Martial law under Ferdinand Marcos
Opposition figures of the time (such as Lorenzo Tañada, Jose W. Diokno, and Jovito Salonga) accused Marcos of exaggerating these threats and using them as an excuse to consolidate power and extend his tenure beyond the two presidential terms allowed by the 1935 constitution.
[11][12]: 4 [13]: 16 After Marcos was ousted, government investigators discovered that the declaration of martial law had also allowed the Marcoses to hide secret stashes of unexplained wealth that various courts[6] later determined to be "of criminal origin".
[18] In his 1987 treatise, Dictatorship & Martial Law: Philippine Authoritarianism in 1972, University of the Philippines public administration professor Alex Brillantes Jr. identifies three reasons expressed by the Marcos administration, saying that martial law:[18] The first two justifications were explicitly stated in Proclamation 1081, which cited two explicit justifications: "to save the republic" (from various plots); and "to reform society" (after the failure of American-style democracy).
Marcos's aide-turned whistleblower Primitivo Mijares noted that "The beginning infrastructure for martial law was actually laid down as early as the first day of his assumption of the Philippine presidency on December 30, 1965."
[19] American defense analyst Donald Berlin notes that this gave Marcos an opportunity for direct interaction with the AFP's leaders, and a hand in the military's day-to-day operationalization.
In tandem with this "Ilocanization", generals loyal to Marcos were allowed to stay in their positions past their supposed retirement age, or were rewarded with civilian government posts.
[24][20] As a result, Security Affairs Professor Douglas J. Macdonald noted that "near the end of the dictatorship, the Military and the Intelligence organizations were badly polarized along generational lines, as they are today."
[21]: 32 Not long after the declaration of martial law, the controlled press reported that Soliman had died of a heart attack, but his family believed that Marcos had ordered that he be killed.
By 1971, Marcos had reached out to US Ambassador to the Philippines Henry Byroade, with the question of whether the United States, then under the administration of President Richard Nixon, would support him should he choose to proclaim Martial Law.
According to the US National Archives' copy of the Memorandum of Conversation between Nixon and Byroade:[22] The president declared that we would "absolutely" back Marcos up, and "to the hilt" so long as what he was doing was to preserve the system against those who would destroy it in the name of liberty.
"[13] But Marcos immediately made noise about the supposed "communist threat" – drawing on images of the bloody Huk encounters of the 1950s, and courting the Johnson administration's political support in light of the U.S.' recent entry into the Vietnam war.
Even in the days immediately before Marcos's declaration of Martial Law on September 23, 1972, the Philippine National Security Council did not consider the two communist movements to represent a sizeable threat.
[44][45] In 1971, AFP Chief of Staff Manuel T. Yan had prominently told media that the grounds for Marcos to either impose of martial law or suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus did not exist.
These included: the December 1970 raid on the Philippine Military Academy's armory by defecting army officer Victor Corpus; and the July 1972 MV Karagatan incident in which a secret arms shipment from China, meant for Communist Party forces, sank just off Digoyo Point in Palanan, Isabela.
[23] The social unrest of 1969 to 1970, and the violent dispersal of the resulting "First Quarter Storm" protests were among the early watershed events in which large numbers of Filipino students of the 1970s were radicalized against the Marcos administration.
[56] By dawn of the following day, many of the 400 individuals listed on the military's priority arrest list—journalists, members of the political opposition, constitutional convention delegates, outspoken lawyers, teachers, and students—had been detained.
Juan Ponce Enrile would later acknowledge that the first wave of arrests focused on political figures and journalists "in the initial stages, we must emasculate all the leaders in order to control the situation.
[59] By the dawn of September 23, 100 of the 400 individuals on the list were in detention centers, with detainees including Senator Ramon Mitra, JRU history teacher Etta Rosales, University of the Philippines College of Social Work professor Flora Lansang, human rights lawyer Haydee Yorac, Manila Times publisher Chino Roces, and a plethora of journalists.
The others included Heherson Alvarez, Alejandro Lichuaco, Voltaire Garcia, and Teofisto Guingona Jr. Marcos reacted with fear of deposition and immediately finalized Proclamation No.
They then alighted from their vehicle and began to fire at the large sedan of Enrile to give an impression of a terrorist ambush, setting the stage for Marcos's theatrical television announcement.
[62][63][64] By the morning of September 23, 1972, martial law forces had successfully implemented a media lockdown, with only outlets associated with Marcos crony Roberto Benedicto allowed to operate.
Eventually, a group of Marcos-supporting delegates led by Gilberto Duavit came up with an entirely new draft of the constitution, which they submitted to Malacañang for ratification only two months after the proclamation of martial law.
[79] So when former MIM member Nur Misuari formed an armed secessionist group called the Moro National Liberation Front, he was quickly able to consolidate power.
[12][82] Amnesty International found convincing evidence of widespread torture among prisoners, enabled by Marcos's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the absence of judicial oversight.
[citation needed] The Heritage Foundation pointed that when the economy began to weaken in 1979, the government did not adopt anti-recessionist policies and instead launched risky and costly industrial projects.
[citation needed] The shutdown of media and the mass arrests of publishers and journalists on the eve of the 1972 Martial Law declaration effectively silenced the Philippine culture of press freedom for several years.
[113] The few publications who dared to criticize Marcos, such as the WE Forum and Ang Pahayagang Malaya, came to collectively be referred to "the mosquito press," since they became a minor but persistent irritation to the dictatorship.
[114] Key turning points in the history of Philippine journalism during this time included:[113] the establishment of WE Forum in 1977 and of Ang Pahayagang Malaya in 1981; the landmark coverage the murder of Macli-ing Dulag, a leader of indigenous opposition to the Chico River Dam Project;[53] the 1982 expose of Ferdinand Marcos's fake military medals which led to the closure of WE Forum and the jailing of its prominent columnists;[113] and the 1984 murder of leading Mindanao journalist Alex Orcullo in Davao City.
[116] Reacting to the announcement, former president Diosdado Macapagal, who at the time was the leading member of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization, said that the lifting of martial law after eight years was "in name only, but not in fact".
[88] Increasing unrest springing from the economic collapse of the Philippines in the years after the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino in 1983 came to a head in February 1986, when the EDSA People Power Revolution succeeded in unseating the Marcoses from Malacañang Palace.
