A son’s delusions

Mr. Lee wrote: “The Philippines was a world apart from us, running a different style of politics and government under an American military umbrella. It was not until January 1974 that I visited President Marcos in Manila. When my Singapore Airlines plane flew into Philippine airspace, a small squadron of Philippine Air Force jet fighters escorted it to Manila Airport. There Marcos received me in great style -- the Filipino way. I was put up at the guest wing of Malacañang Palace in lavishly furnished rooms, valuable objects of art bought in Europe strewn all over. Our hosts were gracious, extravagant in hospitality, flamboyant. “His (Marcos’) foreign minister, Carlos P. Romulo, was a small man... some 20 years my senior, with a ready wit and a self-deprecating manner about his size and other limitations... His good standing with ASEAN leaders and with Americans increased the prestige of the Marcos administration. Marcos had in Romulo a man of honor and integrity who helped give a gloss of respectability to his regime as it fell into disrepute in the 1980s. “In Bali in 1976, at the first ASEAN summit held after the fall of Saigon, I found Marcos keen to push for greater economic cooperation in ASEAN. Marcos and I agreed to implement a bilateral Philippines-Singapore across-the-board 10 percent reduction of existing tariffs on all products and to promote intra-ASEAN trade. We also agreed to lay a Philippines-Singapore submarine cable. I was to discover that for him, the communiqué was the accomplishment itself; its implementation was secondary, an extra to be discussed at another conference. “We met every two to three years. He once took me on a tour of his library at Malacañang, its shelves filled with bound volumes of newspapers reporting his activities over the years since he first stood for elections. There were encyclopedia-size volumes on the history and culture of the Philippines with his name as the author. His campaign medals as an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader were displayed in glass cupboards. Imelda, his wife, had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they visited Singapore before the Bali summit they came in stye in two DC8’s, his and hers. “International outrage over the killing (of Ninoy Aquino) resulted in foreign banks stopping all loans to the Philippines, which owed over $25 billion and could not pay the interest due. This brought Marcos to the crunch. He sent his minister for trade and industry, Bobby Ongpin, to ask me for a loan of US$300-500 million to meet the interest payments. I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘We will never see that money back.’ “Shortly afterward, in February 1984, Marcos met me in Brunei at the sultanate’s independence celebrations. He had undergone a dramatic physical change... He looked most unhealthy... Marcos spent much of the time giving me a most improbable story of how Aquino had been shot. “As soon as all our aides left, I went straight to the point, that no bank was going to lend him any money. They wanted to know who was going to succeed him if anything were to happen to him; all the bankers could see that he no longer looked healthy. Singapore banks had lent US$8 billion of the US$25 billion owing. The hard fact was they were not likely to get repayment for some 20 years. “He countered that it would be only eight years. I said the bankers wanted to see a strong leader in the Philippines who could restore stability, and the Americans hoped the election in May would throw up someone who could be such a leader. I asked whom he would nominate for the election. He said Prime Minister Cesar Virata. “Virata replied it had to do with ‘flow of money’; she would have more money than other candidates to pay for the votes needed for nomination by the party and to win the election. He added that if she were the candidate, the opposition would put up Mrs. Cory Aquino and work up the people’s feelings. He said the economy was going down with no political stability. “...[The] culture of the Filipino people. It is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics. They supported the winning presidential and congressional candidates with their considerable resources and reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election that returned President Joseph Estrada. “One Filipino newspaper, Today, wrote on 22 November 1998, ‘Ver, Marcos and the rest of the official family plunged the country into two decades of lies, torture, and plunder. Over the next decade, Marcos’s cronies and immediate family would tiptoe back into the country, one by one -- always to the public’s revulsion and disgust, though they showed that there was nothing that hidden money and thick hides could not withstand.’” I think Mr. Lee believed the writer of the Philippine newspaper, the now defunct Today, because he believed the writer was right. (I think the writer may have been Teddy Boy Locsin but I could be wrong.) There were other passages relating to the coup attempts that stunted the country’s recovery which I am reserving for a subsequent article. I decided to quote Mr. Lee extensively to inform Mr. Marcos that the very leader of the country his father was allegedly attempting to emulate did not think too highly of his father, much less his father’s ability to make the Philippines another Singapore. He should read the book. He will, perhaps, be more careful in his assertions. I quote Mr. Lee because there are people who believe the younger Marcos’s assertion that had we not rebelled against his father because of “political manipulation,” we would be a Singapore by now and so wish to put the son in grabbing distance of the presidency. They should read the book. Mario Antonio G. Lopez teaches at the Asian Institute of Management and consults for business, government and civil society maglopez@gmail.com shared from