By Mike Billington
May 12—Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the nationalist leader
of the Philippines whose massive development programs for
his nation were crushed in one of the first “color revolutions,”
run by then Secretary of State George Shultz and his neocon
Deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, in 1986, has been elected President of
the Philippines in the May 9 election. While not yet official,
Marcos crushed his opponent, Leni Robredo, the darling of the
regime-change set in Washington, in preliminary statistics, by
two to one, setting a record in Philippine presidential elections
of 31 million votes.
Bong Bong Marcos, as he is known, or BBM, held rallies before
huge crowds across the country during the campaign, but gave
few interviews and simply skipped most of the debates.
Although he served as a senator, he had a sparse record of
legislative accomplishments.
So why the massive victory? In fact, Marcos was swept into
power on the hope by the masses of Filipino citizens that he
can restore the policies of the much beloved Ferdinand Marcos
Sr. His overwhelming victory, beyond the reach of the infamous
vote fraud capacities in the Philippines, serves to prove to the
Western world, at least, to those who appreciate the truth rather
than the fake news and information warfare now dominating the
Western press and governments, that his father and his
mother, Imelda Marcos, who worked closely together during the
Marcos era as President from 1965-1986, to build the
Philippines miracle—leading Southeast Asia in scientific,
industrial, medical and agricultural development, making it the
envy of its Asian neighbors.
Is this the way you remember the Marcos era? Is this the way
the Marcos legacy is reported in your newspapers? Rather,
what is reported ad nauseum is some variant of this lead article
in the May 9 Washington Post:
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator whose family
plundered billions of dollars, was elected president of the
Philippines by a landslide, according to preliminary results, 36
years after his father was ousted in a historic revolution. For
critics, it marks a further backward slide for a nation—once
admired as one of the few democracies in Southeast Asia—that
continues to trudge down the path of populism.
Whether Marcos will follow his brilliant father’s legacy is not
certain, but his campaign slogan was “Together, we shall rise
again,” reflecting both his call for unity in the heavily divided
country, but also clearly the revival of the Marcos family policies
and values. He also had the support of the outgoing President
Rodrigo Duterte, whose daughter Sara was elected Vice
President in an even more resounding margin of three to one.
The Marcos Sr. Record
In a series of articles in EIR, this author presented the true
history of the 1986 coup against Marcos, portrayed to the world
by the whorish Western press as a “People’s Power” removal of
a vile killer and dictator:
• December 24, 2004: “Shultz and the ‘Hitmen’ Destroyed the
Philippines”
• May 16, 2008: “Why the Philippines is Starving—How Shultz
and the WTO Destroyed the Philippines Green Revolution”
• June 14, 2019: “U.S.-China Cooperation in the
Philippines—Operation Marcos: A Development Plan for Asia
and the World”
Here are some highlights:
Agriculture: Marcos was the first president of the Philippines
who did not rise from the elite class, but was a “commoner,”
trained as a lawyer. Making the nation self-sufficient in rice and
corn for the first time, he emphasized irrigation in the major
food-producing regions of Luzon and Mindanao. Credit
facilities, mechanization, and the introduction of high-yield rice
varieties, which needed irrigation, resulted in the self-
sufficiency in rice by 1968.
Eliminating the “latifundista” structure of agriculture under a
landed aristocracy was only possible after Marcos imposed
martial law in 1972. Although martial law was primarily aimed at
countering the communist insurgency in the country, Marcos
used it to break many aspects of the oligarchical control over
the economy. He proclaimed that the entire nation was to be
considered a “land reform area,” and declared that all tenants
working land devoted primarily to rice and corn were to be the
owners of that land, up to a specified limit. Over enraged
opposition from the oligarchs, the program, together with
infrastructure and mechanization improvements, made a
quarter of a million peasants into landowners and increased
grain productivity by half. [Box: Why Marcos Was a Target for
Regime Change]
Nuclear Power: In 1974, Marcos contracted with
Westinghouse to build a nuclear power plant in the Philippines,
which was to be, and is still today, the only nuclear power plant
in Southeast Asia. As originally contracted, the plant would
have cost about $1 billion, and produced 1,200 MW of
electricity by 1984. However, with the anti-nuclear hysteria
following the Three Mile Island (inconsequential) accident in
1979, the Carter Administration imposed retroactive safety
regulations which contributed to more than doubling the cost of
construction. After the 1986 color revolution placed Cory
Aquino, of the latifundista Aquino clan, in power, the fully
completed Bataan nuclear power plant was mothballed, never
to produce a single watt of electricity. Aquino agreed to her
controllers’ demands in Washington that the Philippine people
pay every cent of the inflated cost, for nothing.
Industrial Projects: Marcos launched 11 major industrial
projects, shifting the focus of the nation’s manufacturing
economy from consumer goods to basic heavy industry. This
included steel, petro-chemical, pulp and paper, a copper
smelter, aluminum, phosphate fertilizer, diesel engines, gas
and oil, a coconut industry, and the nuclear power program.
The administration tripled the country’s road network, doubled
the electrification of the country’s homes, increased irrigated
cropland eight-fold, and achieved rice and corn self-sufficiency.
Minimum daily wage rates tripled, although inflation, driven by
international oil price hikes and exploding U.S. interest rates,
more than wiped out these wage increases.
Philippine Heart Center For Asia: In 1975, under First Lady
Imelda’s leadership, Marcos established by presidential decree
the Philippine Heart Center for Asia, open for both paying
patients and charity patients from across Southeast Asia. It stands, still today, as one of the foremost heart hospitals in Asia.
All of these programs—every one, except the Heart
Center—were totally destroyed by the 1986 coup. The
oligarchs, placed in power to “save freedom and democracy,”
scrapped all the industrial programs, ended food self-
sufficiency, privatized power and water utilities, shuttered the
nuclear power plant, and much more, at the command of Wall
Street and Washington. The Philippines, once the envy of its
Asian neighbors, soon became the basket case of Asia, with
mass poverty, transportation bottlenecks, mass unemployment
and a horrendous drug addiction crisis.
Marcos Jr.’s Program?
While BBM has said little about his intentions, there have been
some signals. “We really have to look at nuclear power,” he
said in March, addressing the exorbitant and rising cost of
electricity. Although he goes along with the undependable and
expensive green energy hype for wind and solar, he said a
South Korean proposal to rehabilitate the Bataan nuclear plant
should be revisited: “Let’s look at it again.”
Antonio “Butch” Valdes, the founder of the Philippine LaRouche
Society and of the new political party KDP (Katipunan ng
Demokratikong Pilipino), has long campaigned to reopen the
Bataan plant and to build more nuclear plants across the
country, especially the new small modular reactors (SMRs)
which are now coming on line. He also has campaigned to re-
nationalize the utilities away from the oligarchs who have
demonstrated their failure to run them on behalf of the
population. The potential for BBM to revive his father’s
movement for an actual transformation of the nation will depend
on his willingness to take on these issues against the U.S.-
influenced oligarchical families.
The financial lords of Wall Street and the City of London are
distraught over the Marcos/Duterte victories. Goldman Sachs
complained that—
[Marcos] has sounded a less cautionary note on rising public
debt levels, while emphasizing measures such as subsidizing
key agricultural inputs or capping key food prices to contain
inflation risks, alongside initiatives to revitalize the industrial
sector and SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] to
provide more jobs.
Goldman has threatened that if Marcos is so reckless as to try
to build the economy and improve the living standards of the
impoverished population, then investors may “pull out and
outsource their services elsewhere,” leading to “massive
layoffs.” Their support for the defeated Leni Robredo was in no
way hidden, praising her throughout the campaign for her
subservience to Western finance and her rabid attacks on
China.
The Key Role of China
Indeed, it is the Philippine relationship with China that is the
crucial issue which will determine the success or failure of the
new Marcos era. BBM’s mother, Imelda, played a critical
foreign policy role in her husband’s administration, leading a
delegation to Beijing in 1974, meeting twice with then Prime
Minister Zhou Enlai and once with Chairman Mao Zedong,
arranging for the purchase of Chinese oil and China’s purchase
of Philippine exports. Bong Bong accompanied his mother on
that trip, and treasures the pictures of his meeting with Zhou
Enlai. Mao pledged to Emelda that the Cultural Revolution
leaders who had been training communist insurgents in the
Philippines had been deposed, and that, henceforth, China
would respect Philippine sovereignty under the Chinese
Communist Party’s Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.
Today that relationship is even more important. As the Western
financial system collapses into a hyperinflationary breakdown, driving deadly inflation in the former colonial countries like the Philippines, and with Washington demanding that these impoverished nations kowtow to their efforts to destroy Russia and China, Marcos Jr. bravely asserted:
No matter what the superpowers are trying to do, we have to
work within the interest of the Philippines. We cannot allow
ourselves to be part of the foreign policy of other countries. We
have to have our own foreign policy.
Soon after his election in 2016, Duterte visited China, meeting
with President Xi Jinping, and other delegations from the
Philippines followed. A Six-Year Development Program for
Trade and Economic Cooperation was signed with China in
March 2017. In November 2018, President Xi visited the
Philippines and signed 29 cooperative agreements, lifting the
China-Philippine relationship to the level of “Comprehensive
Strategic Cooperation.” These agreements include bridges, a
dam, irrigation systems, highways, industrial parks, drug rehab
facilities, and more. While some of this is in process, the
COVID-19 pandemic, which had a devastating impact on the
Philippines, has stalled many of the projects. Hopefully, this
cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative will continue and
expand under the new Marcos administration.
Between them is Mike Defensor, candidate for mayor of
Quezon City.
Regarding the South China Sea, and the 2016 arbitration ruling
at The Hague which rejected Chinese claims over certain areas
also claimed by the Philippines, Marcos Jr. has said that since
China did not even attend the arbitration and does not recognize it, “it’s no longer available to us.” Nonetheless, he added, “We will not cede any one square inch to any country, particularly China, but will continue to engage and work on our national interest.” That will come through negotiations, he insisted, not confrontation.
As to relations with the U.S., Marcos Jr. insists that he respects
the historic relationship with the former colonial power, but told
a radio host:
If you let the U.S. come in, you make China your enemy. I think
we can come to an agreement [with China]. As a matter of fact,
people from the Chinese embassy are my friends. We have
been talking about that.
BBM was the special guest at an event in the Chinese
Embassy last October, when the Embassy invited him to cut
the ribbon for a new photo display of historic moments of
China-Philippines relations, including a photo of then Chinese
Premier Zhou Enlai and former President Ferdinand Marcos
signing the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of
Diplomatic Relations between the Philippines and China on
June 9, 1975—four years before the U.S. established official
relations with Beijing.
Speaking at that October event, Chinese Ambassador Huang
Xilian said:
While [we] always cherish and honor old friends, we hope that
more and more people from our two countries will be committed
to deepening our partnership and cooperation, so as to bring
more benefits to our two peoples and pass on our traditional
friendship from generation to generation. Together, we are
opening up a brighter future! As to the oligarchs’ view of BBM,
Antonio Carpio, the former Supreme Court Judge who led the
Philippines’ legal team at the arbitral tribunal, said Marcos’s
stance in regard to the South China Sea was a “betrayal. He’s
taken the side of China against the Philippines.”
Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte had been more direct in
cutting ties with the U.S. neo-colonial policies, especially the
military agreements, although he has since softened and has
allowed the U.S. to set up military operations within five
Philippine Army Bases. How Marcos will deal with the U.S.
military presence, especially in the context of the mounting
belligerence of the “NATO in Asia” campaign by London and
Washington, is yet to be seen. There is a very real potential
that NATO will provoke China into military action against
Taiwan by threatening to recognize Taiwan as an independent
country, undermining China’s sovereignty over Taiwan under
the “One China” policy acknowledged by the U.S. in 1979 when
they recognized the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as
the “sole legal Government of China.” It has been shown by the
NATO provocations of Russia over Ukraine that the ultimate
purpose was to create a justification to wage direct economic
warfare, and proxy military warfare against Russia within
Ukraine, threatening a nuclear confrontation.
One complicating factor for Washington is that under current
U.S. law, Marcos Jr. and the rest of his family are not allowed
to enter the U.S. The family was held in contempt of court for
refusing to co-operate with the District Court of Hawaii ruling in
1995 which ordered the Marcos family to pay $2 billion of what
the court falsely declared “plundered wealth,” to be handed out
to people they declared to be “victims of Marcos Sr.’s rule.” If
the current madness in Washington is not stopped, to continue
the drive for world war and to do nothing about the collapse of
the entire Western financial system, it were better Ferdinand
Marcos Jr. stays away.
Why Marcos Was a Target for Regime Change
Ferdinand Marcos Sr. wrote the book, An Ideology for
Filipinos, published in 1983. The following excerpt exemplifies
why he was targeted for regime change:
The western philosophic tradition locates man’s uniqueness in
his rationality: it defines man as a rational animal. The idea of
man does not necessarily lead to the philosophy of humanism,
for the concept of rationality could be construed
mechanistically: as a movement of thought that follows a set of
inflexible principles. The Cartesian conception of reason is
mechanistic in this sense. For it regards thinking as something
that can be pursued in one way: beginning with clear and
distinct notions, the mind moves forward, step by step,
following only the dictates of logic. What Cartesianism
overlooks is that element of creativity so essential to the
concept of human rationality. The recognition of man’s
creativity, or that impulse to create new forms and new modes
of coping with the demands of reality, has tremendous
implications—not only for a philosophy of man but also for
social policy and thus for ideology.
In a sense, we can regard the history of civilization as the
history of human creativity. The so-called scientific revolutions
represent man’s disengagement from traditional modes of
thinking….
The humanistic thrust of our ideology precisely takes into
account the fact that apart form being rational, in the Cartesian
sense of the term, man has a gift of creativity that expresses
itself not only in his art but also in his science and social
institutions. This creativity is what makes man truly human. In
fact, it seems more appropriate to define man not as a rational
animal, but as a creative being.
20 May 2022