Martial Law and the Need for an Authentic People's Revolution

It pains me to read blog entries and articles depicting the martial law era here in our country as something which many sees as "the ideal" governmental setup in our history. Many people believe that martial rule was "the ideal" because there was peace and order, and people obeyed the law. It is also "the ideal" because many iconic structures which are still regarded today as the country's monuments were made during this era. Likewise, people compare the "roads" of yesteryears and the big megastructures built during the Marcos era as incomparably superior than those made after Marcos.

Credit this, to the slow erosion of the people's trust in our institutions. Shortly after the fall of Marcos, all Filipinos thought that things will change for the better. Twenty years past, there is a general perception among Filipinos that things went from worse to worst. Fact is, the very ills that many people thought bedevilled Philippine society from the very beginning of this Republic's birth, began to take shape in another form, with the same lethal power.

Martial law was supposed to be the socio-political panacea against every single ill of our society. Many people still had this crazy idea that had Marcos stayed on course in his "Bagong Lipunan" theorem, it would have been better.

No.

Martial law was not a cure but a curse.  Bagong Lipunan was never a revolution, it was just a prop meant to lull a militant people into acquiesce. 

Instead of changing social structures and revolutionizing processes and functions, martial rule tried to preserve the best features of eroding institutions, enabling it to survive a possible revolutionary onslaught by the Filipino People. 

Marcos was right on when he signed Proclamation 1081 as the State's answer against the raging tide of Socialism. He was head of Asia's semi-capitalist state. His duty is to protect the way of life as he and his social class know it.

Marcos used martial law not to change Philippine society but to arrest its eventual decline. The decadence of that era rivalled that of Nero's Rome. Marcos used his iron hand not just to prevent the Revolutionaries of that era from ascending to power. 

And since there was no legitimate desire to change, only to legitimize his rule, Marcos strayed from the golden opportunity to direct the course of development by destroying the very institutions of decadence. Instead, Marcos tried to resuscitate those ailing and rotting levers of the superstructure, doing what his Capitalist masters wanted him to do. 

Marcos was neither a revolutionary nor a visionary. He was, plain and simply, a preserver of the old status quo. 

His very act, which he cloaked in propaganda terms as "Bagong Lipunan", was never revolutionary. It was purely reactionary. Bagong Lipunan was just a thesis meant to show that things were different, when in truth and in fact, the same society was actively promoted and supported by Marcos.

The greatest sin that Marcos did to the Filipino People was he gave them the impression that he was the Moses of his people, when, in truth and in fact, he became their Bane.

It is not only Marcos that erred in those times. 

I accuse those people who ascended into power after Marcos' ouster. They are worse than the Dictator because they pretended to be better than him when, in truth and in fact, they are nothing more than poor copycats.

These people perpetuated the system that the people condemned. They pretended to be promoters of democracy, when it was plutocracy that they truly pursued.

These people promoted a bourgeois capitalist system that further worsened both the economic and social spheres.

Instead of arresting the decline of Philippine society, things got worse because the root causes of our misery remain deeply imbedded within the very structure which we adopted from the West.

Now, more than ever, we need a change of the system. We need a surgical solution. We need a total overhaul of this system which oppresses the Filipino People.

The Filipino People is ripe for a revolution that will promote a totally different system, a system that equalizes opportunities, and gives every single individual his due.