Corruption allegations against the government and peoples oppositions to the laws

and dictatorship of Marcos brought about uprisings and reformation movements

to oust the president.

PRIMARY PROBLEMS

1. Unemployment
2. Destabilized Economy
3. Rampant Corruption in the Government and abuse of authority and power
4. Increased crime rates (before martial law) due to poverty

ISSUES AND CONTROVERSIES

1. Marcos Ill-gotten wealth

2. Declaration of Martial Law
3. Assassination of Benigno Aquino

Constant threats to the Marcos administration led him to the implementation of

Martial Law. The whole country was put under the militarys control. It was well
received during the first year as crime rates all over the Philippines dropped and
given the social turmoil in the Philippines at the time it was deemed necessary. But
after nine years, the military took more excessive actions. Military units were in
control of domestic air flights, all incoming calls in the Philippines were not allowed
and even stricter curfews were implemented.

In 1969, President Marcos was reelected for an unprecedented second term

because of his impressive performance or, as his critics claimed, because of
massive vote-buying and electoral frauds.

The second term proved to be a daunting challenge to the President:

an economic crisis brought by external and internal forces; a restive and
radicalized studentry demanding reforms in the educational system; rising
tide of criminality and subversion by the re-organized Communist
movement; and secessionism in the South.

Philippine poverty, on the other hand, increased during the Marcos years, rising
from 41% poverty incidence around the time Marcos took the Presidency in the
1960s to around 59% by the time he was kicked out by a popular people-power
revolution in the 1980s.
State-run monopolies, mismanaged exchange rates, imprudent monetary policy
and debt management, all underpinned by rampant corruption and cronyism,
were among the key factors that plunged the Philippine economy into the worst
economic contraction that it has experienced in its entire history. It should also be
noted that the value of the peso also dropped from P1 = US$ 1 to P25 = US$ 1 during Marcos
term.

Put succinctly, some of the countrys top economists have characterized the
Marcos years as being fueled by debt-driven growth.

And during this time, as much of the country was impoverished, the countrys
external debt grew by an annual average rate of 25% from 1970 to 1981.

And from just $360 million in 1962, our countrys debt reached a staggering P28.3
billion by the time Marcos left his office in 1986.

At its peak, the debt payments for the BNPP reached, on average, US$150,000
per day. The country finally paid the debt for the BNPP in 2007. The resources
funnelled into this project could have funded over 40,000 classrooms to educate
almost 2 million Filipino children, or three squadrons of FA-50 aircraft to help
defend Philippine sovereignty, or account for half the cost of a high speed rail
connecting Clark and Manila. This single corruption-laden project alone robbed
the country of these worthier investments.

Worse yet, the rent-seeking and corrupt environment that produced the BNPP
and many other white elephant projects during those times signalled an erosion
of many key institutions that would take decades to recover.

MARCOSS PLUNDER AND WEALTH

Marcos reportedly took a $5 billion to $10 billion fortune while in office. The figure has often been
cited by the Philippine government and was obtained by the C.I.A. using unknown methods. In any
case, this is in sharp contrast to the reported income of the Marcoses from 1966 to 1986 of around
$300,000 a year.
In 1999, Imelda said that her "legendary" husband got rich from gold trading and luck and said he
planned to use the bulk of money for development projects to help his country.

In 1999, Imelda also declared that her family owns virtually all of the Philippines." When the
Marcoses were in power the national treasury was like the Marcoss piggy bank. Any money the
Philippines earnedwhether through taxes, tariffs, land salescould end up in the Marcoses
pockets.

Moreover, the Marcoses gave many special deals to their cronies and awarded them lucrative
concessions to timber, minerals and cash crops. It is hard to imagine that the Marcoses didnt
receive some kind of kickback or share of the profits in the scheme.

According to the Akbayan party-list group, the Marcos administration was responsible
for 35, 000 torture cases, 70, 000 incarcerations, and 3, 257 murders. Hes also blamed
for the arrest of more than 50, 000 people including the desaparecidos or those who
were victims of enforced disappearances.

ROOTS OF THE DEBT CRISIS AND INDUSTRIAL COLLAPSE

With a drop in export earnings and political fundamentals becoming uncertain, the
financing of credit needs would no longer flow. As the economic situation became
worse, the government had to adopt defensive economic measures to stave off
further economic collapse. Many projects that the government got involved in were
therefore highly dependent on debt capital, poorly backed up by equity capital, and
had no direct technological anchor on which to build their industries. As a result,
many of the attempts in these fields became difficult to pursue toward success.

The fear. Anybody could be picked up at anytime for any reason by the military or the police.
You could wind up a detainee, or you could just vanish, a "salvage" victim. If you protested
against the government, you were labeled a "subversive" or a "communist" or both and you
were summarily arrested. People the government didn't like were tailed by security elements,
their telephones tapped. A student who spoke up to Imee Marcos was murdered. No two words
were more invoked and abused for the purposes of oppression than "national security." People
were afraid to speak out. Marcos logic being what it was, the silence meant the people were
happy.

The injustice. Only Marcos and his cronies, who plundered the economy, were protected by
the law. Nobody else was. Arbitrary arrest, detention, salvaging and torture were the standard.
The Defense Minister -- a man named Juan Ponce Enrile -- said in 1982: "We presume that
priests and nuns charged with subversive activities are guilty until the courts decide whether
they are guilty or not." On one occasion the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, someone
named Enrique Fernando, servilely held an umbrella over Imelda Marcos' head.

The censorship. It was only when rebel soldiers finally seized a TV station in the EDSA
uprising that people saw in their sets just how big the crowds were. Up until then the media
were strictly controlled. Journalists who wrote against the regime -- most of them were women --
were routinely "invited" for questioning by the military. There was no transparency whatever.
There were only three national broadsheets, the Times Journal, the Daily Express and the
Bulletin Today, all of them offering the same pro-administration pap. The chief Marcos
mouthpiece was a columnist named Teodoro Valencia. He died in 1986 and is now considered
the "dean" of Philippine journalism. In 1983, when Ninoy Aquino was buried, at least one million
people accompanied the funeral cortege as it wound its way through Manila. The next day, the
Bulletin scarcely mentioned the story, instead playing up a story about a man struck and killed
by lightning at the Luneta Park.(Recently, Joseph Estrada extolled the Bulletin as his idea of a
good newspaper).

The poverty. Poverty increased from 24% in 1974 to 40% in 1980 and why not? Imelda
Marcos was using the Philippine National Bank as her private piggy bank. One of her ideas of
dealing with the poor was to put up whitewashed walls around the squatter areas in Manila. The
walls are still there.

The corruption. There were suspicions about the Marcoses dipping into the public till. After
EDSA, dazed investigators realized that the truth far outstripped the suspicions. The Marcoses
had been screwing the public even before Martial Law. As early as 1968 Ferdinand and Imelda
had already salted away more than $900,000 in Zurich accounts under the names "William
Saunders" and "Jane Ryan." It was the initial deposit in what would turn out to be a mountain of
loot. After having tracked down Marcos accounts and properties all over the world, investigators
still aren't sure that they've found all the ill-gotten wealth.

A DYNASTIC ATTEMPT

he probably focused mainly on overseeing a dynastic succession that would assure

political continuity for his personal lineage. He gambled that his wife could be that
successor since his children were too young to be in that kind of fray at the time. He
ignored the thought that his wife would be a political lightweight without the beam
of light that she derived from being the wife of the incumbent. It became clear that
towards the close of the 1980s. Marcos was bothered by the question of succession
and he had to make clear his intentions. When he gave Mrs. Imelda Marcos
prominent political powers as member of the cabinet in a new and powerful ministry
on human settlements in 1978 (a combination of housing, environment, local
government and other things that could be imagined) and as Metro Manila Governor
simultaneously, it became clear who was being given enormous political advantage
for that future battle for succession. As soon as this had taken place, it seemed as
if there were almost two presidencies: Marcoss which was the real government and
that of Mrs. Marcos, which tried to corner as much resources from the first.

Mrs. Marcos began building a political constituency and alliances that were meant to
expand her political fences. Her activities began to cause disarray in government
directions and priorities. In addition to these, she traveled extensively out of the
country sometimes on diplomatic assignments for the government. Her well known
trademark of financial profligacy, jet travels and other extravagances made her into
a serious political liability to Marcos that he had failed to read.

when he fled the country after 21 years in power, including 14 year of strongman rule, on widespread
allegations of plundering the national coffers, the countrys foreign debt had ballooned to US$25
billion.

Oplan Sagittarius, the alleged master plan of a multi-faceted operation for the declaration of martial
law. It allegedly provided the legal basis for Proclamation 1081 by enumerating the conditions and
situations that made martial law necessary. Mr. Marcos was going to use the bombings, including the
Plaza Miranda incident, as a justification for this takeover and eventual authoritarian rule.

1983 Benigno Aquino assassination which triggered public outrage that led to the strongmans
downfall three years later.

The downfall of his administration came when Benigno Aquino was assassinated this
fueled even more activist to go into rallies to fight against his administration. In
1986 Marcos held a snap election in order to stop rumors that his government was
being overthrown. Ultimately he was driven out of the country with People Power.