" Fall of a Dictator " by Ron Centeno

The ill-effects of martial law were Marcos’s consummation of massive loot pawned by his cronies who were equally morphed into being fat with vast fortune. Interestingly, the Americans had blood in their hands, too.

When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he consulted with no less than Nixon and Kissinger. Their concession, however, was not free and the return of their endorsement was for the benefit of American companies who would acquiesce to Marcos’s imposition of the rule.

Found in the book The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave, “America was the chief beneficiary. With thirty-five thousand U. S. servicemen in the islands, American bankers managing a tenth of Manila’s $2.1 billion national debt, $74 million in emergency relief, $75 million in aid, and upward of $2 billion in U. S. investments, America encouraged and condoned the new Marcos dictatorship just by continuing to do business as usual.”

Recall that four weeks before martial law was declared, the Supreme Court announced that it had decided to enforce a law restricting all retail trade in the Philippines. Consequently, U. S. corporations were barred from purchasing and owning private agricultural lands, and all other economic perks they were previously entitled to under the 1946 Parity Amendment. As a result, the American ownership must be reduced to 40 percent.

Marcos, however, without having to scrap the court decision, would use it to enrich himself by applying it selectively. Hence, foreign investors would only come to the Philippines if they were willing to distribute shares to Imelda or to his brother Kokoy Romuladez or to the Marcos cronies. This was confirmed later by Alex Melchor, Marcos’s then executive secretary. Melchor says, “such deals were cooked. Ferdinand was an expert chef, and he was always careful to grease the pan.”

Nonetheless, the promise of martial law as Marcos professed, was to instill discipline “necessary to transform the country from a corrupt feudal society into a new era of modern technology and export-oriented industry.” No less than the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were duped in appreciation of the Marcos pretension of “discipline.” Quick to believe, “the World Bank secretly named the Philippines a country of concentration, which meant the amount of aid would be higher than average for countries of similar size and income.”

Before the massive aid from IMF and WB would inundate the coffers of the Philippine government, however, Marcos turned to his cronies to act fast. Indeed, the era of consummate kickbacks, bribes and other forms of extortion became the order of the day.

IN PART VII, WE’LL TALK ABOUT HOW THE MARCOS CRONIES ACQUIRE THEIR WEALTH INCLUDING, BENEDICTO, FLOREINDO, COJUANGCO, LUCIO TAN, AND DISINI. KITA KITA TAYO ULIT.