Ferdinand Marcos

Biography

Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos was born in 1917 in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte, the son of the lawyer and politician Mariano Marcos. He studied law at the University of the Philippines and topped the 1939 bar examination. He was convicted over the 1935 killing of his father's political rival Julio Nalundasan, but the Supreme Court acquitted him on appeal in 1940. He served with the U.S. Army forces in the Philippines in the Second World War and was held prisoner by the Japanese, though he later greatly exaggerated his war record.

A Liberal Party member, he represented Ilocos Norte in the House from 1949 to 1959, then sat in the Senate, where he was Senate President from 1963 to 1965. He switched to the Nacionalista Party, won the presidency in 1965 and was re-elected in 1969. Large infrastructure programmes funded by foreign debt were followed by inflation and unrest.

In September 1972 he declared martial law and ruled as a dictator, rewriting the constitution, silencing the press and the opposition, and using the military against Muslim separatists and suspected communists. He formed the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan party and was also prime minister from 1978 to 1981. Martial law formally ended in 1981, but economic crisis and the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino eroded his support.

He called a snap election in 1986 against Corazon Aquino and was declared the winner amid widespread fraud, which set off the People Power Revolution that February. The family fled to Hawaii, where he died in 1989. His rule is remembered for corruption and human rights abuses on a vast scale, and his son Bongbong Marcos became president in 2022.