MANILA (Reuters) – As frontrunner within the Philippines’ presidential race, the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos seems poised to full a exceptional rebranding of the family identify 36 years after a “folks energy” rebellion ended his father’s autocratic rule.
With official campaigning starting on Tuesday, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., 64, holds a double-digit lead within the polls, three months forward of the May 9 elections.
His push for the presidency has been aided by what political analysts say has been a decades-long public relations effort to alter public notion of his family and supporters. Critics accuse the Marcoses of making an attempt to rewrite historical past.
“What we’re witnessing proper now’s nothing in need of a counter-revolution,” mentioned Richard Heydarian, an writer and tutorial who specialises in politics.
“The Marcoses are right here to erase the 1986 (folks energy) revolution, and to restore the glory and totally rehabilitate the picture of the Marcos regime.”
Since the family’s return from exile within the Nineties, Marcos has served as governor and congressman of the northern Ilocos Norte province, his father’s bailiwick, earlier than successful a seat within the Senate in 2010.
His sister is a senator and a former governor and former congresswoman, and his mom, Imelda, who run unsuccessfully for president in 1992, was elected to Congress for 4 phrases.
The return of a Marcos to Malacanang, the presidential palace, is unthinkable for hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, however over half the nation’s greater than 60 million voters are 40 or beneath, and didn’t dwell by means of the Marcos regime and its oppression and plunder.
Ferdinand Marcos Sr., with Imelda by his aspect, was president for almost twenty years, ruling as a dictator earlier than he was ousted within the “folks energy” rebellion in 1986 that has develop into famend world wide.
Marcos Sr. and Imelda, identified for her huge assortment of paintings, jewelry and sneakers, had been accused of amassing greater than $10 billion whereas he was in workplace.
During his rule, 70,000 folks had been imprisoned, 34,000 had been tortured, and three,240 had been killed, in accordance to Amnesty International.
More than 11,100 victims of human rights abuses in the course of the Marcos regime had been paid compensation utilizing hundreds of thousands from Marcos Swiss financial institution accounts, a part of the family’s ill-gotten wealth recovered by the federal government.
Among them was Loretta Ann Rosales, a political activist who was tortured and sexually abused in the course of the Marcos regime and is now one in every of a number of complainants in search of to bar Marcos Jr. from the presidential race.
“We thought we had gotten rid of the Marcoses,” mentioned Rosales, who can be a former chairperson of the human rights fee. “I would like him disqualified.”
‘LACK LEADERSHIP’
Marcos Jr. has questioned the Amnesty knowledge and rejected long-standing narratives of oppression and failed authorities in his father’s rule. He and his family have shunned questions on previous atrocities and as a substitute touted what their supporters declare as a ‘golden age’.
The youthful Marcos, often known as Bongbong, has spoken extremely of his father, calling him his “idol”, whereas expressing admiration for his “type of labor”, his qualities as a powerful chief, and his “love for the Filipino” folks, traits he mentioned he has inherited.
“He had a really clear understanding of what wanted to be performed and the way to do it, and that I feel was his highest quality as a pacesetter,” Bongbong Marcos mentioned in a YouTube interview final yr. “The downside we’ve now’s we lack management.”
The YouTube interview titled ‘The Greatest Lesson Bongbong Marcos Learned From His Father’ has been seen 13 million occasions because it aired in September.
“He is doing very nicely as a result of we’ve this pandemic of disinformation,” mentioned Victor Manhit, an analyst with the Stratbase assume tank. “He has been dominating political discourse in social media.”
Fact-checking organisation Vera Files mentioned in a December report that Marcos was the “high beneficiary” of disinformation on-line to spruce up his picture whereas discrediting rivals forward of the beginning of the official marketing campaign interval.
“Because you might be surrounded on social media by the identical account saying the identical issues about Marcos (Sr.) being chief – benevolent, revolutionary, all these narratives – even when it sounds bananas and never grounded on details, you might be extra doubtless to consider it’s true,” mentioned Marie Fatima Gaw, communications analysis professor on the University of the Philippines.
Marcos has mentioned he doesn’t interact in adverse campaigning.
He misplaced the 2016 vice presidential race to human rights lawyer Leni Robredo, who can be contesting the presidency, together with boxing celebrity Manny Pacquiao, Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso, and senator Panfilo Lacson, amongst others.
For Raphie Respicio, 48, a tricycle driver and tour information within the Marcos family bastion in Ilocos Norte, no quantity of criticism in opposition to Marcos will weaken his assist for the previous senator.
“He has performed loads of issues right here … and he helped tricycle drivers earn a residing by means of tourism,” Respicio mentioned. “We are 100% for Bongbong.”
(Reporting by Karen Lema; Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
