When Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was sworn in as president of the Philippines on June 30, he took his oath in entrance of the previous legislative constructing the place his father entered politics and swore on the identical Bible utilized by the elder Mr. Marcos at his 1965 inauguration.
For victims of Mr. Marcos’s tyrannical reign, it was an insulting homage to the lifeless dictator. But it surely got here as no shock.
The youthful Mr. Marcos rode to a landslide election win with a marketing campaign that leaned closely on the fiction of a triumphant golden age below his father, promoted by a well-oiled disinformation machine that openly ignored the 1000’s of individuals jailed, tortured or killed by the regime and the estimated $5 billion to $10 billion siphoned off by the Marcos household.
No, reality and accountability won’t be hallmarks of Marcos 2.0., and we Filipinos concern what comes subsequent. The world has already seen the implications of autocrats and their false narratives.
Donald Trump’s “Make America Nice Once more” canine whistle appealed to delusions of misplaced white privilege, ultimately resulting in the lethal assault by a pro-Trump mob on the U.S. Capitol. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India invokes a legendary golden age of Hindu glory that has worsened communal violence, and Vladimir Putin’s repression and army adventures are pushed by rose-tinted recollections of the Soviet Union and czarist Russia.
Now it’s the Philippines’ flip, and it comes at a weak second for our nation.
Philippine democracy is already below menace after the six-year time period of Mr. Marcos’s predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, a bully who spews hatred and insults and belittles and threatens the press and whose brutal battle on medication has seen 1000’s of individuals killed.
Mr. Marcos, now 64 however nonetheless recognized by his childhood nickname, Bongbong, is extra agreeable by comparability, even anodyne. He parries anger over his household’s crimes with a simple smile and empty appeals for unity, dismissing critics as dividers. However he’s his father’s son.
Mr. Marcos has repeatedly denied or trivialized his household’s crimes and refused to apologize. He stood by as his supporters unleashed a fireplace hose of historic distortions portray the elder Mr. Marcos as a superb chief who lifted the Philippines to heights of peace, prosperity and international management unmatched by democratic governments that adopted. In a single declare promoted by Marcos loyalists, the clan’s legendary wealth got here not from plunder however from 1000’s of tons of gold that got to the elder Mr. Marcos by a nonexistent Filipino royal household. In response to this fairy story, U.S.-backed liberal elites unjustly seized energy and plunged the nation into penury and despair.
Lacking from this narrative is the massive 1986 Folks Energy rebellion by Filipinos fed up with the Marcos household’s vanity and extravagance. After propping up his corrupt regime for 20 years, the US additionally turned on Mr. Marcos, fearing {that a} regime collapse might threaten U.S. army bases within the Philippines. The household — a 28-year-old Bongbong amongst them — was whisked away aboard U.S. Military helicopters that they’d full of loot and ended up in exile in Hawaii, the place the elder Mr. Marcos died three years later.
Dictatorship gave approach to a liberal structure and multiparty elections. However democracy confronted an uphill battle. Entrenched political households lorded over their fiefs, blocked land redistribution and different reforms and used public workplace to increase their privileges. Corruption thrived, establishments remained weak, and little was completed to handle crushing poverty. Many Filipinos started to really feel that democracy had allow them to down.
The remaining Marcoses, in the meantime, had been allowed to return dwelling in 1991 to face varied prices. The youthful Mr. Marcos was convicted within the Nineties of failing to file tax returns throughout the household’s years in energy, and his mom, Imelda Marcos, was sentenced in 2018 to 42 years in jail for corruption. Neither served any jail time. They set about resurrecting the household’s picture from their northern stronghold of Ilocos Norte, profitable workplace and leveraging their cash and networks to forge alliances with nationwide political leaders.
And now we’ve President Bongbong. Mr. Marcos has by no means proven himself to be presidential materials. He was referred to as an absentee governor of Ilocos Norte and as a senator was typically a no-show. He continues to lie about acquiring a level from Oxford.
The indicators of what kind of president he might be are already rising.
His cupboard appointments embody a justice secretary who, as a congressman, accused the liberal opposition of being communists and was instrumental in blocking a brand new license for the nation’s largest broadcaster after it angered Mr. Duterte with reviews vital of him. Mr. Marcos additionally indicated final fall that he won’t support an Worldwide Prison Court docket investigation into Mr. Duterte’s battle on medication.
Sadly for Filipinos, one of many few remaining establishments that may act as a examine on his energy — the nation’s historically rambunctious press — is on the defensive. Underneath Mr. Duterte, the Philippines has steadily slid in world press freedom rankings, and someday earlier than Mr. Marco’s inauguration, the Duterte administration ordered the shutdown of Rappler, the feisty information website co-founded by the Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, sending a chill by way of Philippine media. That ought to swimsuit Mr. Marcos, along with his distaste for accountability, simply advantageous. He shunned the media and its inconvenient questions throughout the marketing campaign and skipped most presidential debates.
He’s prone to face continued opposition from the remnants of the democracy constituency that introduced down his father’s regime — liberal components of the Catholic Church, the enterprise group and the center class — and can undoubtedly do his finest to neutralize them. Since his inauguration, pro-Marcos trolls have begun coaching their sights on opponents, accusing opposition supporters and journalists of being communist allies and a revered historian of being an opposition lackey.
True to kind, Mr. Marcos’s in any other case unremarkable inaugural handle praised his father’s energy within the face of unspecified international threats and boasted of the roads constructed by his father and bumper rice harvests throughout that legendary golden age.
The Philippines doesn’t want his model of selective amnesia. Greater than ever, it wants a powerful dedication to democracy based on accountability, respect for opposition and the desire to confront painful truths.
These components had been sorely missing below the primary Marcos presidency. Don’t count on the second to be a lot totally different.
Sheila Coronel (@SheilaCoronel) is a co-founder of the Philippine Heart for Investigative Journalism and the director of the Toni Stabile Heart for Investigative Journalism at Columbia College.
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