A Marcos Is Back in Power
in the Philippines

by Mike Billington

[Print version of this article]

May 12—Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the nationalist leader of the Philippines whose massive development programs for his nation were crushed in one of the first “color revolutions,” run by then Secretary of State George Shultz and his neocon Deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, in 1986, has been elected President of the Philippines in the May 9 election. While not yet official, Marcos crushed his opponent, Leni Robredo, the darling of the regime-change set in Washington, in preliminary statistics, by two to one, setting a record in Philippine presidential elections of 31 million votes.

Bong Bong Marcos, as he is known, or BBM, held rallies before huge crowds across the country during the campaign, but gave few interviews and simply skipped most of the debates. Although he served as a senator, he had a sparse record of legislative accomplishments.

So why the massive victory? In fact, Marcos was swept into power on the hope by the masses of Filipino citizens that he can restore the policies of the much beloved Ferdinand Marcos Sr. His overwhelming victory, beyond the reach of the infamous vote fraud capacities in the Philippines, serves to prove to the Western world, at least, to those who appreciate the truth rather than the fake news and information warfare now dominating the Western press and governments, that his father and his mother, Imelda Marcos, who worked closely together during the Marcos era as President from 1965-1986, to build the Philippines miracle—leading Southeast Asia in scientific, industrial, medical and agricultural development, making it the envy of its Asian neighbors.

Is this the way you remember the Marcos era? Is this the way the Marcos legacy is reported in your newspapers? Rather, what is reported ad nauseum is some variant of this lead article in the May 9 Washington Post:

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator whose family plundered billions of dollars, was elected president of the Philippines by a landslide, according to preliminary results, 36 years after his father was ousted in a historic revolution. For critics, it marks a further backward slide for a nation—once admired as one of the few democracies in Southeast Asia—that continues to trudge down the path of populism.

Whether Marcos will follow his brilliant father’s legacy is not certain, but his campaign slogan was “Together, we shall rise again,” reflecting both his call for unity in the heavily divided country, but also clearly the revival of the Marcos family policies and values. He also had the support of the outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, whose daughter Sara was elected Vice President in an even more resounding margin of three to one.

The Marcos Sr. Record

In a series of articles in EIR, this author presented the true history of the 1986 coup against Marcos, portrayed to the world by the whorish Western press as a “People’s Power” removal of a vile killer and dictator:

• December 24, 2004: “Shultz and the ‘Hitmen’ Destroyed the Philippines”

• May 16, 2008: “Why the Philippines is Starving—How Shultz and the WTO Destroyed the Philippines Green Revolution”

• June 14, 2019: “U.S.-China Cooperation in the Philippines—Operation Marcos: A Development Plan for Asia and the World”

Here are some highlights:

Agriculture: Marcos was the first president of the Philippines who did not rise from the elite class, but was a “commoner,” trained as a lawyer. Making the nation self-sufficient in rice and corn for the first time, he emphasized irrigation in the major food-producing regions of Luzon and Mindanao. Credit facilities, mechanization, and the introduction of high-yield rice varieties, which needed irrigation, resulted in the self-sufficiency in rice by 1968.

Eliminating the “latifundista” structure of agriculture under a landed aristocracy was only possible after Marcos imposed martial law in 1972. Although martial law was primarily aimed at countering the communist insurgency in the country, Marcos used it to break many aspects of the oligarchical control over the economy. He proclaimed that the entire nation was to be considered a “land reform area,” and declared that all tenants working land devoted primarily to rice and corn were to be the owners of that land, up to a specified limit. Over enraged opposition from the oligarchs, the program, together with infrastructure and mechanization improvements, made a quarter of a million peasants into landowners and increased grain productivity by half. [Box: Why Marcos Was a Target for Regime Change]

Nuclear Power: In 1974, Marcos contracted with Westinghouse to build a nuclear power plant in the Philippines, which was to be, and is still today, the only nuclear power plant in Southeast Asia. As originally contracted, the plant would have cost about $1 billion, and produced 1,200 MW of electricity by 1984. However, with the anti-nuclear hysteria following the Three Mile Island (inconsequential) accident in 1979, the Carter Administration imposed retroactive safety regulations which contributed to more than doubling the cost of construction. After the 1986 color revolution placed Cory Aquino, of the latifundista Aquino clan, in power, the fully completed Bataan nuclear power plant was mothballed, never to produce a single watt of electricity. Aquino agreed to her controllers’ demands in Washington that the Philippine people pay every cent of the inflated cost, for nothing.

Industrial Projects: Marcos launched 11 major industrial projects, shifting the focus of the nation’s manufacturing economy from consumer goods to basic heavy industry. This included steel, petro-chemical, pulp and paper, a copper smelter, aluminum, phosphate fertilizer, diesel engines, gas and oil, a coconut industry, and the nuclear power program. The administration tripled the country’s road network, doubled the electrification of the country’s homes, increased irrigated cropland eight-fold, and achieved rice and corn self-sufficiency. Minimum daily wage rates tripled, although inflation, driven by international oil price hikes and exploding U.S. interest rates, more than wiped out these wage increases.

Philippine Heart Center For Asia: In 1975, under First Lady Imelda’s leadership, Marcos established by presidential decree the Philippine Heart Center for Asia, open for both paying patients and charity patients from across Southeast Asia. It stands, still today, as one of the foremost heart hospitals in Asia.

All of these programs—every one, except the Heart Center—were totally destroyed by the 1986 coup. The oligarchs, placed in power to “save freedom and democracy,” scrapped all the industrial programs, ended food self-sufficiency, privatized power and water utilities, shuttered the nuclear power plant, and much more, at the command of Wall Street and Washington. The Philippines, once the envy of its Asian neighbors, soon became the basket case of Asia, with mass poverty, transportation bottlenecks, mass unemployment and a horrendous drug addiction crisis.

Marcos Jr.’s Program?

While BBM has said little about his intentions, there have been some signals. “We really have to look at nuclear power,” he said in March, addressing the exorbitant and rising cost of electricity. Although he goes along with the undependable and expensive green energy hype for wind and solar, he said a South Korean proposal to rehabilitate the Bataan nuclear plant should be revisited: “Let’s look at it again.”

Antonio “Butch” Valdes, the founder of the Philippine LaRouche Society and of the new political party KDP (Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino), has long campaigned to reopen the Bataan plant and to build more nuclear plants across the country, especially the new small modular reactors (SMRs) which are now coming on line. He also has campaigned to re-nationalize the utilities away from the oligarchs who have demonstrated their failure to run them on behalf of the population. The potential for BBM to revive his father’s movement for an actual transformation of the nation will depend on his willingness to take on these issues against the U.S.-influenced oligarchical families.

The financial lords of Wall Street and the City of London are distraught over the Marcos/Duterte victories. Goldman Sachs complained that—

[Marcos] has sounded a less cautionary note on rising public debt levels, while emphasizing measures such as subsidizing key agricultural inputs or capping key food prices to contain inflation risks, alongside initiatives to revitalize the industrial sector and SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] to provide more jobs.

Goldman has threatened that if Marcos is so reckless as to try to build the economy and improve the living standards of the impoverished population, then investors may “pull out and outsource their services elsewhere,” leading to “massive layoffs.” Their support for the defeated Leni Robredo was in no way hidden, praising her throughout the campaign for her subservience to Western finance and her rabid attacks on China.

The Key Role of China

Indeed, it is the Philippine relationship with China that is the crucial issue which will determine the success or failure of the new Marcos era. BBM’s mother, Imelda, played a critical foreign policy role in her husband’s administration, leading a delegation to Beijing in 1974, meeting twice with then Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and once with Chairman Mao Zedong, arranging for the purchase of Chinese oil and China’s purchase of Philippine exports. Bong Bong accompanied his mother on that trip, and treasures the pictures of his meeting with Zhou Enlai. Mao pledged to Emelda that the Cultural Revolution leaders who had been training communist insurgents in the Philippines had been deposed, and that, henceforth, China would respect Philippine sovereignty under the Chinese Communist Party’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

Today that relationship is even more important. As the Western financial system collapses into a hyperinflationary breakdown, driving deadly inflation in the former colonial countries like the Philippines, and with Washington demanding that these impoverished nations kowtow to their efforts to destroy Russia and China, Marcos Jr. bravely asserted:

No matter what the superpowers are trying to do, we have to work within the interest of the Philippines. We cannot allow ourselves to be part of the foreign policy of other countries. We have to have our own foreign policy.

Soon after his election in 2016, Duterte visited China, meeting with President Xi Jinping, and other delegations from the Philippines followed. A Six-Year Development Program for Trade and Economic Cooperation was signed with China in March 2017. In November 2018, President Xi visited the Philippines and signed 29 cooperative agreements, lifting the China-Philippine relationship to the level of “Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation.” These agreements include bridges, a dam, irrigation systems, highways, industrial parks, drug rehab facilities, and more. While some of this is in process, the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a devastating impact on the Philippines, has stalled many of the projects. Hopefully, this cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative will continue and expand under the new Marcos administration.

Regarding the South China Sea, and the 2016 arbitration ruling at The Hague which rejected Chinese claims over certain areas also claimed by the Philippines, Marcos Jr. has said that since China did not even attend the arbitration and does not recognize it, “it’s no longer available to us.” Nonetheless, he added, “We will not cede any one square inch to any country, particularly China, but will continue to engage and work on our national interest.” That will come through negotiations, he insisted, not confrontation.

As to relations with the U.S., Marcos Jr. insists that he respects the historic relationship with the former colonial power, but told a radio host:

If you let the U.S. come in, you make China your enemy. I think we can come to an agreement [with China]. As a matter of fact, people from the Chinese embassy are my friends. We have been talking about that.

BBM was the special guest at an event in the Chinese Embassy last October, when the Embassy invited him to cut the ribbon for a new photo display of historic moments of China-Philippines relations, including a photo of then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and former President Ferdinand Marcos signing the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the Philippines and China on June 9, 1975—four years before the U.S. established official relations with Beijing.

Speaking at that October event, Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian said:

While [we] always cherish and honor old friends, we hope that more and more people from our two countries will be committed to deepening our partnership and cooperation, so as to bring more benefits to our two peoples and pass on our traditional friendship from generation to generation. Together, we are opening up a brighter future! As to the oligarchs’ view of BBM, Antonio Carpio, the former Supreme Court Judge who led the Philippines’ legal team at the arbitral tribunal, said Marcos’s stance in regard to the South China Sea was a “betrayal. He’s taken the side of China against the Philippines.”

Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte had been more direct in cutting ties with the U.S. neo-colonial policies, especially the military agreements, although he has since softened and has allowed the U.S. to set up military operations within five Philippine Army Bases. How Marcos will deal with the U.S. military presence, especially in the context of the mounting belligerence of the “NATO in Asia” campaign by London and Washington, is yet to be seen. There is a very real potential that NATO will provoke China into military action against Taiwan by threatening to recognize Taiwan as an independent country, undermining China’s sovereignty over Taiwan under the “One China” policy acknowledged by the U.S. in 1979 when they recognized the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as the “sole legal Government of China.” It has been shown by the NATO provocations of Russia over Ukraine that the ultimate purpose was to create a justification to wage direct economic warfare, and proxy military warfare against Russia within Ukraine, threatening a nuclear confrontation.

One complicating factor for Washington is that under current U.S. law, Marcos Jr. and the rest of his family are not allowed to enter the U.S. The family was held in contempt of court for refusing to co-operate with the District Court of Hawaii ruling in 1995 which ordered the Marcos family to pay $2 billion of what the court falsely declared “plundered wealth,” to be handed out to people they declared to be “victims of Marcos Sr.’s rule.” If the current madness in Washington is not stopped, to continue the drive for world war and to do nothing about the collapse of the entire Western financial system, it were better Ferdinand Marcos Jr. stays away.

Why Marcos Was a Target for Regime Change

Ferdinand Marcos Sr. wrote the book, An Ideology for Filipinos, published in 1983. The following excerpt exemplifies why he was targeted for regime change:

The western philosophic tradition locates man’s uniqueness in his rationality: it defines man as a rational animal. The idea of man does not necessarily lead to the philosophy of humanism, for the concept of rationality could be construed mechanistically: as a movement of thought that follows a set of inflexible principles. The Cartesian conception of reason is mechanistic in this sense. For it regards thinking as something that can be pursued in one way: beginning with clear and distinct notions, the mind moves forward, step by step, following only the dictates of logic. What Cartesianism overlooks is that element of creativity so essential to the concept of human rationality. The recognition of man’s creativity, or that impulse to create new forms and new modes of coping with the demands of reality, has tremendous implications—not only for a philosophy of man but also for social policy and thus for ideology.

In a sense, we can regard the history of civilization as the history of human creativity. The so-called scientific revolutions represent man’s disengagement from traditional modes of thinking….

The humanistic thrust of our ideology precisely takes into account the fact that apart form being rational, in the Cartesian sense of the term, man has a gift of creativity that expresses itself not only in his art but also in his science and social institutions. This creativity is what makes man truly human. In fact, it seems more appropriate to define man not as a rational animal, but as a creative being. [back to text]