Most Filipinos were not yet born, or less than eight years old, when the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos came to an end in 1986, 36 years ago. If the widely documented accounts of the excesses, robberies and abuses committed during his 21 years of government were not enough, a visit to a museum would suffice to verify the degree of extravagance to which this regime reached. In the museum you can see part of the three thousand pairs of shoes that Imelda Marcos, the wife of the dictator, acquired for her personal use. To that collection is added the money and properties that the family clan amassed, both inside and outside the country.
Little escaped its claws and jaws, according to the investigators’ reports. Even the funds received from international aid and financing agencies were stolen. Neither were the resources of the central bank safe, an entity from which it is estimated that the Marcos family extracted between five and ten billion dollars. The notoriety of the Marcos spouses in this regard earned them recognition in the Guinness Records as the perpetrators of the largest embezzlement committed against a government, a title they still hold. The consequence, as is logical, was the impoverishment of the country, price inflation and a huge external debt.
Added to his financial exploits was his disrespect for human rights, and his willingness to resort to repressive methods to stay in power. The beginning of the end came when opposition leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated in 1983, sparking a popular reaction that culminated in the Marcoses fleeing to Hawaii.
Given that background, it seems incredible that the couple’s son, named after his father, has been overwhelmingly endorsed by voters now to preside over the nation, with the support of the current president, repressive in his own right, whose daughter was the vice-presidential candidate.
