Thoughts on Martial Law and our current chaos
By Marivir Montebon
Today, September 21, 2023, the Philippines remembers (while others try to deny) that 51 years ago, Martial Law was imposed by Pres. Ferdinand Marcos Sr. September 21, 1972 - I was in kindergarten when Martial Law was imposed, too young to remember the economic hardships and political turmoil at that time.
Even before I was born, Marcos was already the president. In our family, my late father was so enamored by him. Marcos was an eloquent speaker, that was all I remember. Dad agreed to the imposition of Martial Law, citing the need to quash the growing communist insurgency.
The Marcos Martial law in 1972 (Photo from philippinefails.blogspot.com)
I pretty much lived a sheltered life by the hard-earned modesty of my parents, both college professors and running a small merchandise store in the city. Because my father was my authority then, I also thought that Marcos was a great leader.
The crises in the Philippines just got worse. In reckoning, my young mind had noticed how the huge pan de sal we used to eat for breakfast shrank through the years. The pan de sal got smaller as I grew older. In silence, I wondered why.
My political awakening happened when I was in college at the University of San Carlos, taking up Business Administration, and later shifting to Psychology. Senator Benigno Aquino was assassinated in August 1983, my first semester in university. Never have I realized how chaotic my country was, that it was on the brink of a social upheaval. Marcos was unpopular. Every day people were marching on the streets asking him to step down.
I joined the student publication Today’s Carolinian when it opened through the vigorous insistence of the student government when Martial Law was legally lifted in 1981. There were 200 applicants, and I was one of 20 who passed. My dream of becoming a journalist came quite early. I was a campus journalist at 17.
After high school at the exclusive girls’ school Colegio dela Inmaculada Concepcion, I asked my parents if I could take up Journalism. My father and mother said no to my choice. I cannot be a journalist, it’s too risky, my father argued. So, I took up Business Administration where Accounting was a big part. I felt tortured during my accounting class, hence I bargained for a shift in Psychology, because Journalism was the absolute no.
So, when I was admitted to the Today Carolinian, I was victorious. I still had it my way, defying my father! I became a journalist without having to enroll in Journalism.
By this time, I knew Marcos was making the communist hysteria as his excuse to perpetuate power. Like the law of gravity, what comes up must go down. Up he went and down he came, as absolute power corrupts absolutely.
University days were the best and worst of times. Best because becoming a journalist and a student leader honed the disciplined and persistent character that I now possess. Worst because I saw and felt government repression and had friends who disappeared or had died in the political journey. I will always hold them with high respect despite the limitations and excesses of the Philippine movement.
Bantayog ng mga Bayani, a Martial Law memorial in Manila (Photo from bantayogngmgabayani.org)
I graduated in 1988, two years after the EDSA uprising which showed the world that a dictator could be toppled peacefully by throngs of people against tanks and cannons. I finished Psychology, despite my constancy at rallies and picket lines, mainly as a young writer. I tried hard to balance academics and activism, for I honored my word to my parents.
Marcos and his family fled the country, upon the intercession of President Reagan, and lived luxuriously in exile in Hawaii. Meanwhile, the Philippines regained its political freedom – exemplified by the vigorous press freedom (the freest again in Asia) and the constitutional representation of invisible sectors in Congress through the party list system.
These were the immediate prize of freedom. Otherwise, everything else was chaotic in the Philippines – political contests, corruption, economic crises, and poverty. The educational system remained archaic, lacking in history and human rights education that could have harnessed the gains of the EDSA uprising.
In my youth, I realized that it was easy to blame a dictator for one’s economic and political woes, but the wounds of the colonial past continue to hurt and impoverish us. The problem is cultural, personally ingrained and subconscious, that which Dr. Jose Rizal diagnosed as a social cancer, where the toxic cells eat up the body. That’s what Philippine society is.
It is clear to see how lacking in visionary and servant leadership the Philippines is. For a country so abundant in natural resources, there is no excuse for material poverty. There is no foresight, creativity, or willingness to use our natural resources for the greater good, only for selfish ends.
There are no government subsidies to industrialize the rice or malunggay or coconut or bananas and everything that the land has to offer. We are surrounded by water, but we don’t have a thriving fishing industry. We remain stunted and struggling to survive. Philippines, wake up, has been my anguish ever since.
The overwhelming inequities and injustices were a result of a mindset of selfishness and resignation. I suppose this is because of the long colonial years of Spain and America, we have lost trust in ourselves and our collective strength to be masters of our fate.
Most leaders operate on selfish interests and greed, and think regionally, as little ethnic kings and princes and barons. Ours is a subconsciously feudal culture.
As a people, Filipinos (hey, the word Filipino is in fact a colonial legacy, from King Felipe of Spain, so our national identity is colonial) remain challenged to break the victim and submissive culture. But if one is fighting poverty every day, like stretching family budgets, it really gets tiresome that many choose to leave their families and work abroad.
Yes, we are in a vicious cycle of extreme poverty and extreme wealth and power. We need to have a national philosophy of progress, as individuals and as communities. I believe that government must invest in useful education to propel our economic independence (go back to making land productive and utilize natural resources wisely) and try to balance the employment mindset with support to creatives and entrepreneurs.
That’s my take on economic independence and self-respect.
Sadly, however, we don’t see substantial curriculum improvement soon. Right now, the education department is amassing huge funds for surveillance. What craziness is that? Things have gone more foolish than I thought. In its confidentiality, one would think that the funds are for selfish political ends (again).
Education budgets must be geared toward research and education materials for the youth to be truly useful and productive in industries. One could look at the progressive countries as Germany and Japan as examples.
The socio-cultural problems in the Philippines are just too much to take. The culture of fear alone stifles people to speak up. Poverty has made them easy prey for bribery and intimidation. It takes so much courage to speak up and say no to corruption and power abuse, and act in unity through cooperatives and self-help groups.
The current problems are also much more difficult with natural conditions posing as threat to lives such as massive flooding.
But we will remember that democracy is the anti-dote to dictatorship. Democracy only works when people are aware of their responsibilities and rights to speak up and do their part in nation-building and self-preservation. It is difficult writing this, and more difficult doing, but we have to do it. Soldier on, we must. # (Main photo by Albayarts.org)
