When Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos landed in Hawaii in 1986 after being toppled in Manila’s “People Power” revolution, he and his entourage brought with them everything that was left to plunder.
They came with $300,000 in gold bars, bearer bonds worth another $150,000, countless pearl strands, a $12,000 jewel bracelet with the price tag still attached, and 22 crates of freshly minted Philippine pesos, at the time valued at around $1 million. On top of this were documents — a treasure trove of 2,000 pages outlining the extent of Marcos’s mass looting, including hidden ownership of at least four Manhattan skyscrapers and properties in Long Island and New Jersey.
One of the New Jersey properties, in Cherry Hill, was where his son, namesake and the Philippines’ likely next president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., lived while attending the University of Pennsylvania.
Those documents became the road map for me and my Post colleague Dale Russakoff in trying to unravel the confusing labyrinth of shell companies and holding firms that controlled the hundreds of millions of dollars — some put the figure as high as $10 billion — that Marcos and his wife, Imelda, stole from the Philippines over two brutal decades.
The massive corruption was just one part of his sordid legacy. There was martial law, the suspension of due process, the widespread jailing of opposition leaders and dissidents, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings known as “salvagings”.
When I moved to Manila later in 1986 to open the Post bureau there, I found a new democracy struggling to take root and a people still trying to come to grips with the trauma of the Marcos years. A handful of his die-hard red-shirted loyalists would show up for a weekly protest near the U.S. Embassy, demanding the dictator’s return from exile. Some of his cronies retained positions of influence. But Filipinos seemed ready to embrace their democratic rights and move on from Marcos’s misrule.
So when I returned to the country a decade later, it was with a bit of shock that I found a kind of rekindled nostalgia for the old strongman.
The economy was growing, foreign investment was flowing in, democratic institutions had been restored, and the country had managed a peaceful transition of power. President Corazon C. Aquino, whose “People Power” movement toppled Marcos in 1986, was replaced by Fidel V. Ramos, the former armed forces commander who had earlier led the military mutiny that let the popular protests succeed.
But the country was still mired in abject poverty, corruption remained rampant and promises of land reform and a more equitable distribution of wealth had proved hollow. Little of the stolen Marcos wealth had been returned. Foreign correspondents like me were lauding the country’s successful transition from dictatorship to democracy. For many ordinary Filipinos, very little had changed — and many were worried about having enough to eat, and already pining for the good old days when things seemed better.
Misplaced nostalgia coupled with amnesia seems to be what has propelled a sizable majority of Filipino voters to turn to Marcos’s son, known as “Bongbong” Marcos, for what now amounts to something like a family restoration. With most of the votes counted early Tuesday morning, he had a commanding two-to-one lead over his closest rival, according to unofficial results.
Most of today’s young voters have no living memory of the horrors of the martial law era or the massive nationwide plunder of the country’s resources. What they are told by their parents or grandparents, or what they see on the candidate’s whitewashed social media accounts, is that the Philippines under Marcos was a golden age.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen it before.
In Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto — the former son-in-law of the late autocrat President Suharto — was the head of the army special forces unit called Kopassus that was implicated in human rights abuses, including kidnapping and torture. He is now the country’s defense minister and a likely presidential front-runner for the next elections in 2024. In the last election, in 2019, he finished second with 44.5 percent of the vote, despite his checkered past and being banned from the United States for 20 years.
In Egypt, the Arab Spring toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak. Not long after, Egyptian friends were complaining to me about the rampant crime and chaos under his short-lived successor, Mohamed Morsi. And the collapse of the Soviet Union briefly turned Russia into a messy, boisterous democracy under Boris Yeltsin. But Russians today remember only the economic chaos, the collapse of the currency and the rise of the oligarchs who plundered the spoils of the state.
Starting out as a foreign correspondent, I often saw popular uprising bringing democracy as the end of the story. What I learned is that for many people, democracy means little if it doesn’t bring meaningful change to their everyday lives.
In tough economic times, nostalgia and amnesia might be more powerful motivators than concern about democratic institutions and guardrails. That is what propelled Bongbong Marcos to his overwhelming lead in the crowded presidential contest in the Philippines.
Americans worried about a return of Donald Trump had better take note.
Keith B. Richburg is the director of the University of Hong Kong Journalism and Media Studies Centre. He is a former Washington Post correspondent.