Ferdinand Marcos

This article deals with President Ferdinand Marcos . For the son of the same name, see Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Ferdinand Marcos

Ferdinand Edralin Marcos (born September 11, 1917 in Sarrat , Ilocos Norte Province ; † September 28, 1989 in Honolulu , Hawaii ) was the tenth President of the Philippines from December 30, 1965 to February 25, 1986 and ruled the country as a dictator from 1972 . In 1986 Marcos had to leave the country after a popular uprising - also known as the EDSA revolution - and fled to the USA .

Life

Early life and rise to power

Marcos was born in Sarrat in the province of Ilocos Norte . His father, Mariano Marcos, was a lawyer who also worked in politics, his mother, Josefa Edralin, was a teacher.

Marcos studied law at the University of the Philippines . He passed his first test by successfully organizing his own defense - he was accused of murdering a political rival of his father. In 1939 he completed his law degree and was ranked number one nationwide in the central state examination.

During the Second World War he served at times as an officer in the Philippine Army and took part in the Bataan Death March . Marcos' claim that he commanded a resistance group called Maharlika during the Japanese occupation has since been refuted by files from the American army .

After the end of the war he became a consultant to Manuel Roxas , the first president of the now independent Philippines. In 1949 he was elected to the Philippine House of Commons . In 1954 he married the beauty queen Imelda Romualdez , who would later help him a lot in his presidential campaign. In 1956 Marcos came to the Philippine Senate , of which he became President in 1962.

In addition, he was from 1961 to April 21, 1964 chairman of the traditional Liberal Party .

Democratic presidency

Ferdinand Marcos (4th from left) at the SEATO summit in 1966

After the Liberal Party did not want to nominate Marcos as a presidential candidate, he changed the party and joined the Nacionalista Party , as its candidate he went into the presidential campaign. In the elections on November 9, 1965, he won by a clear margin over incumbent Diosdado Macapagal . His first term of office was marked by increased economic growth and high tax revenues.

In terms of foreign policy, Marcos proved to be a pillar of US policy on East Asia. Among other things, he sent around 2000 Filipino soldiers to US support in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1969 .

In 1969 he was elected as the first President of the Philippines for a second term. During this period economic growth slowed and crime increased. In 1969 the Maoist resistance movement Nuevo Ejército del Pueblo was founded . The Moros National Liberation Front (MNLF) was also formed in the late 1960s . The separatist Muslim group founded by Nur Misuari was supported by Malaysia and Libya , among others .

From January to March 1970 there was the riots of left-wing students called First Quarter Storm , whose ideas were similar to those of the 1968 movement or the Paris May . In the following years there were repeated bomb explosions in the capital Manila , which the government blamed on the communists. Subsequent investigations revealed that the attacks were caused by government provocateurs. Among other things, nine people were killed and 100 seriously injured in a bomb attack on Plaza Miranda in Manila at a rally of the opposition Liberal Party on August 21, 1971 , eight of whom were Senate candidates from the Liberal Party.

From June 1971 a constituent assembly met to replace the American-based constitution from 1935. The opposition feared that Marcos would abolish the previously anchored limitation of the presidency to a maximum of two electoral terms.

Martial law

An attack on Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile served as an opportunity to impose martial law on September 21, 1972. Marcos had around 30,000 people (including members of the opposition, students, journalists and trade unionists) detained in military camps and confiscated private weapons. The Congress was closed and the country was ruled by presidential decrees. Opposition newspapers and broadcasters were closed. Defense Minister Enrile, who joined opposition Corazon Aquino in 1986 , later admitted that the attack was bogus. In 1973 a new parliamentary constitution was passed.

During the time of martial law, large parts of the old elite were disempowered. First of all, the economy was doing better, firstly because it was quieter, and secondly because Marcos had competent economic experts. However, powerful monopolies were created that were largely in the hands of Marcos' friends, relatives, and his wife. The beneficiaries diverted millions of dollars abroad and deposited them with Swiss banks or invested in New York real estate.

The army became the dictator's personal instrument of power through the targeted promotion of loyal officers such as Fabian Ver , the former driver of Marcos, or officers from the Marcos region of Ilocos . He also secured himself with gifts to his closest confidants - the Rolex 12 group and the like. a. - their loyalty. The army was massively increased from 58,000 soldiers in 1971 to 142,000 soldiers in 1983.

End of martial law and the death of Benigno Aquino

After martial law was repealed in 1981, Marcos found himself exposed to growing opposition, including the old elite, sections of the armed forces that were dissatisfied with nepotism and the traffic jam, the Catholic Church and business people who were appalled by the increasingly critical economic situation.

On August 21, 1983, the prominent Marcos critic Benigno Aquino, Jr. (1932-1983), who had emigrated to the USA in 1980 for a medical procedure, was shot dead on his return at Manila airport. Although the killing was officially carried out by a lone perpetrator, a commission of inquiry appointed by Marcos came to the conclusion in October 1984 that it had been a military conspiracy. However, this was ignored by the government, which acquitted Fabian Ver and other military personnel in late 1985.

Millions of people took part in the funeral procession for Benigno Aquino. His widow Corazon Aquino now became a symbol of the opposition and was also very popular with the people. This was particularly important because so far the members of the opposition have largely come from the urban elite and middle class.

Deposition and exile

Imelda Marcos

Due to the growing opposition, Marcos called early elections in late 1985 , which took place on February 7, 1986. The main rival candidate was Corazon Aquino. The elections were held under observation by the US and global media. Although election observers and the media discovered massive election fraud , the National Assembly loyal to Marcos declared him the winner on February 15.

On February 22nd, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Vice Army Chief General Fidel Ramos Marcos called for his resignation. They holed up together with their troops in the opposing military bases Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo , which are located on the great Manila ring road (EDSA). Cardinal Jaime Lachica Sin called on the people on the church radio station Radio Veritas to support the insurgents. In the days that followed, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated on EDSA Avenue and blocked access to the military bases. Among them were many priests and nuns who were demonstrating in an evening procession in front of the presidential palace, where she is a replica of the patron saint of the Philippines and the armed forces , the Our Lady of the Rosary of the Philippines: La Naval of Manila , contributed to , prayed for a peaceful stance on the part of the military and called for Marcos to step down. The Marcos-loyal units did not dare to break the non-violent resistance of the EDSA revolution - some units even switched to the insurgents. Ferdinand Marcos was deprived of his two most important instruments of power.

Corazon Aquino was sworn in on February 25, 1986 as the first female president of the Philippines. On the same day, Marcos was sworn in as president in a solitary ceremony in the presidential palace, where he was still holed up. However, on the advice of US Senator Paul Laxalt and with the help of the US army stationed in the Philippines, he and his family fled to Guam that same evening . Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos traveled on to Hawaii a little later .

Death and funeral

Ferdinand Marcos died in Hawaii on September 28, 1989. He was not buried until November 2016, the preserved body was laid out in a chilled glass coffin by his wife Imelda. Since the return of Imelda Marcos to the Philippines in 1993, this glass coffin was in Batac in the province of Ilocos Norte open to the public in a mausoleum on the Marcos family's land. Imelda Marcos continued to insist that her husband be buried at the National Heroes Cemetery in Manila, where all Filipino presidents are traditionally buried. However, this was long refused because Marcos had put a corrupt and bloody dictatorship over the Philippines. According to a decision of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which found no violations of the law in Marcos' burial in the Heroes' Cemetery, Marcos' embalmed body was buried there with military honors on November 18, 2016 in the presence of his widow, his children and grandchildren.

children

Marcos' only son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. , also known as Bong Bong , was governor of Ilocos Norte between 1998 and 2007 and has been a member of Congress since then, while his eldest daughter Imee Marcos was also a member of the Philippine Congress.

literature

• Charles C. McDougald: The Marcos File: Was He a Philippine Hero or Corrupt Tyrant? , San Francisco Publishers 1987, ISBN 978-0-940777-05-7 .
• Sterling Seagrave : The Marcos Dynasty , Cambridge et al. a. Harper & Row 1988, ISBN 978-0-06-015815-6 ( online excerpt ).
• Ferdinand E. Marcos , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/1989 of October 30, 1989, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Ferdinand Marcos  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Ferdinand Marcos  - Quotes

• Entry on Ferdinand Edralin Marcos on the website of the Philippine Senate (English)
• Literature by and about Ferdinand Marcos in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BBC News: Homage to Imelda's shoes of February 16, 2001, accessed on March 22, 2010 (English).
2. ^ Presidents of the Liberal Party ( Memento April 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Inquirer.net: First Quarter Storm remembered ( Memento of the original from February 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , February 4, 2010, accessed April 2, 2010. 
4. ↑ New York Times: New Book on Marcos Says US Knew of His '72 Martial-Law Plans , April 19, 1987, accessed April 2, 2010.
5. ↑ Philippine Daily Inquirer: Before 'Rolex 12', there was 'Omega 5' ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 21, 2007, accessed April 2, 2010. 
6. ↑ Description of the EDSA revolution ( Memento of the original from February 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Description of the influence of the La Naval de Manila ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ^ Philippine dictator Marcos given hero's burial (English).