In the Philippines, Marcos Jnr ‘rebrands’ family name as he charts ‘progressive’ path
- President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has been trying to put a positive spin on his father’s dark legacy since assuming office in 2022
- Some analysts argue Marcos Jnr is also trying to be more ‘forward-looking’ in crafting his own legacy on his own terms
For the first time in 38 years, Filipinos will not officially celebrate the anniversary of the “People Power Revolution” on February 25 after it was removed as a public holiday, a move critics say is part of a larger strategy to distance the Philippines from the dark legacy of former president Ferdinand Marcos Snr.
The late strongman, whose rule was marked by widespread human rights abuses and corruption, was ousted in a bloodless people-led uprising in 1986. Analysts say his son, current leader Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, is embarking on a series of moves aimed at redefining the family’s narrative both at home and globally.
For Vergel Santos, who worked as a journalist during Marcos Snr’s reign and now sits on the board of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, erasing the public’s “memories of the dictatorship of his father and the torture and the plunder” has not been a hard thing to do.
“In fact, younger people have no memory of the blood sins of the father,” he said.
In the 2022 presidential election, 56 per cent of the 67.5 million registered voters were aged 18 to 41 – meaning most were born after the People Power Revolution or were toddlers at the time.
Santos expressed the belief that Marcos Jnr was trying to “vanquish” the remaining memories of his father’s “draconian regime, his torture, murder and plunder”.
Marcos Snr’s dictatorship was marked by 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 35,000 documented tortures, 77 “disappeared”, and 70,000 incarcerations, based on evidence collected by Amnesty International which Marcos Snr allowed inside detention camps, international and local human rights and church organisations which conducted investigations at that time.
He is also suspected of stealing at least US$10 billion from state coffers.
Marcos Jnr gave voters the impression that he was running to finish the work his father had started and – in a phrase used in memes spread by his campaign – to restore the “Marcos Golden Age”.
Critics argue that Marcos Jnr’s attempt to rewrite his family’s place in Philippine history has only intensified since he took office in 2022.
One example occurred in September 2023, when the country’s Department of Education released a memo stating that the term Diktadurang Marcos (“Marcos Dictatorship”) – used to describe the martial law era of his father’s regime – would be changed to simply Diktadura (“Dictatorship”) in new grade 6 textbooks.
In a statement, the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy slammed the move, saying that removing the name would “distort history by downplaying the image of Ferdinand E. Marcos as dictator”.
However, Santos characterises such efforts as more “an attempt at redemption”.
“Not to redeem the dictator, because there is no redeeming him, but probably to redeem the family, because the family is the heir to [Marcos Snr’s] plunder,” Santos said.
Marcos Jnr’s Philippine presidency an exercise in redemption
In 2003, the Philippine Supreme Court ordered that US$658.2 million held by Marcos Snr and his wife Imelda in secret Swiss bank deposits be returned to Manila after the Swiss Federal Court ruled the funds were “of criminal origin”.
But the Presidential Commission on Good Government, a state agency created in 1986 to recover the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth, said that amount was merely a fraction of an estimated US$10 billion that the couple had stolen.
Political analyst Ronald Llamas said Marcos Jnr’s strategy was not just about revising history but also “rebranding” his family’s name for the future.
“I think [he’s] trying to rebrand the Marcos name. He’s not turning his back on his father’s legacy, but he’s trying to craft his own legacy according to his own terms,” said Llamas, a former political adviser to the late president Benigno Aquino III.
He noted that Marcos Jnr had veered away from the “authoritarian track” of his father and that “he’s more forward-looking”.
“He and his wife want to create a political future for their children,” Llamas said.
Arguing that the president “is actually conflict-averse”, Llamas noted that Marcos Jnr had dialled back on the bloody war on drugs started by his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, and restarted peace talks with the country’s communist rebels in the hopes of ending the deadly decades-long insurgency that peaked during the martial law era of his father.
Rafael Ongpin, president of Quicksilver Satcom Ventures, also said he believed Marcos Jnr was trying to create his own legacy through a more “progressive” policy agenda. He cited the president’s “bold decision” to erase the country’s housing backlog for the poor by committing to build 1 million homes yearly.
But Santos said Marcos Jnr was tailoring his foreign policy for personal advantage. “He knows that the public mood is against China, so the thing to do is to become closer to the US. it would seem advantageous to him because he has cases in the US.”
The US State Department in 2022 said Marcos Jnr was immune from any pending suit, including a contempt judgment before a Hawaii court for his refusal to pay a US$766 million class suit awarded to human rights victims of his father’s regime.
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Llamas argued that Marcos Jnr’s early foreign policy moves had been an attempt to “to reintroduce the Marcos name in a different way to the international community”.
Throughout 2023, Marcos Jnr undertook numerous foreign visits, emphasising economic reforms and inviting foreign investments, while also addressing global issues such as climate change and food security in forums like the United Nations General Assembly .
During these international engagements, Marcos Jnr carefully navigated discussions about his family’s contentious history, focusing instead on contemporary themes of economic recovery and international cooperation, particularly in the Indo-Pacific area.
Ongpin said it was all part of the president’s strategy to “build his own legacy by making the right moves politically and economically. Moves he knows will be judged by future generations”.
