Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and President Joe Biden are in the throes of a four-day junket in DC to patch up a decade of strained relations and enhance military cooperation in the Pacific. Marcos has been the Filipino leader for less than a year and is simultaneously and without shame wooing China and the United States, much in the manner of his infamous father, who governed the archipelago of islands for 20 years. So whatever will these two leaders have to talk about for four solid days?
Common Goals
Marcos is new to the role of president, having campaigned on the abstruse message of -- wait for it -- unity. Much like Biden, Marcos inherited a nation experiencing great wealth and opportunity. The Philippine economy will be one of the better-performing nations in 2023. According to S&P Global, it “grew at a pace of 7.6% in 2022, the fastest rate of economic growth recorded by the Philippines since 1976,” and “the outlook for 2023 is for continued firm economic expansion.” Will the son harken back to the days of unrestful glory under his father or run the country democratically?
Marcos Sr. ascended to the office in 1965 by claiming to be his country’s most decorated war hero in World War II. As it turns out, those assertions were unverifiable and labeled “fraudulent” by his detractors. For most of his first term, he built a strong economy. But that soon changed as he pushed through a massive infrastructure development funded by foreign debt. By the beginning of his second term, as the citizenry began questioning his leadership abilities, he instituted martial law in 1972 through a corrupt and illegal change in the law that shut down the free press, while abundant human rights abuses kept people under control.
Sr. drove his economy into the ground in a few years, was accused of assassinating opposition leader Benigno Aquino, and sparked an uproar in the streets. The people were incensed by Aquino’s murder, and when tensions became unbearable, father Ferdinand decided it was time to make a move that would shape the outcome of his re-election in 1986 by instituting a snap election that moved the vote a year ahead. Marcos won but not without controversy. According to the International Observer Delegation, the “election was not conducted in a free and fair manner.”
President Ronald Regan, through Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-NV), advised Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly.” The Marcos family conceded, boarded US military helicopters, and lived in exile for decades in Hawaii before returning to the Philippines in the 1990s.
The Marcos Mystique
The lavish lifestyle of the Marcos family is legendary. Allegedly, Marcos Sr., his wife Imelda, and political friends skimmed an estimated $10-$30 billion from the country while citizens were starving and living in the streets.
Movers enlisted to pack up the belongings of the disgraced president and his relatives to ship to the Aloha State found more than 3,000 pairs of shoes in Imelda’s closet: some cheap and local, others designer labels. She bought Givenchy and Chanel, adorned herself in diamonds, and once said, “Never dress down for the poor. They won’t respect you for it. They want their First Lady to look like a million dollars.” After the family’s exile, Imelda sardonically told reporters that the unruly masses were “looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes.”
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Matriarch Marcos also tended to drama when explaining why acting the way she did was necessary: “It is terribly important to do certain things. After all, the mass follows class. Class never follows mass.” Is it any wonder that the term “Imeldific” was coined?
Diplomacy Between Pals
Controversy still surrounds the powerful Marcos family. The National Union of People’s Lawyers has blasted Marcos Jr. for attempting to rewrite history and his father’s violent human rights abuses throughout his regime. The organization, which heralds several members once victimized by Marcos Sr., has hinted that the election that put Jr. into power might be as questionable as that of 1986. They released a statement a year ago that read in part: “Fact can really be stranger than fiction. Or, to be more precise, fiction can be repackaged into fact. We shall carry on the fight even more intensely and await our redemption from this resurrected nightmare.”
But when "democracy" becomes the tagline of each presidential campaign, column inches are sure to follow.
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