1965-1986)10th Philippine President
3rd Republic
4th Republic (Martial Law, "The New Republic" Parliamentary Government)
Philippine Lawyer and Politician, Ferdinand Marcos was born in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte on September 11, 1917. His parents are Don Mariano Marcos and Doña Josefa Edralin. Marocs studied law in the late 1930’s at the University of the Philippines.
Marcos took up leadership in a time wherein the country was in crisis economically and socially. His goals at that time were to uplift the economic and social condition of all the people using hard-work and self-reliance.
His first term was innovative and inspirational. Marcos embarked on a huge infrastructure program, unifying the scattered islands through a network of roads, bridges, rails and ports, committing all the available resources to development. He carefully
steered the Republic’s diplomacy during a period of transition in international relations, which saw the confrontation of the Cold War give way to peaceful negotiations. He was host to the Vietnam allies at the Manila Summit of 1966, and embarked on intense personal diplomacy throughout the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).
The national problems, however, were much graver than could be solved in any single term of office. Combining into an explosive force were poverty, social inequity and rural stagnation, the burden of centuries coupled with rising expectations, a bounding birthrate and mass-education. The country at that time was said to have been making only four million pesos a day while spending six million pesos. Industries had a very slow growth. The school facilities could not accomodate the increasing number of children. Diseases continued to spread. Criminality was on the increase. Marcos was trapped between the entrenched oligarchy, which controlled the Congress and the firebrands from the Manila student movement in the peasant regions of Luzon.
As a result of this, Marcos sent out the Army to face the resurgence of armed Communist activity and the emergence of Maoist urban guerrillas. In August 1971, the write of habeas corpus was suspended.
This worked in the short term, but as soon as it was lifted, radical agitation started again. By the middle of 1972, nearly the entire media turned dead set against the Administration and government was beginning to be slowed down by the intense rivalry between the political parties.
The economic effects of this paralysis of government were made worse by great floods which in the Luzon plain ruined much of agriculture, infrastructure and industry. The people wallowed deeper in cynicism and despair. In Manila, crime, pornography and violence drove citizens from the streets. Invoking the last constitutional defense of the state, President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972.
