The last gasp of Philippine democracy: How the kleptocratic Marcos family closed in again on the presidency
, now, will prove the most consequential. How did all this happen? How did our democracy decay enough to allow the resurgence of the kleptocratic Marcos family, 36 years after they stuffed diamonds into the dictator’s diapers and fled the Philippines under cover of night?Filipinos hold a vigil this past Feb. 25 at the EDSA People Power monument in Quezon City. EDSA is an acronym for the street in Metro Manila where, in 1986, demonstrations against the Marcos regime led to his ouster.Mr.
Though the early years of dictatorial control had afforded some good – in terms of economy, infrastructure and pet vanity projects – it was far outweighed by all the bad that inevitably bankrupted the country, financially and morally. Filipinos had had enough. For power’s temptations form the themes and narrative arc of the clichéd telenovela that is the modern-day Philippines. Cue now what would be its backstory montage:
Finally, in this montage of travesties, we’d zoom in on the capital: Metro Manila, where national power is centralized, and the city’s crime, pollution, flooding, kilometric gridlock, and disparity between haves and have-nots all seem to exemplify the exhausted hopelessness of our entire society. This city is where millions of Filipinos also departed from these past decades for places offering opportunity and optimism – which seemed to be everywhere but the Philippines.
That came in 2016, in the form of a governor’s son: Rodrigo Duterte, a tough-talking long-time ruler of a provincial capital of the historically neglected region of Davao, whose children shared his power by swapping places amongst themselves, dancing around mayoral and congressional term limits. A law-school-educated, extrajudicial-minded mayor, he’d become nationally notorious for his “Davao Death Squad.
In the Philippines, such wholesale spurning of essential democratic liberties began with Marcos Sr. – who called his brand “constitutional authoritarianism” – before it went out of fashion with his ouster, and the truth came out about his false heroism in the Second World War, his fake military medals, his daughter’s conviction in the U.S. for the death of a student who’d insulted her and their family’s systematic plundering of the country.
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