Ferdinand Marcos Jr., namesake of his father, the Philippine dictator, wants to finish “rehabilitating” his family by becoming president of the country.
The Marcoses made an astonishing return to politics in the three decades following the popular uprising that toppled the dictator in 1986, and after an exile in the United States.
Marcos Jr., nicknamed “Bongbong”, currently 64 years old, led this comeback. In 2016, he narrowly lost the vice presidency when Rodrigo Duterte acceded to the first magistracy in a parallel consultation.
The Marcos Jr.’s ties to his father, a bloody oppressor for long years under martial law, divide the country.
But his campaign on social networks targeting the youngest, who did not live through the dictatorship, has proven very effective, affirming his popularity and, for critics, “rewriting” history.
Polls put him on track for landslide victory on May 9which would mark the return to the presidential palace of a family that fled into exile more than 35 years ago.
Marcos Jr. was in a British boarding school in 1972 when his father imposed martial law, sparking a bloody crackdown on dissidents and large-scale corruption.
He defended his father’s regime with the strong economic growth and public spending under this law as an argument, covering up the corruption and poor management that impoverished the country.
Although he has recognized that that period was marked by human rights violations, he minimizes them.
The presidential candidate affirms that he was then too young to assume any responsibility related to his father’s dictatorship, but his detractors recall that he was provincial governor of Ilocos Norte, a family feud, between 1983 and 1986, when the “patriarch” of the Marcos clan still held the power.
In addition, in 1985 he was appointed president of a satellite services company under government control.
“The haters will hate”
This company was one of many fronts used to transfer illicit profits abroad, according to an asset recovery agency established after the fall of the father.
The dictator died in Hawaii in 1989, and the family was later allowed to return to the Philippines, where he resumed a political career, exploiting local loyalties to achieve successive high office.
The current president, Rodrigo Duterte, was more supportive, referring to the former dictator as “the best president of all time”, organizing his burial at the Heroes Cemetery in Manila.
In addition, the family was favored thanks to the fact that subsequent governments have also been denounced for corruption and the anger fueled by an eternal division between rich and poor.
Returned from exile, Marcos Jr. won his father’s seat in the Congress of Ilocos Norte in 1992, six years later he became provincial governor and national senator in 2010, just like his sister today.
Imelda, his mother, held a seat in the lower house of parliament for three terms, later leaving it to a nephew.
Duterte, whose 2016 victory he attributed to patronage of the Marcoses, was a longtime supporter of “Bongbong.”
Both families forged a fearsome alliance, in which Marcos Jr. teamed up with Sara, Duterte’s daughter, today a vice-presidential candidate. However, Duterte Sr. has been more critical in recent months of Marcos Jr., calling him “weak.”
In a recent interview, he responded to this criticism with a chorus from Taylor Swift’s song “Shake it off.”
“The haters gonna hate!” (The haters are going to hate), she launched. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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