Are the elections longest in history. It has cost decades to whiten the family frames the image of the dictator to return to the presidency of Philippines. His son, also Ferdinand, will achieve it this Monday, closing the circle of picturesque national politics: the clan that fled by helicopter from Manila in 1991 after fleecing the poorest country on the continent is now expected to fight against the corruption.
Ferdinand Marcos Junior has more than 50% voting intention in all the polls, an ocean away from Leni Robredo, vice president and human rights lawyer. Her victory will culminate the vital mission of her mother, Imelda Marcos, who has revealed in recent years his longing for the power of the first lady. It is the last cartridge of the clan because he is already 92 years old and nobody sees a Marcos as president without his formidable political influence behind the curtains. To his son, also known as bongbong either bbmAt 64 years old, no other merits are known than his surname and Imelda’s herculean task of rewriting his legacy.
That conjugal dictatorship it is tied to the most brutal and corrupt days in recent Philippine history. Marcos became president in 1965 and seven years later he imposed a martial law which he raised a decade later. The dissent was crushed: some 70,000 prisoners, 34,000 tortured and 3,240 dead, according to Amnesty International. The popular weariness bordered on boiling and the loss of support from the Army recommended the couple to flee on the run in 1986. The magnitude of the robbery was then sensed.
1,220 pairs of shoes
Imelda has remembered how she hid the diamonds in diapers in the previous hours and the American customs seized 24 suitcases with gold bars. The 1,220 pairs of luxurious shoes of Imelda in a country where many go barefoot epitomize kleptocracy. They were valued at $10 million by Christie’s and Sotheby’s when they were interested in auctioning them in 2005. The couple bought iconic properties in New York for cash, such as the Crown Building (just disdained the empire state because “it was too ostentatious,” Imelda clarified), he collected works by Miguel Angel either Botticelli and accumulated gems and brilliants in bulk. Mark was appointed second most corrupt leader of all time by the organization Transparency International, behind only the Indonesian Suharto. Aquinas Heart, his successor and widow of a murdered opponent, created a commission to recover what was stolen. The 2,240 million dollars obtained are a trifle compared to the 5,000 or 10,000 million total.
Those certainties have been buried by a feverish revisionism. The defenders of the clan point to an inheritance of gold that Marcos had received before presiding over the country as the origin of the fortune and put the investments in infrastructures of his mandate before the outrages. Those are remembered cultural centers, nuclear plants and hospitals that were raised then when the covid has laid bare the national shortcomings. The story ignores the fact that that nuclear power plant, built with foreign money, never opened, or that the economic boom of the first years ended in 1984 with the biggest drop in GDP since the Second World War.
ostrich strategy
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Several factors explain the collective amnesia. Half of the voters did not live that time and the textbooks do not affect it. The most accessible information is in the social mediataken on board by the dynasty’s acolytes, where snappy videos on TikTok and YouTube describe the dictator as a philanthropist. The four hours and fifteen minutes on average daily that Filipinos spend on social media gives them global leadership. It has also helped the ostrich strategy of Bongbong, as unbecoming of a presidential candidate as it is understandable. She has protected her slack edge fleeing exposure, no debates and just a handful of interviewsaware that his lack of waist in awkward questions ruined his past vice-presidential candidacy.
The chronicles stubbornly allude to that youth ignorant as the only driving force behind Marcos, but his leadership in the will to vote in all age sectors forces us to look further. The Filipinos have collected inept and corrupt presidents, both dapper and overwhelmed by the entrenched problems of a disastrous country. A quarter of the population is below the poverty line and just lead the cheap hand export to the mainland. Therein lies his detachment from orthodox politics and the triumph of the tongue-tied and feral Rodrigo Duterte after promising that he would end the drug by killing drug addicts. From Bongbong there is no news about his strength but he trusts his genes.