Gonzales, Christian Paul E.

BSN 2 – 1

If you hear the name, “Ferdinand Edralin Marcos”, what comes in to your mind? Yes, there are many significant
issues that we can remember of him, some are good and some are bad. He might have lost his “respectable personality”.
Yet, we can’t deny that there are many projects he did for the good of our country, for us to remember him. I then invite
you to listen attentively as I recount to you some significant phases of his life.

Ferdinand Edralin Marcos was born in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte in northwestern Luzon. He was the first son of
Mariano Marcos, a politician, and Josefa Edralin, a teacher. During his early years, in the 1935 election year his father’s
political enemy, Julio Nalundasan, was murdered after winning the Ilocos Norte seat in the national legislature. To this
effect, Marcos was arrested but he successfully petitioned the Philippine Supreme Court for release on bail, allowing him
to complete his education. In 1939 Marcos received a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of the Philippines and
subsequently passed the bar exam with high scores. Later that year he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to a
minimum of ten years in prison. While in prison he wrote his own appeal, and in 1940 he argued his own case in front of
Supreme Court justice José P. Laurel, who overturned his murder conviction.

Marcos worked as an assistant to the first president of the newly independent republic, Manuel Roxas. At that
time, Roxas had split from the Nationalist Party—up until then the dominant political party in the Philippines—to form
the Liberal Party. Marcos, as a Liberal Party candidate, won the Ilocos Norte seat in the Philippine House of
Representatives in 1949; he held the post for three terms, until 1959. In 1954, meanwhile, he married Imelda
Romualdez, a former beauty-pageant queen from Leyte, and they quickly became glamorous members of the Philippine
elite.

With the intention of running for presidency, Marcos ran as the Nationalist Party candidate against incumbent
president Diosdado Macapagal. Marcos presented himself as the individual who could break a long pattern of corruption
and inadequate leadership. He also had enthusiastic support from American president Lyndon B. Johnson and the
international business community.

Ferdinand Marcos became the president-dictator of the Republic of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. Marcos
was twice elected to the presidency before he declared martial law and seized dictatorial powers in 1972. Many public-
work projects, financed by foreign loans, helped the economy to develop rapidly. In addition, Imelda Marcos launched a
series of prestige projects in Manila, including the building of museums and grand hotels. However, his authoritarian
regime is remembered for its rampant corruption at the highest levels of government and its suppression of political
dissent and the democratic process.

Ninoy Aquino’s death proved to be the galvanizing force in Marcos’s downfall. A massive nonviolent protest
known as the People Power Movement forced him from office in 1986. Through the aircraft supplied by the US, the
Marcoses and their family and close associates left the Philippines for Hawaii, on February 26, 1986. Thus, ended the
rule of a powerful dictator.

Ferdinand Marcos had the intellect, the leadership skills, and the opportunity to be the greatest president of the
Philippines in the 20th century. Surely, former President Marcos is not completely bad. We must not be unfair. Let us
also remember him too, on his “brighter side of life”.

Before I end, I would like to leave a food for thought and it goes this way “While you are on earth, be at your
best because you will not come again this way!”.