The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos reformation task in favor of simply creating a dictatorship that Imelda has turned into a conjugal authoritarian rule. While Marcos declared that he would reform society to eliminate the privileges of the few in order that the rights of the many may be respected, he has succeeded only in eliminating both the privileges of the few and the rights of many in order to concentrate absolute power in one man and distribute privileges only to his cronies. While Marcos pledged to eliminate graft and corruption, these ills of the socalled old society has even assumed an even more serious proportion under the New Society, falling into the pattern that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton must be turning over in his grave over the Philippine situation. The Philippine situation brings to mind what that foremost Filipino educator, Don Camilo Osias, said of the administration of another Ilocano, the late President Elpidio Quirino (of Ilocos Sur, also in northern Philippines). Campaigning as the vice presidential candidate of the late Jose P. Laurel, Sr., Osias said in 1949: “The government headed by Quirino is a government off the people, fool the people and buy the people.” However, the conjugal dictatorship will not be content for long about their present domain in the Philippines. The ruling duumvirate still think in terms of annexing Sabah to the Philippines in the not-too-distant future. They believe it is a sacred duty mandated by the martial law Constitution. Sabah and its rich resources were very much in the mind of Marcos when he personally wrote the definition of Philippine territory in the Constitution which he ordered the Constitutional Convention at gunpoint to approve. It read: “The national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic or legal title, including the territorial sea, the air space, the sub-soil, the sea-bed, the insular shelves, and the other submarine areas over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction. The waters around, between and connecting the islands of the archipelago, irrespective of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines.” (Italics supplied). The question is often asked why Imelda has made it a consuming ambition to share the powers of the dictatorship of Marcos. The answer is that Imelda knows one vital principle of the Philippine civil code which she thinks is of appropriate usage to her: that anything brought into, or acquired during, the marriage is conjugal.
Chapter V Infrastructure of Martial Law Marcos did not panic into dictatorship. Weeks before Marcos rang the curtain down on democracy in the Philippines, the whiff of revolution was sharp and unmistakable. It was evident Primitivo Mijares
Page 111
