#NeverAgain
The False Ideology: Never Again to Martial Law
On the evening of September 23, 1972, the late president Ferdinand Marcos appeared on national television to officially declare the Philippines under the rule of Martial Law. It was an unforeseen dark history that stains the memories of many Filipinos. This ruled many civilians in an attempt to protect from the Communist threat as justification.
Marcos signed Proclamation №.1081 following the supposed ambush of the then-Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile as to call for public security. Although sources say that this was staged and Martial Law had long been planned prior to the incident. Marcos defended it was for public security and states that there is a need to get rid of the source of rebellion and promote a rapid trend for national development.
‘Golden Age’
The notion ‘golden age’ of the Philippine Economy under the Marcos regime is a big fat lie. A few people still stand by the fact that the Philippines was once the ‘richest country in Asia’ during the Marcos regime and even after the latter years. The severe retrogression of Filipinos’ income per person took two decades of lost development during Martial Law and the country’s stocks of debt grew exponentially that made a full blast of crisis by 1983.
The country’s external debt grew from $8.2 billion in 1977 to $24.4 billion in 1982. As a result, interest payments as a share of national income increased eightfold in the same period. The successes on development were built on debt-driven growth and infrastructure was built with no source of payment left involved.
The unemployment rate surged right after and says so much about the deterioration of welfare for Filipino households during the Martial Law. The problem with the labor force would later give rise to the widespread growth of the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) phenomenon after 1986.
Silenced Media
The competing voices of the media made Marcos well-aware of its role played in the society which triggered him to take advantage of his power by shutting down media outlets and appointing his allies to relay fabricated information. In General Order №62, Marcos gave the military the authority to arrest and detain anyone going against the government or deemed subversive that made press freedom severely restricted during Martial Law. It was a dark chapter for the journalists, protesters, and student activists who were arrested and tortured at the heights of human abuse and dictatorship. By doing so, Marcos had the final say in whatever passed for the truth.
Ditto Sarmiento was the Editor of the Philippine Collegian, the student paper of the University of the Philippines, and printed a collective editorial entitled “Uphold Press Freedom” that circulated the campus when Imelda Marcos was a special guest of the 65th anniversary of the UP College of Law. Sarmiento was then arrested weeks later for “rumormongering and printing circulation of leaflets and propaganda materials” under the harsh conditions of a cell for seven months.
Press Freedom was severely restricted during Martial Law and Marcos knew the power of the media and had to seize control of it. Arrests and torture were made towards journalists, protesters, and student activists who seek to end the dictatorship.
Ill-gotten Wealth
On September 11, 2019, a Facebook user posted a long list of historical claims that were supposedly not taught in schools. The user claims that “The wealth and jewelry of the Marcos family came from their hard work, and were not taken from public funds” which resulted the post to go viral over social media.
Based on the 2003 data computed by the Philippine Supreme Court, the Marcos family had only earned a ruling of $304,372 of wealth during the two-decades of administration. The Marcoses have failed to show proof of other legitimate sources of their wealth, thus High Court used this to declare the family’s Swiss deposits as ill-gotten. The total $658 million was questioned by the Supreme Court that also led the former First Lady Imelda Marcos convicted of two accounts of graft in 1992 for anomalous contracts, and another 7 counts of graft in 2018 for illegally creating private organizations in Switzerland.
The Presidential Commission on Good Government was then able to recover more than P170-billion worth of ill-gotten wealth from the Marcoses.
Civil and political rights were abolished, Congress was dissolved, a one-man rule was imposed, human rights were blatantly violated, and people still choose to believe that Marcos is a Hero. It’s an insult to the whole country to praise a dictator for all the lies that his family and his allies have done. Rewriting and erasing what’s on the textbooks is useless when the majority of the civilians that experienced the abuse remains as one of the darkest memory our history could have.
