THIRTY-NINE years ago this month, Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law. The day was September 21, a Friday in 1972 but it was two days later, September 23, when Marcos announced it.
I was a victim of martial law. I lost my cozy Manila Times job as a senior business reporter and construction editor. The Times then had 70 percent of the market, more than the circulation of the three other dailies combined.
By October 1972, I had joined the Mainichi Shimbun, Japan’s oldest newspaper, as Manila stringer, to help locate the Japanese straggler Hiroo Onoda, after his colleague was killed by army soldiers on Lubang island the previous month, September. Onoda surrendered in March 1974.
I also joined The Times Journal in 1973 and became its business editor in 1976, the youngest business editor then. In 1978, l joined Asiaweek and became its senior correspondent for 25 years. My Asiaweek work gave me my TOYM in international journalism.
The martial law rule regime had a healthy respect for foreign correspondents. On the other hand, the military censors didn’t understand business journalism. So I thrived—both as a foreign correspondent and as a business journalist.
Looking back, I see martial law was about leadership and taking charge.
In the early 1970s, Philippine society was riven by discord and class war. Only 100 families, the oligarchs, ruled the economy and its politics. Social inequity was revolting. Communist guerillas were active in the countryside. Muslim separatists were arming themselves, using petrodollars. The communists were about to overtake South Vietnam and from there, it was feared, leap-frog to the rest of Southeast Asia.
Marcos was the subject of assassination plots. Marcos deployed the powers of the presidency against his enemies and the enemies of the state.
Martial law enabled Marcos to impose strongman rule for nine years, from September 1972 to 1981 when he was supposed to have lifted it, and to rule by decree for 14 years, from September 1972 to February 1986 when he was ousted by a four-day Church-backed People Power revolt that eventually inspired some 30 other countries ruled by despots to return to democracy.
Was Marcos’s martial law bad? The answer is yes and no.
Yes, because martial law destroyed the Philippines’ carefully cultivated image as the show window of democracy of Asia.
But that democracy had been made fragile by a greedy economic and political elite and by a widening gap between the rich and the poor which a nascent but growing communist guerilla movement, inspired and funded by Red China, and by a stirrings of self-determination by an even more impoverished Muslim population, tried to exploit to their advantage.
Yes, because martial law led to many abuses and human rights violations never before experienced since the four years of the Japanese occupation.
Martial rule also freed the military from the barracks to intervene in purely military affairs and share power with the civilian government.
After martial law, no president was ever safe from coup attempts and military destabilization. Marcos had one coup—a very successful one, leading to his ouster. Corazon Aquino had nine, all unsuccessful with two of them bloody, and Joseph Estrada had one, also very successful.
No, because martial law was in the main, good for the country, especially during its first five years.
It instilled discipline among the people, much unlike today’s matuwid na daan concept of President Benigno Aquino III. People went home early and spent more time with their families. The drug lords were checked by the televised killing by musketry of a notorious drug syndicate leader.
More than 200,000 firearms were seized from private hands. Private armies were disbanded, almost overnight. With the ensuing peace and stability came the economic payback.
In 1973, the Philippines produced a rice surplus. In 1974, the country scored its highest ever, by then, annual GDP growth rate of 9.8 percent.
With the commodities boom, exports ballooned. Martial law conditions enabled the country to cope with the debilitating effect of the first major global energy crisis, the quadrupling of the price of oil in 1974.
In 1975, Marcos granted naturalization to ethnic Chinese businessmen by decree.
“It allowed droves of ethnic Chinese to become citizens in a few months’ time, simply upon the dictator’s signature, empowering them to own lands and enter industries constitutionally banned to foreigners, thereby releasing their entrepreneurial energies,” wrote Inquirer columnist Rigoberto Tiglao in his Sept. 22 column, “Demystifying Marcos’s martial law regime”.
Marcos united the elite economic and political class. He united an archipelago of 7,017 islands.
Tiglao wrote: “For the Castillian-descended elites, Marcos reminded them of a dictator they admired: Generalissimo Francisco Franco who defeated the Spanish communists.”
“The Sorianos’ and Ayalas’ conglomerates grew by leaps and bounds during martial law. It was our economic and ideological elite that embraced and supported the martial law regime, and made up its main pillar—more than the military,” concluded Tiglao, a self-confessed communist guerilla during the martial law years.
The lesson to draw then from Marcos’s nine years of martial law and 14 years of rule by decree: Leadership and taking charge.
Interviewed by this writer shortly after he was sent into exile in Hawaii, Marcos said one of his legacies was “saving the Philippines from communism”, which was then leapfrogging from Vietnam into Indochina and into the rest of Southeast Asia.
Of course, in 1975, Vietnam fell into the hands of the communists. The Vietnamese didn’t export communism. Instead, they buckled down to work and adopted the capitalist system.
Today, Vietnam grows better economically, attracts more foreign investments and draws more tourists than the Philippines. Vietnam’s secret? Leadership and focus.
One other lesson of martial law: An incompetent president does as much damage as a corrupt but capable president. Yet, Filipinos look kinder on incompetent presidents than corrupt and competent ones.
Perhaps, in the next ten years, Marcos’s presidency will be seen in a better light and show him for what he really was—a very good but flawed president.
I was a victim of martial law. I lost my cozy Manila Times job as a senior business reporter and construction editor. The Times then had 70 percent of the market, more than the circulation of the three other dailies combined.
By October 1972, I had joined the Mainichi Shimbun, Japan’s oldest newspaper, as Manila stringer, to help locate the Japanese straggler Hiroo Onoda, after his colleague was killed by army soldiers on Lubang island the previous month, September. Onoda surrendered in March 1974.
I also joined The Times Journal in 1973 and became its business editor in 1976, the youngest business editor then. In 1978, l joined Asiaweek and became its senior correspondent for 25 years. My Asiaweek work gave me my TOYM in international journalism.
The martial law rule regime had a healthy respect for foreign correspondents. On the other hand, the military censors didn’t understand business journalism. So I thrived—both as a foreign correspondent and as a business journalist.
Looking back, I see martial law was about leadership and taking charge.
In the early 1970s, Philippine society was riven by discord and class war. Only 100 families, the oligarchs, ruled the economy and its politics. Social inequity was revolting. Communist guerillas were active in the countryside. Muslim separatists were arming themselves, using petrodollars. The communists were about to overtake South Vietnam and from there, it was feared, leap-frog to the rest of Southeast Asia.
Marcos was the subject of assassination plots. Marcos deployed the powers of the presidency against his enemies and the enemies of the state.
Martial law enabled Marcos to impose strongman rule for nine years, from September 1972 to 1981 when he was supposed to have lifted it, and to rule by decree for 14 years, from September 1972 to February 1986 when he was ousted by a four-day Church-backed People Power revolt that eventually inspired some 30 other countries ruled by despots to return to democracy.
Was Marcos’s martial law bad? The answer is yes and no.
Yes, because martial law destroyed the Philippines’ carefully cultivated image as the show window of democracy of Asia.
But that democracy had been made fragile by a greedy economic and political elite and by a widening gap between the rich and the poor which a nascent but growing communist guerilla movement, inspired and funded by Red China, and by a stirrings of self-determination by an even more impoverished Muslim population, tried to exploit to their advantage.
Yes, because martial law led to many abuses and human rights violations never before experienced since the four years of the Japanese occupation.
Martial rule also freed the military from the barracks to intervene in purely military affairs and share power with the civilian government.
After martial law, no president was ever safe from coup attempts and military destabilization. Marcos had one coup—a very successful one, leading to his ouster. Corazon Aquino had nine, all unsuccessful with two of them bloody, and Joseph Estrada had one, also very successful.
No, because martial law was in the main, good for the country, especially during its first five years.
It instilled discipline among the people, much unlike today’s matuwid na daan concept of President Benigno Aquino III. People went home early and spent more time with their families. The drug lords were checked by the televised killing by musketry of a notorious drug syndicate leader.
More than 200,000 firearms were seized from private hands. Private armies were disbanded, almost overnight. With the ensuing peace and stability came the economic payback.
In 1973, the Philippines produced a rice surplus. In 1974, the country scored its highest ever, by then, annual GDP growth rate of 9.8 percent.
With the commodities boom, exports ballooned. Martial law conditions enabled the country to cope with the debilitating effect of the first major global energy crisis, the quadrupling of the price of oil in 1974.
In 1975, Marcos granted naturalization to ethnic Chinese businessmen by decree.
“It allowed droves of ethnic Chinese to become citizens in a few months’ time, simply upon the dictator’s signature, empowering them to own lands and enter industries constitutionally banned to foreigners, thereby releasing their entrepreneurial energies,” wrote Inquirer columnist Rigoberto Tiglao in his Sept. 22 column, “Demystifying Marcos’s martial law regime”.
Marcos united the elite economic and political class. He united an archipelago of 7,017 islands.
Tiglao wrote: “For the Castillian-descended elites, Marcos reminded them of a dictator they admired: Generalissimo Francisco Franco who defeated the Spanish communists.”
“The Sorianos’ and Ayalas’ conglomerates grew by leaps and bounds during martial law. It was our economic and ideological elite that embraced and supported the martial law regime, and made up its main pillar—more than the military,” concluded Tiglao, a self-confessed communist guerilla during the martial law years.
The lesson to draw then from Marcos’s nine years of martial law and 14 years of rule by decree: Leadership and taking charge.
Interviewed by this writer shortly after he was sent into exile in Hawaii, Marcos said one of his legacies was “saving the Philippines from communism”, which was then leapfrogging from Vietnam into Indochina and into the rest of Southeast Asia.
Of course, in 1975, Vietnam fell into the hands of the communists. The Vietnamese didn’t export communism. Instead, they buckled down to work and adopted the capitalist system.
Today, Vietnam grows better economically, attracts more foreign investments and draws more tourists than the Philippines. Vietnam’s secret? Leadership and focus.
One other lesson of martial law: An incompetent president does as much damage as a corrupt but capable president. Yet, Filipinos look kinder on incompetent presidents than corrupt and competent ones.
Perhaps, in the next ten years, Marcos’s presidency will be seen in a better light and show him for what he really was—a very good but flawed president.
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