufferings of the common people and often became
involved in political, and even communist, activities. One of the best-known politicized
clergy was Father Conrado Balweg, who led a New People's Army guerrilla unit in the tribal
minority regions of northern Luzon. Although Pope John Paul II had admonished the clergy
worldwide not to engage in active political struggle, the pope's commitment to human
rights and social justice encouraged the Philippine hierarchy to criticize the Marcos
regime's abuses in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Church-state relations deteriorated as
the statecontrolled media accused the church of being infiltrated by communists. Following
Aquino's assassination, Cardinal Jaime Sin, archbishop of Manila and a leader of the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, gradually shifted the hierarchy's stance
from one of "critical collaboration" to one of open opposition.
A prominent Catholic layman, José Concepcion,
played a major role in reviving the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) with
church support in 1983 in order to monitor the 1984 National Assembly elections. Both in
the 1984 balloting and the February 7, 1986, presidential election, NAMFREL played a major
role in preventing, or at least reporting, regime-- instigated irregularities. The
backbone of its organization was formed by parish priests and nuns in virtually every part
of the country.
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The
Business Elite
The Aquino assassination shattered business
confidence at a time when the economy was suffering from years of mismanagement under the
cronies and unfavorable international conditions. Business leaders, especially those
excluded from regime-nurtured monopolies, feared that a continuation of the status quo
would cause a collapse of the economy. Their apprehensions were shared by foreign
creditors and international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund. Inflation
and unemployment were soaring. The country's GNP became stagnant by 1983, and then it
contracted--by -6.8 percent in 1984, and -3.8 percent in 1985, according to the IMF. There
was a steep decline both in domestic and foreign investment. Outward capital flows reached
as high as US$2 million a day in the panic that followed Aquino's death. The Makati area
of Manila, with its banks, brokerage houses, luxury hotels, and upper-class homes, became
a center of vocal resistance to the Marcos regime.
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Left-wing groups, affiliated directly or indirectly
with the Communist Party of the Philippines, played a prominent role in anti-regime
demonstrations after August 1983. While the New People's Army was spreading in rural
areas, the communists, through the National Democratic Front, gained influence, if not
control, over some labor unions, student groups, and other urbanbased organizations.
Leftists demanding radical political change established the New Nationalist Alliance
(Bagong Alyansang Makabayan--BAYAN), in the early 1980s, but their political influence
suffered considerably from their decision to boycott the presidential election of February
1986.
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Corruption and demoralization of the armed forces
led to the emergence, in the early 1980s, of a faction of young officers, mostly graduates
of the elite Philippine Military Academy, known as the Reform the Armed Forces Movement
(RAM). RAM supported a restoration of pre-martial law "professionalism" and was
closely allied with Minister of National Defense Enrile, long a Marcos loyalist yet
increasingly unhappy with Ver's ascendancy over the armed forces.
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Given its past colonial association and continued
security and economic interests in the Philippines, the United States never was a
disinterested party in Philippine politics. On June 1, 1983, the United States and the
Philippines signed a five-year memorandum of agreement on United States bases, which
committed the United States administration to make "best efforts" to secure
US$900 million in economic and military aid for the Philippines between 1984 and 1988. The
agreement reflected both United States security concerns at a time of increased
Soviet-Western tension in the Pacific and its continued faith in the Marcos regime.
The assassination of Aquino shocked United States
diplomats in Manila, but conservative policy makers in the administration of President
Ronald Reagan remained, until almost the very end, supportive of the Marcoses, because no
viable alternative seemed available. In hindsight, United States support for the moderate
People's Power movement under Corazon Aquino, backed by church and business groups, would
seem to be self-evident common sense. Yet in the tense days and weeks leading up to
Marcos's ouster, many policy makers feared that she was not tough or canny enough to
survive a military coup d'état or a communist takeover.
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Indicative of the importance of United States
support for his regime, Marcos announced his decision to hold a "snap"
presidential election on an American television talk show, "This Week with David
Brinkley," in November 1985. He promised skeptical Americans access for observer
teams, setting February 7, 1986, a year before his six-year presidential term ran out, as
the date for the election. He believed his early reelection would solidify United States
support, silence his critics in the Philippines and the United States, and perhaps banish
the ghost of Benigno Aquino. Marcos's smoothly running, well-financed political machine
and the divided nature of the opposition promised success, but his decision proved to be a
monumental blunder.
Cardinal Sin, an astute negotiator described by one
diplomat as "one of the best politicians in the Philippines," arranged a
political alliance of convenience between Corazon Aquino and Salvador Laurel, who had
announced his own candidacy but agreed to run as Aquino's vice-presidential candidate.
Aquino had immense popular support and Laurel brought his superior organizational skills
to the campaign. Their agreement to run together was arranged just in time for the
deadline for submission of candidacies in early December. The church hierarchy gave its
moral support to the opposition ticket. Cardinal Sin, realizing that poor people would not
refuse money offered for votes and that the ethic of utang na loob would oblige
them to vote for the briber, admonished the voters that an immoral contract was not
binding and that they should vote according to their consciences.
On the day of the election, NAMFREL guarded ballot
boxes and tried to get a rapid tally of the results in order to prevent irregularities. A
team of United States observers, which included a joint congressional delegation, issued a
mild criticism of electoral abuses, but individual members expressed shock and
indignation: Senator Richard Lugar claimed that between 10 and 40 percent of the voters
had been disenfranchised by the removal of their names from registration rolls. The
results tabulated by the government's Commission on Elections (COMELEC) showed Marcos
leading, whereas NAMFREL figures showed a majority for the Aquino-Laurel ticket. On
February 9, computer operators at COMELEC observed discrepancies between their figures and
those officially announced and walked out in protest, at some risk to their lives. The
church condemned the election as fraudulent, but on February 15, the Marcos-dominated
National Assembly proclaimed him the official winner. Despite the election fraud, the
Reagan administration's support for Marcos remained strong, as did its uncertainty
concerning Corazon Aquino. Yet a consensus of policy makers in the White House, Department
of State, Pentagon, and Congress was emerging and advised the withdrawal of support from
Marcos.
On February 22, Enrile and General Fidel Ramos,
commander of the Philippine Constabulary, issued a joint statement demanding Marcos's
resignation. They established their rebel headquarters inside Camp Aguinaldo and the
adjoining Camp Crame in Metro Manila, which was guarded by several hundred troops. Marcos
ordered loyal units to suppress the uprising, but Cardinal Sin, broadcasting over the
Catholic-run Radio Veritas (which became the voice of the revolution), appealed to the
people to bring food and supplies for the rebels and to use nonviolence to block
pro-Marcos troop movements.
Hundreds of thousands responded. In the tense days
that followed, priests, nuns, ordinary citizens, and children linked arms with the rebels
and faced down, without violence, the tanks and machine guns of government troops. Many of
the government troops defected, including the crews of seven helicopter gunships, which
seemed poised to attack the massive crowd on February 24 but landed in Camp Crame to
announce their support for People's Power. Violent confrontations were prevented. The
Philippine troops did not want to wage war on their own people.
Although Marcos held an inauguration ceremony at
Malacañang Palace on February 25, it was boycotted by foreign ambassadors (with the
exception, in an apparently unwitting gaffe, of a new Soviet ambassador). It was, for the
Marcoses, the last, pathetic hurrah. Advised by a United States senator, Paul Laxalt, who
had close ties to Reagan, to "cut and cut cleanly," Marcos realized that he had
lost United States support for any kind of arrangement that could keep him in power. By
that evening, the Marcoses had quit the palace that had been their residence for two
decades and were on their way to exile in the United States. Manila's population surged
into Malacañang to view the evidence of the Marcos's extravagant life-style (including
Imelda's muchpublicized hundreds of pairs of expensive, unworn shoes). An almost bloodless
revolution brought Corazon Aquino into office as the seventh president of the Republic of
the Philippines.
Source: Library of Congress: Portals to the World <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/phtoc.html>
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