Election days are indeed coming AND I'm getting tired of the Pinklawans. No, it's not because I'm a Marcos loyalist (which seems to be the case of Benign0 of Get Real Philippines) or that I don't like outgoing Vice President Leni Loud Robredo. In fact, it's possible to be NEITHER for the spoiled son of a dictator (Bobong Marcos) or for the loudmouth that's Leni Loud. I was out of ideas but I read through GRP and found an article written by ChinoF. I'm afraid that there's so much focuses on the Marcoses ALONE and NOT WHAT THEY DID that assured us the MARCOS YEARS WEREN'T THE GOLDEN YEARS. It would be best to consult other sources than just the Pinklawan sources. I viewed The Kingmaker which I feel was a bit one-sided since it had interviews with Etta Rosales. However, both the late Ninoy Aquino and the late Noynoy Aquino also experienced it FIRSTHAND. Rosales herself was really a victim of martial law even if I find her work as a human rights chairperson sloppy. It was said Ninoy was once a good friend of Marcos before their rivalry took place.
It's very easy to talk about how vile the late Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. was. Yet, I'm still amazed at how Carlos P. Garcia is buried at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani when his Filipino First caused the Philippines to FAIL and Marcos Sr. to later succeed in his plans. Now, I decided to take some points from the GRP article and my own twist.
If the Marcoses (and insert OTHER NAMES) will be put away then the Philippines' corruption will end
This is one bogus argument. Once again, if you think I'm defending the Marcoses, PLEASE READ THOROUGHLY AND STOP MISSING THE POINT. This is one of the dumbest arguments I read because the problem is more systemic than anything. A wrong understanding of what the system means is something. The system isn't just who's in charge (Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, Aquino, Duterte) but the kind of system that runs the Philippines. The Philippines' constitution needs to be checked EVEN before the Marcoses came into power.
I could remember listening to the speech of Ninoy in Boston. One of the many things he had said was the illegality of the 1973 Constitution. Marcos issued envelopes and the next thing to happen was a new constitution that wasn't even stable. Ninoy had mentioned that "we had a parliamentary without a parliament" - meaning it was a sham. Ninoy mentioned many important points about the Marcos' corruption. The joke that Ninoy said about the Japanese and the letter "l" and "r" really made sense such as, "You Filipinos are a very rucky people. You have a president who roves you and a first lady who roves you more." It was funny to listen to. Maybe, I'm wrong about Ninoy not being a hero or a power-hungry opportunist like Starscream was in The Transformers. I confess Ninoy was partly my inspiration for writing this blog!
What allowed the Marcoses to rise up in the first place? A FAULTY SYSTEM. The constitution that was before him allowed the Marcoses to rise. The 1973 Constitution got repealed. Eventually, we had the 1987 Constitution which idiots said, "There's no mistake in it. Only the leaders." Such an argument is VERY SELF-DEFEATING. Not even the 1987 Constitution is set in stone as amendments are welcome based on constitutional assembly. Yet, there was no provision that disallowed the Marcoses to return. Guess what? Marcos Sr. may have died but his wife Imelda Romualdez-Marcos even tried to run for president, Bobong returned and became a senator, and so did Imee Marcos-Manotoc. The late Lee Kuan Yew even dared to berate them one way or another in From Third World to First.
So, let's say that one day the Marcoses rode an airplane and it fell into the ocean. The nation celebrates that the Marcoses are all gone. Another scenario is to pass an anti-Marcos law that will prohibit descendants of Marcos Sr. from running into politics. The nation may celebrate that too. However, will that fix corruption? I tried to talk about the need to shift the parliamentary and the same, "IT'LL NEVER WORK! MARCOS HISTORY PROVES IT!" is really stupid. If they just listened to Ninoy's speech - they'd figure out that Ninoy was pointing out that Marcos Sr.'s "parliament" was just for show. Marcos Sr.'s arrangement that he can't be dissolved by parliament but he can dissolve it is like Emperor Palpatine and the Imperial Senate. Palpatine COULD dissolve the Imperial Senate but not the other way around. Marcos Sr. later picked Cesar Virata as a "prime minister" whom Lee Kuan Yew described as a "sitting duck". Think about it that's the very system itself that allowed the Marcoses to rise into power.
Marcos Sr. was overthrown during the EDSA Revolution. EDSA still remains important in history as both an achievement AND a failure. The achievement was that Marcos Sr. was overthrown. However, the failure is that it failed to learn WHY the Marcos Years weren't the golden years. The 1973 Constitution had to be replaced. Yet, the new constitution was so hurriedly written. It's a shame, really, that Filipino First Policy still remained even after Marcos was overthrown. What gains after Marcos? Sure, I can blog now like this. However, has the quality of life really improved because economic protectionism went on for a long time even after the Marcos dictatorship was overthrown?
Besides, what's needed to prevent more Marcos-type dictators would be the parliamentary system. Do I need to repeat for a MILLION TIMES that the Marcos Years were a MOCKERY of the parliamentary system? If there was a real parliament - corruption would be easily eradicated. It's easy to brag that Noynoy did some anti-corruption model. However, neither Noynoy nor outgoing President Rodrigo R. Duterte could match up to Mahathir bin Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew. A real parliamentary system would've encouraged active healthy debates between the government and the opposition. Corruption will be easily exposed on both sides because transparency is a requirement. A parliamentary system helped Mohamad do his famous chainsaw against corruption.
If the Philippines recovers the Marcos Wealth then the Philippines will recover
This is another stupid scenario comparable to Juan Tamad waiting for the guava to fall from the tree. I may have been a critic of Noynoy (and now I'm a critic of both him and Duterte) but he did SOME economic reforms. In fact, some of Duterte's finished projects were there because Noynoy had some purchases later in the latter's administration. If Noynoy just sat down at the Malacanang waiting for the guava to fall down - there wouldn't be any economic improvement at all. The Philippines wouldn't enter the rising status either.
I remembered how I argued with a crazy woman about her wasteful lifestyle when I was in college. I told her that it's because of people like her that the Philippines doesn't improve. I could remember many of her idiotic comments such as, "It's the fault of the rich that we're poor!" What I might consider to be a really dumb argument is that Marcos made Singapore rich with the ill-gotten wealth or something like that. It's just baloney because Singapore was already starting to crawl out of its third-world status during the Marcos Years. Lee Kuan Yew was a contradiction to Marcos Sr. Lee Hsien Loong is a contradiction to Bobong. Lee Hsien Loong served in the office while Lee Kuan Yew was the prime minister. Unlike the Marcoses, the Lees were good public servants because of the PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM. The parliamentary system would ensure that fewer political dynasties by popularity happens. Credibility-based political dynasties are welcome and shouldn't be discouraged either. The Marcoses only ran a mock parliament. So how did Marcos make Singapore rich? That argument is just stupid to say that the helicopter dropped off money there before going to Hawaii where Marcos Sr. died in exile.
It's true that Lee Kuan Yew mentioned INSIGNIFICANT amounts of wealth that were recovered. True, but the Marcos Wealth can't solve all the country's problems. I'm still in favor of recovering it. However, just think what if Germany decided not to do anything after the fall of Nazi Germany and later, the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall fell and reunited Germany. If Germany just waited to recover Hitler's wealth then do you think Germany will recover? The same can be true if Deng Xiaoping would've just decided to wait to recover the wealth of Mao Zedong. Instead, the solution has been to create economic programs to enrich the Philippines WHILE trying to recover the Marcos Wealth. It's because the Marcos Wealth recovery ISN'T the end of it all solution but just a one-shot deal to get more money. It's pretty much like winning the sweepstakes.
What's the use of getting the Marcos Wealth if there's no real sustainable plan to generate MORE WEALTH? What if one day all the Marcos Wealth was recovered. However, there are still plenty of debts to repay such as infrastructure projects and COVID-19 expenses. Would the Marcos wealth recover the economy? Granted, how much of the Marcos Wealth is really left knowing the lifestyle of Imelda Romualdez-Marcos? She has thousands of pairs of shoes while the rest of the nation starved during the Marcos Years. What's the use of whining about the Marcoses stealing while denying that economic protectionism was also another cause of the economic crash? The Marcos cronies enjoyed what they enjoyed because of one policy - ECONOMIC PROTECTIONISM. I guess not knowing about Marcos' protectionist policies continued the same phobia for decades even after EDSA about foreign direct investors (FDIs) being invaders.
A real sustainable plan would be to invite more foreign direct investments (FDI). Some might say it's the Marcoses' fault that FDI was low. Do they know WHY it was so low? It's not just because of human rights violations. Marcos Sr. was nearly the Philippines' own version of Kim Il Sung when there was but ONE STATION. Bobong could've become the emperor and Sandro would be crown prince if Marcos Sr. wasn't overthrown. Protectionism forbade FDIs from owning more than a certain percentage. It's said it's to protect the local businesses. Instead, it made the local businesses stunt and the oligarchs grow in power instead. Marcos Sr.'s economic policies were MEANT to discourage FDI in the first place.
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