Homecoming for the Marcos Family in the Philippines — Just Don’t Mention the Dictatorship

Two topics are taboo for the Philippines’ newly inaugurated president, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.First is the record of harsh dictatorship that marked the 20 years and two months in which his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., ruled the country before dying in exile at Hawaii in 1989. Second is the corruption that resulted in him and his wife Imelda, 92, socking away what is said to be about $10 billion in foreign accounts.Having avoided political debates during his campaign for president, Mr. Marcos Jr. was eager at his inauguration Thursday to praise what he said were his father’s achievements while glossing over or ignoring the past.“I once knew a man who saw how little had been achieved since independence,” the 64-year-old said before a carefully vetted crowd in front of Manila’s National Museum, his tone rising and falling in solemn oratorical style. “In a land of people with the greatest potential for achievement, they were poor. He got it done, sometimes with support, sometimes without.” His father, he said, “built more and better roads, produced more rice than all administrations before his.”That was about the closest that Mr. Marcos Jr. came to suggesting that the senior Marcos during his years as president had encountered such tremendous opposition that he felt compelled to declare martial law for a decade, during which tens of thousands were jailed and several thousand killed.Not mentioned, of course, was the detail that his father, his mother, and he and his two sisters plus a number of cronies had to clamber aboard two U.S. Air Force planes that flew them to Honolulu in February 1986, at the end of a bloodless “People Power Revolution” that led to the presidency of Corazon Aquino, doyenne of another wealthy family. She promised sweeping reforms after the assassination of her husband, Benigno Aquino, in August 1983 triggered the populist movement that precipitated Marcos’s downfall.One obvious reform dating from Aquino’s tenure was that a president could serve only one six-year term. Yet the latest outgoing president, Rodrigo Duterte, is sure to retain a measure of his power thanks to the election of his daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, as vice president.Running on separate tickets, Mr. Marcos Jr. received 31 million of the 55 million votes that were cast on May 9 while Ms. Duterte-Carpio, who had been mayor of the Duterte family stronghold of Davao, a major port on the southern island of Mindanao, did even better, winning 32 million votes.Nor was there any hint of the wide internet campaign that propelled the rehabilitation of Marcos Sr., whose body was buried in the National Heroes’ Cemetery in 2016 in the first year of Mr. Duterte’s term. Activists protested the burial, which previous governments had refused to carry out, just as they turned out Thursday — well outside the grounds of the National Museum — to demonstrate against Mr. Marcos Jr.Overlooking the protests, along with his father’s record of dictatorship and the corruption of his parents, the new president played upon the theme of unity. “You the people have spoken, and it is resounding,” he said to a ripple of applause from several hundred people gathered on the broad lawn in front of the museum. “When my calls for unity started to resonate with you, it echoed your yearnings,” he said. “You rejected the politics of division.”Beside him on the steps of the National Museum were most of his family, including his wife; his mother, Imelda; his two sisters, Imee and Irene; along with Vice President Duterte-Carpio, who’d been inaugurated in a separate ceremony the day before but also assumed office Thursday. Imelda Marcos, the matriarch of the family, gleamed with delight as she savored the triumph of the family’s return to the Spanish-built Malacañang Palace, the seat of presidential power, where her 3,000 pairs were found stashed in the basement after her departure in 1986. The corruption cases against her and her late husband, in America and in the Philippines, presumably will go nowhere amid endless legal maneuverings.Mr. Marcos Jr. may also have to fend off an investigation by the International Criminal Court in the Hague into the killing during Mr. Duterte’s rule of upwards of 30,000 people caught up in his war against drugs. The court suspects “crimes against humanity”; Philippine officials say only about 6,000 were killed, and those in battles with policemen rooting out the drug trade.While Mr. Duterte’s war against drugs aroused widespread international condemnation, it contributed to his popularity at home. Mr. Marcos is expected to keep on fighting drugs but at a lower-key, less violent level.The renaissance of Marcos family rule has placed Washington in a delicate position. American pressure during the presidency of Ronald Reagan played a major part in the demise of the senior Marcos after it became apparent that he was too unpopular to be able to go on as president.The White House, sensitive to the need to maintain decent relations with the Philippines, with which it’s still bound by a treaty, did not want to offend the new president. Mr. Duterte during his six years in office made a point of cozying up to China, and Mr. Marcos Jr. has visited Beijing a number of times even though China claims the entire South China Sea in which the Philippines controls several islets.Considering all the annoying issues, there was no chance President Biden would attend the inaugural. Vice President Kamala Harris seemed a little too high level, too. That left it to the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, who was happy to fill in as head of a large delegation full of friends of the Philippines. Surely, en masse, they were enough to compete with the emissary from Beijing, Vice President Wang Qishan.

Homecoming for the Marcos Family in the Philippines — Just Don’t Mention the Dictatorship

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