Marcos Dictatorship 1965 - 1986

Ferdinand Marcos ran for the Nacionalista Party in 1965 and delivered Macapagal a resounding defeat. Marcos initiated an ambitious spending program on public works; building roads, bridges, health centers, schools and urban beautification projects. He maintained his popularity through his first term and in 1969 was the first President of the Philippine Republic to win a second term in office. His popularity declined precipitously in the second term.

The criticism of Marcos grew directly from the dishonesty of the 1969 campaign and his failure to curb the bribery and corruption in government. There was also a more general discontent because the population continued to grow faster than the economy causing greater poverty and violence. The Communist Party of the Philippines formed the New People's Army and the Moro National Liberation Front fought for the secession of Muslim Mindanao. Marcos took advantage of these and other incidents such as labour strikes and student protests to create a political atmosphere of crisis and fear that he later used to justify his imposition of martial law.

The popularity of Senator Benigno Aquino and the Liberal Party was growing rapidly. Marcos blamed communists for the suspicious Plaza Miranda bombing of a Liberal Party rally on August 21, 1971. A staged assassination attempt on the Secretary of Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, supplied the pretext for the declaration of martial law on September 21, 1972. Benigno Aquino was amongst the first of the 30,000 some opposition politicians, journalists, critics and activists detained under martial law.

With civil rights and the Philippine Congress suspended and his enemies in detention, Marcos brought in a new constitution in 1973 that replaced the Congress with a National Assembly and extended the term of the President to six years with no limit on the number of terms. With pay raises and selective promotions, he made the armed forces under General Fabian Ver his personal political machine. With his wife and friends, he established monopolies and cartels in the agricultural, construction, manufacturing and financial sectors that extracted billions from the Philippine economy. By the time Marcos was finally forced from power in 1986, the Philippines was a poorer country than when he first took office in 1965.

After five years in detention, a military court found Benigno Aquino guilty of subversion in November 1977 and sentenced him to death. Aquino, though, was too well-known and prominent to execute. He developed heart disease in prison and in May 1980 he was released for treatment and exile in the United States.

In order to gain the implicit endorsement of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church for his regime, Marcos ostensibly lifted martial law on January 17, 1981 - although all of the orders and decrees issued under martial law remained in effect. Pope John Paul II visited the Philippines in February 1981. A new election was scheduled for June 16, 1981. The opposition boycotted the election and Marcos won a huge majority for another six year term as President.

After three years in exile, Benigno Aquino decided to return to the Philippines. On his arrival at Manila International Airport from Taiwan on August 21, 1983, a military escort took Aquino from the aircraft and shot him in the back of the head as he came down the stairs to the tarmac.

Lakas Ng Bayan: The People's Power/EDSA Revolution 1986

The murder of Benigno Aquino was the beginning of the end for the Marcos dictatorship. The brazen assassination of the Philippine's foremost opposition leader was headline news around the world. It went almost unreported under the Marcos controlled media in the Philippines. The media silence was deafening and accusation enough by itself.

Despite the limited news coverage, two million mourners attended the funeral ceremonies in the largest political demonstration to that time in Philippine history. Something had snapped in the Filipinos' passive acceptance of the dictator's repression. Aquino's murder brought together the different elements of the opposition in a common cause to reclaim their political freedom and dignity.

The assassination precipitated a loss of confidence in the business community. Capital began to leave the country at the rate of US$12 million a day. By October 1983, the Central Bank of the Philippines was forced to notify its creditors that it could not meet its obligations on its debt of US$24.6 billion. The default called in the International Monetary Fund to disclose the true state of the nation's finances. The country was bankrupt. The Peso suffered a 21% devaluation. In 1984 the economy contracted by 6.8% and again by 3.8% in 1985.

At first, Marcos appointed Chief Justice Fernando to investigate the Aquino assassination. The Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin, was asked to sit on the Fernando Commission. He publicly expressed his doubts in the military's version of events and refused to join the Commission. The Commission collapsed.

Next, Marcos appointed an old friend and retired judge, Corazon Agrava, to head a five member Commission of investigation into the assassination. The Agrava Commission released majority and minority reports in October 1984. Both reports concurred that the assassination had been a military conspiracy but they did not agree on the actual persons and numbers involved. Judge Agrava's minority report absolved General Fabian Ver and named only seven conspirators. The majority report named 26 conspirators including General Ver.

The majority report resulted in indictments against the 26 named conspirators. The trial began February 22, 1985. It soon became clear that the prosecution had chosen to ignore the findings of the Agrava Commission and was proceeding according to the military's story. As the sham in the court unfolded there were growing protests and calls for Marcos to resign.

On November 3, 1985, with the economy imploding and his credibility at home and abroad in tatters, President Marcos made the surprising announcement of a snap election during a live interview on American television with David Brinkley. With his own formidable political machine firmly installed and his opposition unprepared and disorganized, Marcos was confident that a repeat of the 1981 election, in which he had taken 86% of the vote, could restore his legitimacy. At first, the snap election was called for January 17, 1986 then changed to February 7.

On December 2, 1985, General Ver and all 25 co-defendents were acquitted of complicity in the Aquino assassination. The next day, December 3, 1985, Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino declared her candidacy for President with her running mate for Vice-President, Salvador Laurel. Although the Aquino and Laurel families had been long standing rivals in Philippine politics, behind the scenes, Cardinal Sin had arranged a political match of convenience to defeat Marcos. Since her husband's murder, Cory Aquino, the simple housewife, had become the unifying moral symbol of opposition to Marcos. Balancing Cory's lack of political experience, Salvador Laurel was an accomplished politician who led the United National Democratic Organization (UNIDO); a coalition of opposition groups in the National Assembly.

The election was officially organized and conducted by the government's Commission on Elections (COMELEC). The National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) was an organization of 300,000 volunteers determined to protect the electoral process from fraud and abuse. It had close connections to the Roman Catholic Church and its organization reached down to the local parishes where priests and nuns did much of NAMFREL's work.

The campaign was a travesty of vote buying, violence and intimidation. In many electoral districts between 10 and 40 percent of the voters' names were struck from the registration lists. On voting day, NAMFREL did its best to guard the polling stations and ballot boxes but still it had much evidence of widespread ballot stuffing and stolen ballot boxes to report. Most of all, NAMFREL pushed for quick tabulation and reporting of the vote to limit the chances for tampering with the results.

As the vote was counted, COMELEC's tabulations reported Marcos in the lead while NAMFREL's results reported an Aquino-Laurel majority. The day after the election, on February 8, the Roman Catholic Church declared the election a fraud. On Sunday, February 9, the computer workers at COMELEC headquarters noticed the discrepancies between the numbers they were processing and the numbers coming out in official announcements. In the first of many courageous acts of public defiance over the next two weeks, the workers stood up and bravely filed out of the COMELEC computer centre in protest.

The election count dragged on for several days with both candidates claiming victory. Marcos referred to the National Assembly, which he controlled, for a decision on the election result. The National Assembly declared the election in favour of Marcos on Saturday, February 15. Cory Aquino refused to concede defeat and called on her followers to rally the next day in Manila's Rizal Park. Close to a million supporters attended the rally on Sunday, February 16, to hear Cory outline a national campaign of civil disobedience. She called for a boycott of the businesses owned by Marcos' crony capitalists and for a general strike to begin on February 25; the day of Marcos' inauguration.