The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos partisans erroneously judged that the concerted voices of the Manila Times, the Manila Chronicle, the Philippines Free Press, the Weekly Nation and the Graphic and other mass media who had joined the chorus denouncing Marcos’ inexorable march towards dictatorship would provide them with the needed votes. As it turned out, the anti-Marcos elements garnered all the laudatory columns and editorials, but the Marcos convention managers got the votes to defeat the ban Marcos move and to approve the proposal for a parliamentary system of government for the Philippines. The headlong rush into what the opposition partisans thought would be an arena for a spectacular decapitation of Marcos as a power in Philippine politics turned into a rout — eventually signalling the demise of democracy.
Chapter VII The Reign of Greed The underlying philosophy of the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda is basically intestinal. A digestive interpretation of this philosophy easily reveals that the regime in developing a feudal factory system that would enable just a few families to run the Philippines as a private business. Admittedly, with the brutal use of the guns of martial law, the New Society has rid the country of the old oligarchy. However, the same coercive and extortionate process has produced overnight a new oligarchy. More powerful than the old, the new oligarchy assumed control of a growing, seemingly endless list of corporations and business firms in the country. The new oligarchy is made up of the ruling duumvirate themselves, their relatives, their cronies and a few favored military commanders. And the new oligarchy has not been discriminating in its oppressive business manipulations. By dictatorial decrees promulgated by Marcos, the working class had been stripped of Its right to free self-organization and to strike. A policy of keeping wages low has been adopted so that maximum profits can be had with minimum investments. The very few who could bask in the reflected notoriety of the conjugal dictatorship have become the noueau riche as they mustered the levers and uses of power made available by the guns of martial law. The best illustration of the intestinal philosophy of the New Society is in the field of mass media. Contrary to the pledge of the martial regime to “democratize” mass media ownership, today the ownership of newspapers and other periodicals, radio and television is concentrated in different but fewer (*1. See Chapter on “The Era of Thought Control.”) hands.*1 In the area of business and finance, new tycoons have flourished to replace or even surpass the two or three whom the martial regime has branded as malefactors of great wealth. Other captains of industry who have learned to kow-tow to the new regime remain as firmly at the helm today, as they were before martial law. Primitivo Mijares
Page 157
