Ferdinand Marcos Essay Example

ancestry. Ferdinand was a champion debater, orator, student activist and writer in their school newspaper at the University of the Philippines, where he also participated in boxing, swimming and wrestling as well as sharpshooting. In December 1938, Mariano Marcos, his brother Pio, his son Ferdinand, and his brother-in-law Quirino Lizardo were prosecuted for the murder of Julio Nalundasan.

On September 20, 935, the day after Nalundasan (for the second time) defeated Mariano Marcos for the National Assembly seat for Ilocos Norte, Nalundasan was shot and killed in his house in Batac. According to two witnesses, the four had conspired to assassinate Nalundasan, with Ferdinand Marcos eventually doing the killing. In late January 1939, they were denied bail and in the fall[when? ] of 1939 they were convicted. Ferdinand and Lizardo received the death penalty for premeditated murder, while Mariano and Pio were found guilty only of contempt of court.

The Marcos family took their appeal to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which on October 22, 1940, overturned the lower court's decision and acquitted them of all charges but contempt.  In 1939, while incarcerated, Ferdinand Marcos graduated cum laude with a law degree from the U. P. College of Law. If he had not been put in jail for twenty-seven days, he would have graduated magna cum laude. He was elected to the Pi Gamma Mu international honor society, and the Phi Kappa Phi international honor society which, 37 years later gave him its Most Distinguished Member Award.

While in detention Governor Roque B. Ablan Sr. of Ilocos Norte helped Marcos study for the bar exams by providing a desk lamp in his cell, law books, and reviewers.

Marcos passed the bar examination with the highest score on record, while also writing an 830-page defense. Several people contested his score and a retake was taken albeit an oral bar examination witnessed by several people. His second bar examination resulted in a 100% score, the highest grade obtained in the Philippine Bar. Military Service The war came to the Philippines a day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Marcos knew beforehand that it was coming and had prepared himself to "die a thousand deaths" in his country's defense, as he had promised in his murder trial. With the main Japanese force pushing its way South from Lingayen Gulf landings, the young intelligence officer was all over the path of Japanese advance in his Oldsmobile to assess the situation. One day, he found himself in a hand-to-hand combat against the invaders for the control of the key bridge across the Agno River behind enemy lines.

Here he nearly got bayoneted before he could turn around and dispatch his two attackers with his pistol. He later found himself fighting a rearguard action as the men of the USAFFE were ordered to retreat to Bataan. He was with the last unit to slip into Bataan before the last bridge was blown up in the face of the pursuing Japanese. To this peninsula at the mouth of Manila Bay, MacArthur's men clung for three months against a modern army of 85,000 men.  In Bataan, Marcos was wounded three times, captured once but managed to slip back to his unit after killing one of his captors.

He was cited and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading

a four-man intelligence patrol in destroying an enemy battery atop Mt. Natib that had been raining shells on the Filipino soldiers. He killed 50 Japanese soldiers who rushed to confront them. With the loss of the battery, the enemy advance was blunted and the fall of Bataan was delayed by another three months. Marcos was recommended by General Wainright, commander of allied troops in Bataan, for the Congressional Medal of Honor for having fought bravely and beyond the call of duty at the junction of Salian and Abo-Abo River.

Again, he was cited for heroism that helped turn the battle on the slopes of Mt. Samat, one of the fiercest in Bataan.  When the end came, Marcos and his companions refused to surrender and tried to escape towards the mountains of Zambales. But they were captured and forced to join the Death March, a trek of 100 kilometers across the plains of Central Luzon under the scorching sun, without food and water. Of the 50,000 men who started the trek, 15,000 collapsed along the way. Of the remainder, half died within three months in Camp O'Donnel in Capas, Tarlac. Five thousand more died of delayed shock after getting out.

Marcos was released on August 4, 1942, emaciated beyond recognition but grateful to be alive. His mother had been waiting for him at the gate. He had hardly rested at their home in Manila, when he was arrested and brought to Fort Santiago by the Kempetai, the secret police, for questioning. For the next eight days, his torturers tried to break his will and make him reveal the hideouts of known guerrilla leaders, but to no avail.  The

beatings stopped only when he agreed to lead them to Laguna where the guerrilla leader, Vicente Umali, was reported to be in hiding.

Umali's men jumped the Japanese convoy and sprung Marcos who was too weak to walk. A convalescent in the mountains until December, he saw how factionalism, jealousy and suspicions had weakened the resistance. Early in 1943, he was off on a dangerous mission of establishing communications between the various guerrilla groups, to include Col. Fertig in Agusan and Col. Volckmann, commander of USAFIL-NL in Isabela. For the rest of 1943, he risked capture and death crisscrossing the archipelago in pursuit of his mission.

He fell short of overcoming their division, but the communication network he established proved to be valuable in preparing the ground for the return of General MacArthur and his liberation forces. He was in communication with the Liberator. Marcos organized his own Maharlika group of spies based in Manila.  With the return of American forces, he fused his group into the USAFIL-NL under Volckmann who appointed Marcos major of intelligence. Again, Marcos was near death of malaria, hidden among cancer patients in the Manila General Hospital with the knowledge of President Jose P. Laurel and Gen. Mateo Capinpin, both of the puppet government.

There he met with Manuel Roxas, who was collaborating with the Japanese. Marcos told Roxas of MacArthur's order for his escape.  Marcos' intelligence work near the end of the war helped the combined guerilla forces to mass effectively against the retreating army of General Yamashita and achieve a decisive victory at Bessang Pass. Following a directive of the Commonwealth government to begin the transition from war to peace, a

plan was developed to have Marcos as civil affairs officer for the nine provinces of Northern Luzon.

His first job was to disarm the guerrillas, speed up their return to normal lives and restore peace and order in the region. Volckmann had to order his airlift from the frontline to prepare him for his new job. Thus, while the war was winding down, Marcos had his first heady savor of politics as civil affairs officer of Northern Luzon. Congressional career House of Representatives When the Philippines was granted independence on July 4, 1946 by the American government, the Philippine Congress was established. Marcos ran and was twice elected as representative of the 1st district of Ilocos Norte, 1949-1959.

He was named chairman of the House Committee on Commerce and Industry and member of the Defense Committee headed by Ramon Magsaysay. He was chairman, House Neophytes Bloc in which (President) Diosdado Macapagal, (Vice President) Emmanuel Pelaez and (Manila Mayor) Arsenio J. Lacson were members, House Committee on Industry; LP spokesman on economic matters; member, Special Committee on Import and Price Controls and on Reparations; House Committees on Ways and Means, Banks Currency, War Veterans, Civil Service, Corporations and Economic Planning; and the House Electoral Tribunal.

Senate He was the topnotcher in the senatorial elections in 1959. He was Senate minority floor leader, 1960; executive vice president, LP 1954-1961; president, Liberal Party, 1961–1964; Senate President, 1959-1965. During his term as Senate President, former Defense Secretary Eulogio B. Balao was also closely working with Marcos. As a lawyer and a master politician, Marcos led a most interesting and controversial political career both before and after his term as Senate President.

He became

Senator after he served as member of the House of Representatives for three terms, then later as Minority Floor Leader before gaining the Senate Presidency. He is one of the legislators who had established a record for having introduced a number of significant bills, many of which found their way into the Republic statute books. Downfall During these years, Marcos's regime was marred by rampant corruption and political mismanagement by his relatives and cronies, which culminated with the assassination of Benigno Aquino.

Critics considered Marcos the quintessential kleptocrat, having looted billions of dollars from the Filipino treasury. The large personality cult in the Philippines surrounding Marcos also led to disdain. uring his third term, Marcos's health deteriorated rapidly due to kidney ailments, often described as lupus erythematosus. He was absent for weeks at a time for treatment, with no one to assume command. Marcos's regime was sensitive to publicity of his condition; a palace physician who alleged that during one of these periods Marcos had undergone a kidney transplant was shortly found murdered.

Many people questioned whether he still had capacity to govern, due to his grave illness and the ballooning political unrest. [33] With Marcos ailing, his equally powerful wife, Imelda, emerged as the government's main public figure. Marcos dismissed speculations of his ailing health as he used to be an avid golfer and fitness buff who liked showing off his physique. In light of these growing problems, the assassination of Aquino in 1983 would later prove to be the catalyst that led to his overthrow.

Many Filipinos came to believe that Marcos, a shrewd political tactician, had no hand in the murder of Aquino but that

he was involved in cover-up measures. However, the opposition blamed Marcos directly for the assassination while others blamed the military and his wife, Imelda. The 1985 acquittals of Ver as well as other high-ranking military officers for the crime were widely seen as a miscarriage of justice. By 1984, his close personal ally, U. S. President Ronald Reagan, started distancing himself from the Marcos regime that he and previous American presidents had strongly supported even after Marcos declared martial law.

The United States, which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, was crucial in buttressing Marcos's rule over the years. [34] During the Carter administration, the relation with the U. S. soured somewhat when President Jimmy Carter targeted the Philippines in his human rights campaign. In the face of escalating public discontent and under pressure from foreign allies, Marcos called a snap presidential election for 1986, with more than a year left in his term. He selected Arturo Tolentino as his running mate.

The opposition united behind Aquino's widow, Corazon, and her running mate, Salvador Laurel. The "People Power movement" drove Marcos into exile and installed Corazon Aquino as the new president. At the height of the revolution, Enrile revealed that his ambush was faked in order for Marcos to have a pretext for imposing martial law. However, Marcos maintained that he was duly elected and proclaimed president of the Philippines for a fourth term. The Philippine government today is still paying interest in public debts incurred during Marcos' administration.

It was reported that, when Marcos fled, U. S. Customs agents discovered 24 suitcases of gold bricks and diamond jewelry hidden in diaper bags and in

addition, certificates for gold bullion valued in the billions of dollars were allegedly among the personal properties he, his family, his cronies and business partners surreptitiously took with them when the Reagan administration provided them safe passage to Hawaii. When the presidential mansion was seized, it was discovered that Imelda Marcos had over 2700 pairs of shoes in her closet.