On the eve of the 28th anniversary of the EDSA People
Power Revolution that removed him from power, the late former President
Ferdinand Marcos was among top trends on social media site Twitter, with some
claiming that he was "the best president" that the country has ever
had.Marcos' administration, which spanned 1965 to 1986, was marked by political
repression, human rights violations, and corruption.
Amid alleged threats against the government, he
declared martial law in
1972, which suspended the 1935 Constitution, dissolved Congress, and vested
authoritarian powers on him.
Through Presidential Decrees, he was able to make laws
without Congress, as well as issue arrest and seizure orders that are normally
issued only by the judiciary in a democratic government.
More than 50,000 people, including those critical of his
governance, were arrested during the first three years of his martial rule,
according to Amnesty International. The number does not include the
"desaparecidos" or victims of enforced disappearances under Marcos.
The Marcos regime was also responsible for 3,257 murders,
35,000 torture cases, and 70,000 incarcerations, according to members Akbayan
party-list group, of whom many suffered under the dictatorship.
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The repression forced thousands to go underground, with
the book "Dictatorship and Revolution: Roots of People’s Power"
estimating that number of communist rebels growing from 1,250 in 1972 to an
estimated 40,000 in 1983 because of Marcos.
The value of the peso also dropped from P1 to US$ 1, to
P25 pesos US$ 1, during Marcos' time in office.
From just US$ 360 million in 1962, the Philippines' debt
reached P28.3 billion at the end of Marcos' rule in 1986, according to James K.
Boyce's "The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos
Era."
Meanwhile, the Presidential Commission on Good Government
said the Marcoses stole at least $10 billion from the nation's coffers.
The Marcoses' ostentatious display of wealth during his
rule in the 1970s left US embassy officials disgusted, according to diplomatic
cables released by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
PCGG Chairman Andres Bautista said the government has yet
to recover P30 billion to P50 billion worth of Marcos assets, 28 years after
the agency was established.
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