Ferdinand Marcos’s Regime In about two months it will be the elections here in the Philippines. As I ponder about the candidates for president my mind goes back to all the history lectures I had about Ferdinand Marcos and his regime. He held the presidential seat for about twenty-one years and his time in power and even after power has always been controversial. I usually take cabs to get around, and it is common for cabs to have their radio on usually on the news station. Here in the Philippines, it is almost as if politics is the only news.
It is what you’ll hear all day. As I sat in a cab one day and listened with the driver about the top presidential candidates Ninoy Aquino and Manny Villar, I started thinking about how either of them would lead this country that is struggling. I asked the driver who he was going to vote for and he said he didn’t know. He said he wished that there was someone like Ferdinand Marcos that he could vote for. Someone who will lead with a clear vision of the country’s direction. When he dropped me home, I researched about the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos.
I asked myself how the taxi driver could ask for a person like Ferdinand Marcos while his regime was covered with controversies but then I recalled what my grandfather had told me years ago. He said that during the time of Marcos the Philippine was strong economically and that the country was advancing on an international level. My grandfather also told me though that although the country was strong it still had its flaws such as corruption, embezzlement issues and human rights violations. I believe that Marcos’s regime in the philippines was a significant event in history.
There are frightening unproven stories about kidnap and murder and people disappearing during his years in power but I would like to have been there to see first-hand how the Philippines was during his rule. They say that it was beautiful, advancing and developing at a rather fast rate. I want to be able to judge for myself if Marcos was a good president or a corrupt and abusive one. I want to be there and see if his time was better than the one I live in now, if the Philippines was better under the hand of a man with a so called iron fist.
Maybe a leader with an iron fist is what this country needs. As I researched about his regime I also came across an article of Marcos being blamed for Benigno Aquino’s assassination. As I read more about it I learned more about Aquino and compared him with his son who is now possible the next president of the Philippines. Aquino wanted Marcos’s regime to stop, if he had not been assassinated though will he be able to lead the country in the same level Marcos did without ruling with an iron fist?
Will his son now we a good president if he is elected? Marcos’s rule was both a good and bad time in Philippine history, its so confusing but so sognificant, so controversial from economic strength which was good to martial law which people see as bad. It was a turning point in the country’s history. That is why I think it is significant, that’s why I chose it as my paper. That’s why if I could travel in time I’d like to be there to see it for myself.
