MARCOS-SOPHISTICATED DICTATOR
Schirmer, Daniel B.
i lllllllmm III I III III I II lllllllllH MARCOS-SOPHISTICATED DICTATOR DANIEL B. SCHIRMER Concern for appearances is a distinguishing feature Last February 27 the martial...
...Again apologists came forward...
...On the contrary, do not these developments suggest that Marcos, as throughout his previous career, hews close to every major turn in U.S...
...i lllllllmm III I III III I II lllllllllH MARCOS-SOPHISTICATED DICTATOR DANIEL B. SCHIRMER Concern for appearances is a distinguishing feature Last February 27 the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos held another referendum to determine its support among the Philippine people...
...Protestant leaders publicized the case of the Reverend Cesare Taguba, a minister to Philippine miners, arrested and given electric shock till his sanity was endangered...
...As has been suggested, the other side of press censorship is the self-advertisement that marks this re, me, bringing to mind the Madison Avenue techniques of the Nixon administration in the days before the Watergate exposure...
...Mattes' warm reception by the Chinese leaders...
...This past June Professor Benedict Kerkvliet, of the University of Hawaii, an expert on Philippine agrarian reform, spoke before a House Committee in a hearing on aid to Marcos...
...But Marcos' pretensions as a reformer appear questionable...
...In response to conditions such as these the Catholic bishops of the Philippines have criticized martial law for establishing "a climate of fear...
...But if mass poverty has anything to do with causing crime, Marcos has failed in this reform too...
...Since its inception the Philippine martial law administration has shown unmistakable and overriding preoccupation with what is currently known as public relations...
...Marcos' China trip followed a similar visit to the Soviet Union, and Marcos' apologists like Foreign Secretary Carlos Romulo have hailed the development of relations with the socialist powers as presaging a new independence from the United States...
...Finally (as d this writing) on Monday March 3 the New York Times carded a story, read by many U.S...
...Whereupon Marcos declared them to be in possession of full legality, freeing many of them from the jails where martial law had held them up to now...
...Marcos also claims credit for the elimination of street crime...
...to war in Vietnam, now he trails after Kissinger in Peking and Moscow, hoping like his mentor to use the Sine-Soviet split to advantage and inundating the Philippine people, many of whom respect the People's Republic of China, with news of Mrs...
...Think, for a moment, of Marcos' present embarrassments: an uncontrollable war with Muslim rebels in the south of the country...
...Oriented especially towards U.S...
...Always underfed and poverty-stricken, now, in the New Society, the Philippine people are poorer and more malnourished than ever...
...Filipinos and those of Philippine descent are represented by several organizations (Movement for a Free Philippines led by ex-Senator Raul Manglapus, the anti-imperialist Union of Democratic Filipinos, the National Association of Filipinos in the United States, etc...
...Two years ago, when martial law was declared, there were dragnet arrests and thousands thrown into jail, but there were no tanks in the streets, no overbearing display of military force...
...Now we're recommending how to expand...
...Substantial evidence of this sort tends to lead to the conclusion that the present Marcos regime is a repressive dictatorship designed to bolster U.S...
...Diokno, who had been in jail since the imposition of martial law, is very ill and plans to come to the United States for medical treatment, but his release grabbed the spotlight, putting the thousands who remain imprisoned in the shadow...
...Could it be that the Philippines, once known as the United States' showcase democracy in Asia, is now, under Marcos, turning into the United States' showcase dictatorship...
...U.S...
...citizen once active in the Huk revolt, immediately spoke up to praise PKP legalization, thereby lending credence to the image of "liberalization" that Mareos seeks to promote...
...After this event Marcos announced an offer of amnesty to all those currently opposed to his regime, Muslim, Catholic, or New People's Army...
...The controlled press minimizes the violence of the Marcos dictatorship, as can be seen from its treatment of Marcos' unsuccessful efforts to stamp out the Muslim rebellion in the southern Philippines (involving, this past year, the complete destruction of two Muslim-held cities, Jolo and Balabagan, with many civilian casualties and refugees...
...economic and military interests in the Philippines...
...Trying to answer the question as to why Marcos went to the bother of having the referendum (the third such since martial law, with results almost identical to the previous two) the Times correspondent surmised, ."The President may be interested in appearances...
...Congress...
...The U.S...
...Conquest and colonization of that country by McKinley at the turn of the century...
...Vice Admiral Ray Peet, U.S...
...As he is doubtless aware, there are in this country a number of groups and organizations actively unfavorable to his government...
...But the Marcos press prints no military communiqu6s, no hard news of the fighting or casualties at all...
...Marcos made a trip to the United States to inaugurate an expensive Philippine Center in New York City, visiting at the hospital bedside of the ailing Nixon en route, and bringing with her the offer of amnesty to all opponents of the dictatorship in U.S...
...The Association of Major Religious Superiors (Catholic) called for a boycott of the referendum...
...bases in the Philippines at Subic Bay and Clark Air Field have also felt the benefit of Marcos' strong man rule...
...corII Ill Illlllllll Illllllll I DANIEL a. SCHmMER, the author of Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Schenkman), teaches Philippine history at the Godd~'d/Cambridge Graduate Program in Social Change in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...Marcos made her sensational excursion to Peking, visiting with Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung, and returning with a Sine-Philippine trade pact...
...Last year the cost of living in the Philippines jumped 47 percent, and a recent unpublished report of the Philippine Department of Agriculture indicates that in the past 3V2 years average per capita consumption of seafood, dairy products, leaf vegetables has declined, as has consumption of textiles and durable goods...
...exile...
...voters, carried a story that the Marcos family and that of his wife Imelda were "about to become the two wealthiest families in the Philippines" because of the extortion they had practiced on their former ally, the multi-millionaire Eugenio Lopez...
...It has increased the Philippine budget for propaganda from 3 million to 68 million pesos ($10 million...
...Marcos' amnesty offer as a "farce...
...Indeed, at the same time that he abolished censorship, Marcos pleaded with the legal press to temper its praise of the New Society with some criticism, lest it lose all credibility...
...He established this control with martial law, when he closed down most of the Philippine newspapers and set up strict censorship over the remaining "legal" press (in large part already under his thumb...
...Last winter a U.S...
...the spread of the Communist-led guerrilla activities of the New People's Army from Luzon in the north to the Visayas and Mindanao, the central and southern islands...
...William Howard Taft, the first U.S...
...December saw the release of several hundred prisoners (their families responsible for their "good conduct," they are subject to re-arrest under martial law at any time), and on New Year's Day Marcos set January 30 as the date for the third referendum (first announced by the dictator in November on the occasion of a visit to Manila by David Rockefeller and ofificials of the Chase Manhattan Bank...
...Opinion Mrs...
...colonial administrator of the Philippines, told a Senate Committee in 1902 it was necessary to maintain the Philippines as a U.S...
...Unfortunately for Marcos, the day before this Parade magazine, also read by many U.S...
...A few days later Joseph Lelyveld writing in the New York Times from Manila declared the 90 percent margin won by Marcos in the voting to be "par for the course for this kind of exercise by an authoritarian government...
...Today, as U.S...
...Members of the Protestant and Catholic clergy initiated a manifesto opposing it that was signed by 38,000 persons (the biggest expression of opposition Marcos has yet to face), and 5,000 demonstrated in the streets of Manila against martial law...
...1I Aptll 1973:46...
...Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda (a political force in her own right), have launched what the Far Eastern Economic Review calls a "softsell program to silence critics of their regime...
...colony because independence would "drite out capital, prevent capital from coming here," Taft was keenly aware of the need to appease public opinion in the United States...
...New to this referendum, however, was the expression of public opposition to the regime that accompanied it...
...William Pomeroy, for example, a U.S...
...voters, that Marcos was calling for a drive against graft and corruption in his government...
...porate executive in Manila (representing some part of the 2 to 3 billion dollar American investment in the Philippines) told a stateside reporter, "Before martial law, we were making recommendations to our home office on how to get out...
...voters and blunted their opposition to budding U.S...
...rule and swear allegiance to it...
...Then Marcos postponed the date of the referendum to February 27, so that for two months this question held the spotlight, and debate about the proposed exercise of the vote obscured the dictatorship, as twice before...
...With Senators Cranston (California) and Abourezk (South Dakota) expressing opposition to Marcos, with Congress showing considerable balkiness over aid to Marcos' fellow-dictator Thieu, Marcos and the State Department obviously have cause for concern...
...State Department adII April1975:44 missions to the contrary notwithstanding, Marcos continues to issue proclamations announcing full success for his land reform policy, the last such appearing in the New York Times November 24...
...empire...
...Precisely so...
...Marcos has suppressed what had been a growing nationalist movement, has outlawed strikes to keep wages low and given many new and profitable incentives to U.S...
...empire-builders regard U.S...
...Perhaps that is why the Marcos dictatorship seems like a replay, in nee-colonialist terms, of early U.S...
...bases and economic influence in the Philippines as key to the U.S...
...It is concern for appearances which is a distinguishing feature of the Philippine dictatorship, setting it apart from similar governments in South Vietnam, Chile and South Korea...
...Evidently the limits the controlled and legal press puts on itself make such censorship superfluous...
...Next was the surrender of the 27-man Politburo of the PKP, remnants of the Communist Party once active in the Huk rebellion of the '50s (as distinct from the Communist Party that now leads the New People's Army...
...Commonweal: 45 One of these outspoken exiles, Heherson Alvarez, whose opposition to Marcos predates martial law, denounced Mrs...
...Then, as if to prove his words, Taft very early announced "amnesty" for all those Filipino nationalists who would cease opposition to U.S...
...For Thieu presently announces he wants to open relations with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, and Park buys advertising space in the New York Times...
...investors, eliciting their approval...
...capital, who tries to give this dictatorship a "liberal" face, offering amnesty to all those who will desist in their opposition and abolishing press censorshp (in effect dismantling some of the external trappings of martial law in order to preserve the dictatorship...
...terror and brutality were given a "low profile...
...Whether his "liberalization" hoax will have the same effect today or not, Marcos' grandstand publicity plays, his "hardsells," put other U.S.-sponsored dictators like Thieu, Park and Pinochet in the shade, evidently inspiring some envy...
...A top Philippine official admits to 5,000 prisoners held out of 18,000 arrested since martial law was declared...
...What is common to all these groups is their demand for an end to U.S...
...Once following the U.S...
...position in Asia and have done so since the U.S...
...Taft's policies fooled many U.S...
...Alvarez has tragic grounds from which to speak, since it is reported that his younger brother in the Philippines, though completely apolitical, was kidnapped, tortured and killed this past summer by the Marcos secret police, presumably to teach those in exile the need to conform...
...Making a trip to the presidential palace to have their pictures taken by the press, these men pledged allegiance to the New Society and praised its "reforms...
...Informal sources in Manila say that at least 1,500 government troops have been killed, 5,000 wounded, in this war since martial law began...
...growing criticism from the Catholic and Protestant clergy in the Philippines, and the worsening conditions for the common people...
...Navy, testified to a House Committee last June that...
...press reports that it has engaged the services of a prominent Madison Avenue advertising firm...
...Mattes is worried about the political survival of his regime...
...Members of the Catholic and Protestant clergy have come together in a committee called Christians Concerned About the Philippines...
...This is precisely the picture the Philippine martial law government has sought to offset by means of its public relations policies from the very beginning...
...Torture of political prisoners is reported: last summer U.S...
...under Philippine martial law, security of bases has been good...
...nee-colonial influence experiences worldwide crisis, it is Marcos, the Filipino politician, who exercises dictatorship to protect U.S...
...Moreover, Marcos loudly proclaimed that his dictatorship was set up to achieve s "New Security" of thoroughgoing reform and that it would stand or fall with its record on much-needed and long-overdue agrarian reform...
...Certain essential features of the present government require cosmetic treatment...
...aid to the Marcos dictatorship (as voiced by Benedict Kerkvliet at the congressional hearings last June...
...In the face of all this the Philippine dictatorship has recently put on what can only be described as a bravura display of public relations...
...It is significant that the State Department felt called upon to defend the Marcos regime from many of Kerkvliet's criticisms in a letter to Congress signed by Linwood Holton, Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations, and more significant that, even in this context, the Department felt obliged to concede that Marcos' land reform program had so far failed--"Not all efforts have been successful, e.g., the ambitious land reform program has been delayed because the Government initially moved without a full appreciation of the obstacles and costs involved...
...In October Mrs...
...The Press It is absolute control of the Philippine press that allows Marcos to tout himself as a reformer, irrespective,of his performance...
...Marcos' trips, the amnesty offers, the referendum and the rest, all these public relations activities, whatever their effect at home, seem designed to influence opinion in the United States---a critical concern for Marcos because of the military and economic aid he receives from the U.S...
...Consider the following...
...Thus, in explaining his colonial policies to Apolinario Mabini, a Philippine nationalist, Taft said that "the United States wanted to exercise the same sovereignty that Russia or Turkey would" (both notoriously autocratic at the time) "the only difference being that Americans would try to exercise sovereignty more liberally...
...While Kerkvliet was critical of Philippine martial law in general, he singled out Marcos' land reform program for special censure, claiming that this program was "all-show, no-go," that Philippine tenant farmers had been given promises, not land...
...costly ads promoting the Philippine dictatorship have appeared in the New York Times and Fortune magazine, and these are only mechanical aspects of what has clearly been a matter of high policy...
...voters, whether or not of Filipino descent, is the Friends of the Filipino People...
...policies...
...these are high figures for the Philippine Army of 70,000 men...
...First came Marcos' release, in September, of Jose Diokno, one of his foremost nationalist critics...
...U.S...
...Recently as a mark of "liberalization" Marcos abolished press censorship...
...foreign policy...
...In November Mrs...
Vol. 102 • April 1975 • No. 2
