FERDINAND EDRALIN MARCOS
Ferdinand E. Marcos, born September 11, 1917, was the eldest of the four children of Mariano Marcos and Josefa Edralin.
Mariano Marcos was a self-disciplined and ambitious man who graduated young from a Manila teaching school who later became a schoolmaster in Laoag, Ilocos Norte. He plunged into politics and was twice elected as Congressman. Josefa Edralin was a landowner’s daughter and a onetime town beauty who herself, chose to teach. While Mariano immersed himself in politics, Josefa took care of their children, Ferdinand, Pacifico, Elizabeth and Fortuna.
Fructuoso Edralin, Ferdinand’s maternal grandfather, was a strong influence. The old man regaled him with stories of the 1896 Revolution, of the Ilocano heroes he could only read about in schoolbooks. These tales were to instill into him a passionate concern for his country and an ambition to write history himself in his own time.Marcos attended college at the University of the Philippines. His record of excellence went beyond the classroom. He won honors in the University boxing, swimming and wrestling teams. He joined the newly-formed ROTC and rose to the rank of cadet major. He won the first gold medal offered by General MacArthur for proficiency in military science. His baritone oratory enlivened the school debating team. He became the most bemedaled debater, winning the President Quezon Medal and was awarded the University President’s medal for obtaining the highest scholastic average over the full course of his college work.
The demands on the student’s time of leadership and sports took their toll. He lost his scholarship. Ferdinand went home to the province to ask money for tuition from his grandmother.
At that time, his father lost the Congressional seat twice to Julio Nalundasan. The new elections pitted them against each other once more and Mariano Marcos lost. Three nights after the elections, Nalundasan was killed by a sniper. The Marcoses were the main suspects.
A few days before the Christmas of 1938, Marcos sat at his evening review classes. In a few months he was to graduate and the honor of being awarded magna cum laude awaited him. Constabulary soldiers broke into his room and arrested him on the charge of killing Nalundasan. The coming trial was a national sensation. In the dark cell of the Laoag jail, Marcos mustered enough courage and energy to study for his coming bar exams. Outside the jail, he organized his own defense in the courts.
Defeated in the lower courts, he appealed to the Supreme Court. Though technically still not a lawyer, he obtained permission to argue his own defense. As he contradicted the testimony of the state witness, newspaper headlines announced his topping the examinations—with the highest marks ever achieved in the history of the Philippine bar. A short while later, the Supreme Court acquitted him.
During World War II
Marcos was called to arms three weeks before Pearl Harbor and spent the first days of the war as combat intelligence officer of the 21st Infantry Division. He was among the last troops to cross into Bataan.
There, the Fil-American troops braced for a last stand against an invasion force of 85,000 men. Though all around them the last outposts of Western power in Southeast Asia were falling one by one, the defenders of Bataan and the nearby island-fortress of Corregidor held on through the summer of 1942, denying the Japanese easy access to the strategic South Pacific, from where the massive Allied counterattack was eventually to come.In mid-January, Lieutenant Macros, accompanied by three eighteen-year-old recruits, penetrated behind the Japanese lines, killed more than 50 of the enemy and destroyed the deadly mortars that pinned down General Mateo Capinpin’s 21st Division. He was later captured and tortured yet escaped to rally elements of various divisions in a six-day running battle on the banks of two Bataan rivers that threw the enemy back. For this he was promoted captain and recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The last days of Bataan, Captain Marcos spent guiding the American and Filipino officers chosen to lead guerrilla resistance through the Japanese lines. Ironically captured when he himself tried to escape the fallen fortress, he walked the Death March to the prison camp in Capas, Tarlac. He spent four months there overcome with jaundice, dysentery and malaria. His spirit never broke.
Released in early August 1942, he was soon imprisoned again, this time at Fort Santiago, the notorious Manila prison chamber. He was tortured for eight days to tell where the guerrilla leaders he had escorted through the Bataan lines had burrowed but he refused to say a word. Finally he led his captors to an ambush in Mt. Banahaw and escaped to join the guerrillas.
He spent the next two year fighting in the hills, trying to unite the divided guerrilla bands into one disciplined force against the Japanese. His name became renowned as on of the finest guerrilla leaders of Luzon.
Though only 27, Marcos had set records for courage and earned himself 28 medals at the end of the war. He spent the last days of the war as civil affairs officer of Northern Luzon. He was in command of the entire Ilocos region, which was to be his political base as freedom was restored to his country, and the work of rebuilding began.
The Political Career
It was his job to set up civilian administration in the provinces Volckmann’s guerrillas controlled. His leadership was as excellent as always, and he dealt out justice to outlaws and established unimpeachable personalities in positions of command. His ambition, however was to enter Harvard and earn a doctorate in corporate law. He declined President Manuel Roxas’ offer of a seat in Congress and went to practice law in Manila in March 1946. He was preparing to go to the American university the following spring.
Marcos was later persuaded to become a professional politician. He chose his father’s old domain and went into his new career with spirit. He told the crowds in Ilocos Norte that if he were elected Congressman, "I pledge you an Ilocano President in 20 years." (He made it into presidency in 16 years.)With a 70% vote, he was sent off to Congress and thrice became Ilocos Norte’s representative to the legislature. Congressman Marcos was an activist presence—but he was a scholarly and introverted activist, unlike the boisterous, gladhanding politician typical of that time. He was unafraid to champion an unpopular cause if he thought it just. The Manila Times wrote, "He played a large part in developing a new conscience in the lower house," which was a comment in regards to his integrity during the time of carpetbaggers. Economic policy, agricultural modernization, the protection and extension of civil rights, the enhancement of professional ethics in politics and civil service were Congressman Marcos’ interests. He was the one who wrote the original land-reform code in 1952, as well as other seminal bills on government incentives to commerce and industry.
In 1954, he met Imelda Romualdez in the Congress cafeteria. Despite the simplicity of her appearance—she was in casual houseclothes and slippers—she impressed him. He knew at that moment she would have to be his wife.
Though they seemed an unlikely match, Marcos being a Liberal and an Ilocano and Imelda being a Nacionalista by family tradition and a Visayan, he pursued her. They married at a civil ceremony in Baguio after 11 days of courtship. Two weeks later, on May 1, 1954, they were married at the Pro Cathedral of San Miguel in Manila. President Ramon Magsaysay, the principal sponsor, held the breakfast reception in Malacañang Palace, where 3,000 of Manila’s official and social elite were invited.
They were celebrated by the media, their wedding publicized as the "Wedding of the Year." The groom was among the most outstanding young politicians in the country, whose public image as a reputable trial lawyer and legislative figure was magnified by his dashing, charismatic personality. The bride carried a name which was respected in both political circles and social register, and whose beauty and fine voice could charm gatherings.
After the marriage, Marcos had his house in San Juan renovated and added a wing for his law office so that he could spend as much time as he could with his family.
The First Couple decided on a small family and spaced the birth of their children accordingly. Their first child, Imelda (Imee), was born in 1955, followed by Ferdinand Jr. (Bongbong, Marcos’ war-name as a guerrilla leader) in 1958, then Irene in 1960, as Marcos was beginning his first term in the Senate. (He was elected into the senate in 1959.)All through this time, he was moving inevitably up the political ladder. At this time his party was a tiny minority in national politics, yet he came first in the winners’ column to the upper house—and became what the Times called "the young elder statesman."
At this point, he was still barely over 40. He was acknowledged leader of the North. His following in eight Luzon provinces, especially among the Ilocanos, was unequaled. The laws he drew up resulted in material prosperity for large parts of the country. He was a Congressional watchdog against corruption, waste and ineptitude, and he had earned a reputation as an honest politician.
It was on December 30, 1965, that Marcos took up the leadership of a nation in crisis. Self-reliance and hard work to uplift the economic and social condition of all the people, nationalism at home and greater independence in foreign policy became the goals of Marcos’ life.
His first term was innovative and inspirational. He invigorated both populace and bureaucracy. 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).
Marcos and Imelda’s partnership had an almost similar charm as that of Juan Peron and Eva Duarte. Imelda proved her worth in their marriage by working side by side with her husband. As First Lady, she busied herself with social welfare and cultural projects that complemented Marcos’ work in economics and foreign affairs.
Imelda began restoring Intramuros as a tourist attraction, and started filling in waterfront on Manila Bay on which to build a sprawling Cultural Center. This was followed by a film center where she could stage film festivals, Miss Universe contests and professional boxing matches between such reigning champions as Joe Frazier and Mohammed Ali. She sponsored tree planting and beautification and cleanliness drives at Luneta Park and around historic cemeteries.
Her social welfare program included Christmas bags, home gardens, disaster relief and a project called Save-a-Life-in-Every-Barrio. Funding came from various sources, both local and foreign.
Marcos’ four years of presidency earned him a record that surpassed that of any of the five presidents before him. In 1969, he was returned to a second term—the first Filipino President to be so re-elected—and with the highest majority ever recorded in Philippine electoral history.
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. 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.
