MANILA — They bopped alongside to the beat of a martial legislation anthem up to date right into a pop tune. They cheered when an A-list movie star proclaimed that the spirit of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the previous dictator, was alive. And when Mr. Marcos’s son and namesake held up the peace signal made well-liked by his father a era in the past, the shrieking crowds mirrored it in return.
It is election season within the Philippines, and historical past is being rewritten, one marketing campaign rally at a time.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has spent many years defending his household’s title in opposition to accusations of greed and corruption and downplaying the legacy of his father’s brutal rule. During his presidential marketing campaign, he has portrayed himself as a unifier, whereas false narratives on-line reimagine his father’s regime as a “golden era” within the nation’s historical past.
Now, as patriarch of the Marcos dynasty, Mr. Marcos is anticipated to be the primary particular person to win the presidential election within the Philippines by a majority in additional than three many years.
The race is being solid as a contest between those that keep in mind the previous and those that are accused of making an attempt to distort it, the final chapter in a brazen try and absolve the Marcoses of wrongdoing and quash any effort to carry the household accountable. Five years of President Rodrigo Duterte — a robust Marcos ally recognized for his bloody conflict on medication and for jailing his critics — might have presaged a Marcos household comeback.
“It will determine not just our future but our past,” mentioned Maria Ressa, a journalist and Nobel Prize winner who’s an outspoken critic of each Mr. Duterte and Mr. Marcos.
The Marcoses are accused of looting as a lot as $10 billion from the federal government earlier than fleeing to Hawaii in 1986, when the peaceable “People Power” protests toppled the Marcos regime. The household returned to the nation shortly after the dying of the elder Mr. Marcos in 1989.
Despite the exile, the Marcos title by no means really left the political institution.
Mr. Marcos, recognized by his boyhood nickname, “Bongbong,” served as vice governor, governor and congressman in Ilocos Norte, the household stronghold, for many of the interval between the Eighties and 2010. That yr, he entered the nationwide political scene when he was elected senator. Imelda Marcos, his 92-year-old mom, ran for president twice and misplaced within the Nineties.
Rehabilitating the household title has been a recurring theme. Over the many years, the Marcoses have sought to focus on younger voters with no reminiscence of martial legislation or the torture and killing of political prisoners. Fifty-six p.c of the voting inhabitants within the Philippines is aged between 18 and 41, and most didn’t witness the atrocities of the Marcos regime — best circumstances for the unfold of disinformation, opponents say.
In January, Twitter mentioned it had eliminated greater than 300 accounts selling Mr. Marcos’s presidential bid for violating guidelines on spam and manipulation. The influential Roman Catholic Church within the Philippines mentioned in a press release that it was appalled by the “historical revisionism” within the election, and “the attempt to delete or destroy our collective memory through the seeding of lies and false narratives.”
Mr. Marcos’s spokesman, Vic Rodriguez, mentioned there was “no certainty” that the Twitter accounts belonged to his supporters.
Last week, Meta, Facebook’s guardian firm, mentioned it had suspended greater than 400 election-related accounts, pages and teams for violating its requirements. The firm cited a video on Mr. Marcos’s official Facebook web page that falsely accused his election rival, Leni Robredo, who’s vice chairman, of dishonest within the 2016 vice-presidential race. (The president and vice chairman are elected individually within the Philippines.)
Several teams have sought to disqualify Mr. Marcos’s candidacy, pointing to a 1995 tax evasion conviction and the $3.9 billion in property taxes that his household nonetheless owes the federal government. Mr. Marcos, 64, has disregarded the assaults as “fake news,” and refused to take part in almost all presidential debates.
At a rally in Las Piñas, Ella Mae Alipao, 15, mentioned that she bought most of her information about Mr. Marcos from TikTok and Facebook, and that she didn’t “believe much in books.” After Mr. Marcos’s father was ousted, Ms. Alipao mentioned, “the Filipinos found out how good he was; that’s when they realized that they should have made him president for a longer time.”
Mr. Marcos has made related feedback: “I’m not going to vindicate my father’s name because his name doesn’t need vindication,” he mentioned in 1995. “I am so confident that history will judge him well.”
In the 36 years for the reason that father was ousted, many Filipinos have grow to be disillusioned with the nation’s democracy. Poverty is widespread, earnings inequality stays excessive and few folks belief their elected leaders. When Mr. Duterte got here to energy, he promised radical change, ushering in a brand new period of strongman politics that has been embraced by many throughout the nation.
Mr. Duterte fashioned an alliance with the Marcoses early in his five-year presidential time period. In 2016, he organized for the daddy’s physique to be moved to the Philippines’ equal of Arlington National Cemetery, regardless of protests. And it was not till Sara Duterte, Ms. Duterte’s daughter, made the shock announcement that she would run for vice chairman as a substitute of president that Mr. Marcos gained his giant lead within the polls.
In latest weeks, the opposition has been working furiously to counter the false narratives on-line concerning the Marcoses. Sergio Osmena III, a former political prisoner, senator and a grandson of the fourth president of the Philippines, mentioned he had employed 10,000 volunteers to wage a counteroffensive in opposition to the Marcos marketing campaign by releasing movies on the financial devastation and human rights violations of the Marcos years.
“It’s probably too late,” he mentioned.
The Marcoses have been remarkably adept at avoiding jail time. Mr. Marcos was sentenced to as much as three years in jail in 1995 for tax-related convictions, however his sentence was overturned on attraction two years later, though his conviction remained on the books. In 2018, his mom was sentenced to as much as 11 years in jail for creating personal foundations to cover her unexplained wealth. She posted bail, and the Supreme Court remains to be reviewing her attraction.
The authorities has recovered simply $3.3 billion of the estimated $10 billion that the Marcoses are accused of stealing, however $2.4 billion in belongings are nonetheless beneath litigation, with numerous teams tussling over them. Should Mr. Marcos win the presidency, many concern these proceedings, together with the $3.9 billion in property taxes, will likely be swept away, cementing the false concept that the Marcoses are harmless.
Among some younger voters, that view has already taken maintain. “If he is a thief, how come he hasn’t been jailed?” requested Rjay Garcia, a 19-year-old rug salesman, at a latest rally within the metropolis of Santa Rosa. Mr. Garcia mentioned that he believed the circumstances in opposition to Mr. Marcos’s household have been meant “to destroy his reputation,” and that he had “never heard” of the People Power protests.
Even these with intimate reminiscences of the nation’s wrestle for democracy might really feel it’s time to transfer on.
Benjamin Abalos Jr., Mr. Marcos’s marketing campaign supervisor, led protests in opposition to the Marcos regime as a scholar council officer of the Ateneo Law School. He mentioned he by no means talked about these days together with his candidate. “Whatever justice was achieved in those 36 years, I think that’s already enough,” he mentioned. “Perhaps now it’s about moving forward.”
Such attitudes might sign {that a} full rehabilitation of the Marcos title might quickly be full. The household now features a governor, a senator, a mayor and a potential congressman. Mr. Marcos’s eldest son, Ferdinand Alexander, 28, is working for a congressional seat in Ilocos Norte, the place his cousin, Matthew Marcos Manotoc, is governor.
Mr. Marcos has seized on his alliance with Ms. Duterte to current himself as a unifier who is able to lead, however his political monitor file is usually skinny.
While in his six years within the Senate he helped go legal guidelines on defending older folks and increasing emergency reduction to youngsters, almost 70 p.c of the 52 legal guidelines he pushed for have been on designating holidays and festivals, renaming highways and reapportioning provinces and cities, a overview by The New York Times discovered.
An investigation in 2015 discovered that his résumé on the Senate web site had been embellished to incorporate a bachelor of arts from the University of Oxford. The college later mentioned he didn’t full his diploma, however obtained as a substitute a particular diploma in social research. Mr. Marcos has denied misrepresenting his training.
Though Mr. Marcos is seen because the front-runner within the May 9 election, rallies for Ms. Robredo, the vice chairman, have drawn lots of of hundreds of younger supporters in latest weeks. Hecklers have shouted “magnanakaw,” or “thief,” at Mr. Marcos’s motorcade, and the petitions to disqualify his candidacy are nonetheless beneath attraction, although specialists say they’re unlikely to succeed.
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” mentioned Ms. Ressa, the journalist, recalling a quote from the writer Milan Kundera. She described the election as a “microcosm of a global battle for facts.”
“If facts don’t win,” she mentioned, “we’ll have a whole new history.”
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