Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos was born on September 11, 1917, in the town of Sarrat, Ilocos Norte to Mariano Marcos (1897–1945) and Josefa Edralin (1893–1988). Mariano Marcos was a lawyer and congressman from Ilocos Norte, Philippines. He was killed in the waning days of World War II. Josefa Marcos was a schoolteacher who would far outlive her husband—dying in 1988, two years after the Marcos family left her in Malacañang Palace when they fled into exile after the 1986 People Power Revolution.

In December 1938, Ferdinand Marcos was prosecuted for the murder of Julio Nalundasan. He was not the only accused from the Marcos clan; also accused was his father, Mariano, his brother, Pio, and his brother-in-law Quirino Lizardo. Nalundasan, one of the elder Marcos’s political rivals, had been shot and killed in his house in Batac on September 21, 1935, the day after he had defeated Mariano Marcos a second time for a seat in the National Assembly. According to two witnesses, the four had conspired to assassinate Nalundasan, with Ferdinand Marcos eventually pulling the trigger. In late January 1939, they were finally denied bail and later in the year, they were convicted. Ferdinand and Lizardo received the death penalty for premeditated murder, while Mariano and Pio were found guilty of contempt of court. The Marcos family took their appeal to the Supreme Court of the Philippines, which overturned the lower court’s decision on October 22, 1940, acquitting them of all charges except contempt.

Ferdinand Marcos, along with his father, brother, and brother in-law was prosecuted in December 1938 for the murder of Julio Nalundasan, who had been shot on September 21, 1935. Two witnesses reported that the then 18-year-old Ferdinand was the one who pulled the trigger on the elder Marcos’ political rival, who had just defeated Mariano Marcos for the second time for a seat in the National Assembly the day prior to his murder. The quartet were convicted in 1940, with Ferdinand and brother in-law Lizardo receiving the death penalty for premeditated murder. However an appeal to the Supreme Court by the Marcos clan resulted in the lower court’s decision to acquit the four of all charges except contempt, in October 1940.

Marcos, who had received ROTC training, was activated for service in the US Armed Forces in the Philippines (USAFIP) after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served as a 3rd lieutenant during the mobilization in the summer and fall of 1941, continuing until April 1942, after which he was taken prisoner. According to Marcos’s account, he was released from prison by the Japanese on August 4, 1942, and US Military records show that he rejoined USAFIP forces in December 1944. Marcos’s Military service then formally ended with his discharge as a major in the 14th Infantry, US Armed Forces, in the Philippines Northern Luzon, in May 1945.

Controversies regarding Marcos’s military service revolve around: the reason for his release from the Japanese POW camp; his actions between release from prison in August 1942 and return to the USAFIP in December 1944; his supposed rank upon discharge from USAFIP; and his claims to being the recipient of numerous military decorations, most of which were proven to be fraudulent.

After the surrender of the Japanese and the end of World War II, the American government became preoccupied with setting up the Marshall Plan to revive the economies of the western hemisphere, and quickly backtracked from its interests in the Philippines, granting the islands independence on July 4, 1946. After the war, Marcos was one of only eleven lawyers confirmed by the new government as a special prosecutor with the office of the Solicitor General tasked to try by “process of law and justice” all those accused of collaboration with the Japanese. Eventually, Marcos ran for his father’s old post as representative of the 2nd district of Ilocos Norte and won three consecutive terms, serving in the House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959.

Another controversy arose in 1947, when Marcos began signing communications with the rank of Lt. Col., instead of Major. This prompted US officials to note that Marcos was only “recognized as a major in the roster of the 14th Infantry USAFIP, NL as of 12 December 1944 to his date of discharge.”

Prior to the Marcos administration, the Philippine government had maintained a close relationship with the Kuomintang-ruled Republic of China (ROC) government which had fled to the island of Taiwan, despite the victory of the Communist Party of China in the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution. Prior administrations had seen the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a security threat, due to its financial and military support of Communist rebels in the country.

Ferdinand Marcos married Imelda Romualdez on May 1, 1954, and the marriage produced three children:

After he served as member of the House of Representatives for three terms, Marcos won his senate seat in the elections in 1959 and became the Senate minority floor leader in 1960. He became the executive vice president of the Liberal Party in and served as the party president from 1961 to 1964.

By 1960 the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations had worked with the Garcia administration and the UP College of Agriculture to establish the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Laguna, signaling the rise of the Green Revolution (industrialized, chemical agriculture) to the Philippines. In the late ’60s, the Marcos administration took advantage of IRRI’s new “miracle rice” cultivar (IR8), promoting its use throughout the Philippines. While this resulted in annual rice production in the Philippines increasing from 3.7 to 7.7 million tons in two decades and made the Philippines a rice exporter for the first time in the 20th century, the switch to IR8 required more fertilizers and pesticides. This and other related reforms resulted in high profits for transnational corporations, but were generally harmful to small, peasant farmers who were often pushed into poverty.

Marcos ran a populist campaign emphasizing that he was a bemedalled war hero emerging from World War II. In 1962, Marcos would claim to be the most decorated war hero of the Philippines by garnering almost every medal and decoration that the Filipino and American governments could give to a soldier. Included in his claim of 27 war medals and decorations are that of the Distinguished Service Cross and the Medal of Honor. According to Primitivo Mijares, author of the book The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos, the opposition Liberal Party would later confirm that many of his war medals were only acquired in 1962 to aid in his reelection campaign for the Senate, not for his presidential campaign. Marcos won the presidency in 1965.

To help finance a number of economic development projects, the Marcos government borrowed large amounts of money from international lenders. The external debt of the Philippines rose more than 70-fold from $360 million in 1962 to $26.2 billion in 1985, making the Philippines one of the most indebted countries in Asia. Philippine Annual Gross Domestic Product grew from $5.27 billion in 1964 to $37.14 billion in 1982, a year prior to the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. The GDP went down to $30.7 billion in 1985, after two years of economic recession brought about by political instability following Ninoy’s assassination. A considerable amount of this money went to the Marcos family and friends in the form of behest loans.

From 1963 to 1965, he was the Senate President. Thus far, he is the last Senate President to become President of the Philippines. He introduced a number of significant bills, many of which found their way into the Republic statute books.

Ferdinand Marcos was inaugurated to his first term as the tenth President of the Philippines on December 30, 1965, after winning the Philippine presidential election of 1965 against the incumbent president, Diosdado Macapagal. His inauguration marked the beginning of his two-decade long stay in power, even though the 1935 Philippine Constitution had set a limit of only two four-year terms of office.

When Marcos became president in 1965, Philippine policy and politics functioned under a Post-World War II geopolitical framework. As a result, the Philippines was ideologically caught up in the anticommunist scare perpetuated by the US during the Cold War. Marcos and the AFP thus emphasized the “threat” represented by the formation of the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1969, even if it was still a small organization. partly because doing so was good for building up the AFP budget. As a result, notes Security Specialist Richard J. Kessler, this “mythologized the group, investing it with a revolutionary aura that only attracted more supporters.”

The 21-year period of Philippine economic history during Ferdinand Marcos’s regime—from his election in 1965 until he was ousted by the People Power Revolution in 1986—was a period of significant economic highs and lows.

Ferdinand Marcos received his Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) (honoris causa) degree in 1967 from Central Philippine University.

Expressing opposition to the Marcos’s policies and citing rising discontent over wide inequalities in society, civil society groups and opposition leaders began campaigning in 1967 to initiate a constitutional convention which would revise change the 1935 Constitution of the Philippines. On March 16 of that year, the Philippine Congress constituted itself into a Constituent Assembly and passed Resolution No. 2, which called for a Constitutional Convention to change the 1935 Constitution.

One of Marcos’s earliest initiatives upon becoming president was to significantly expand the Philippine military. In an unprecedented move, Marcos chose to concurrently serve as his own defense secretary, allowing him to have a direct hand in running the military. He also significantly increased the budget of the armed forces, tapping them in civil projects such as the construction of schools. Generals loyal to Marcos were allowed to stay in their positions past their retirement age, or were rewarded with civilian government posts, leading Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr. to accuse Marcos in 1968 of trying to establish “a garrison state.”

Under intense pressure from the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, Marcos reversed his pre-presidency position of not sending Philippine forces to Vietnam War, and consented to a limited involvement, asking Congress to approve sending a combat engineer unit. Despite opposition to the new plan, the Marcos government gained Congressional approval and Philippine troops were sent from the middle of 1966 as the Philippines Civic Action Group (PHILCAG). PHILCAG reached a strength of some 1,600 troops in 1968 and between 1966 and 1970 over 10,000 Filipino soldiers served in South Vietnam, mainly being involved in civilian infrastructure projects.

In March 1968 a Muslim man named Jibin Arula was fished out of the waters of Manila Bay, having been shot. He was brought to then-Cavite Governor Delfin N. Montano, to whom he recounted the story of the Jabidah Massacre, saying that numerous Moro army recruits had been executed en-masse by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on March 18, 1968. This became the subject of a senate exposé by opposition Senator Benigno Aquino Jr.

This eventually led to the formation of the Mindanao Independence Movement in 1968, the Bangsamoro Liberation Organization (BMLO) in 1969, and the consolidation of these various forces into the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in October 1972.

During the 1969 campaign, Marcos launched US$50 million worth in infrastructure projects in an effort to curry favor with the electorate. This rapid campaign spending was so massive that it would be responsible for the balance of payments crisis of 1970, whose inflationary effect would cause social unrest leading all the way up to the proclamation of martial law in 1972. Marcos was reported to have spent PhP 100 for every PhP 1 that Osmena spent, using up PhP 24 Million in Cebu alone.

Presidential elections were held on November 11, 1969, and Marcos was reelected for a second term. He was the first and last Filipino president to win a second full term. His running mate, incumbent Vice President Fernando Lopez was also elected to a third full term as Vice President of the Philippines.

Rumors of coup d’état were also brewing. A report of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee said that shortly after the 1969 Philippine presidential election, a group composed mostly of retired colonels and generals organized a revolutionary junta with the aim of first discrediting President Marcos and then killing him. The group was headed by Eleuterio Adevoso, an official of the opposition Liberal Party. A document given to the committee by a Philippine Government official alleged that key figures in the plot were Vice President Fernando Lopez and Sergio Osmena Jr., whom Marcos defeated in the 1969 election.

By 1969, however, Ferdinand Marcos started publicly asserting the need for the Philippines to establish a diplomatic relationship with the People’s Republic of China. In his 1969 State of the Nation Address, he said:

On September 8, 1969, the CCP main building was inaugurated as the “country’s premier arts institution.” The inauguration was originally set in January 1969, but was postponed because funds were running out from campaign overspending. The projected budget for the construction of CCP was P15 million, but by December 1968 the cost had already reached P48 million, and the construction was not even complete yet. Because of this, Imelda Romualdez Marcos loaned $7 million from the National Investment Development Corporation to finance the remaining amount. By 1972, debt for the construction of the theater alone has reached P63 million.

Construction of the bridge began in 1969. It was inaugurated on July 2, 1973, in time for Imelda Marcos’s birthday. The cost of the construction reached $22 million and was acquired through the Japanese Official Development Assistance loans.

By 1970, study sessions on Marxism–Leninism had become common in the campuses, and many student activists were joining various organizations associated with the National Democracy Movement (ND), such as the Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines (SCAUP) and the Kabataang Makabayan (KM, lit. Patriotic Youth) which were founded by Jose Maria Sison; the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK) which was founded as a separate organization from the SCAUP and KM by a group of young writer-leaders; and others.

By the time Marcos gave the first State of the Nation Address of his second term on January 26, 1970, the unrest born from the 1969–1970 balance of payments crisis exploded into a series of demonstrations, protests, and marches against the government. Student groups – some moderate and some radical – served as the driving force of the protests, which lasted until the end of the university semester in March 1970, and would come to be known as the “First Quarter Storm”.

A special election was held on November 10, 1970, to elect the delegates of the convention. Once the winners had been determined, the convention was convened on June 1, 1971, at the newly completed Quezon City Hall. A total of 320 delegates were elected to the convention, the most prominent being former senators Raul Manglapus and Roseller T. Lim. Other delegates would become influential political figures, including Hilario Davide, Jr., Marcelo Fernan, Sotero Laurel, Aquilino Pimentel, Jr., Teofisto Guingona, Jr., Raul Roco, Edgardo Angara, Richard Gordon, Margarito Teves, and Federico Dela Plana.

On December 29, 1970, Philippine Military Academy instructor Lt Victor Corpuz led New People’s Army rebels in a raid on the PMA armory, capturing rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, a bazooka and thousands of rounds of ammunition in 1970. In 1972, China, which was then actively supporting and arming communist insurgencies in Asia as part of Mao Zedong’s People’s War Doctrine, transported 1,200 M-14 and AK-47 rifles for the NPA to speed up NPA’s campaign to defeat the government.

The country’s total external debt rose from US$2.3 billion in 1970 to US$26.2 billion in 1985 during Marcos’s term. Marcos’s critics charged that policies have become debt-driven with rampant corruption and plunder of public funds by Marcos and his cronies. This held the country under a debt-servicing crisis which is expected to be fixed by only 2025. Critics have pointed out an elusive state of the country’s development as the period is marred by a sharp devaluing of the Philippine Peso from 3.9 to 20.53. The overall economy experienced a slower growth GDP per capita, lower wage conditions and higher unemployment especially towards the end of Marcos’s term after the 1983–1984 recession. Some of Marcos’s critics claimed that poverty incidence grew from 41% in the 1960s at the time Marcos took the Presidency to 59% when he was removed from power,

Some historians claim Marcos was responsible for the Plaza Miranda bombing as he is known to have used false flag operations as a pretext for martial law. There were a series of deadly bombings in 1971, and the CIA privately stated that Marcos was responsible for at least one of them.US intelligence documents declassified in the 1990s contained further evidence implicating Marcos, provided by a CIA mole within the Philippine army.

Before Marcos’s presidency, the Philippines was the second largest economy in Asia, behind only Japan. He pursued an aggressive program of infrastructure development funded by foreign loans, making him very popular throughout almost all of his first term and eventually making him the first and only President of the Third Philippine Republic to win a second term, although it would also trigger an inflationary crisis which would lead to social unrest in his second term, and would eventually lead to his declaration of martial law in 1972.

By 1972 the convention had already been bogged down by politicking and delays, when its credibility took a severe blow in May 1972 when a delegate exposed a bribery scheme in which delegates were paid to vote in favor of the Marcoses – with First Lady Imelda Marcos herself implicated in the alleged payola scheme.

The investigation on the scheme was effectively shelved when Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, and had 11 opposition delegates arrested. The remaining opposition delegates were forced to go either into exile or hiding. Within two months, an entirely new draft of the constitution was created from scratch by a special committee. The 1973 constitutional plebiscite was called to ratify the new constitution, but the validity of the ratification was brought to question because Marcos replaced the method of voting through secret ballot with a system of viva voce voting by “citizen’s assemblies”. The ratification of the constitution was challenged in what came to be known as the Ratification Cases.

Another false flag attack took place with the attempted assassination of Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in 1972. President Nixon approved Marcos’s martial law initiative immediately afterwards.

Plaza Miranda was soon followed by a series of about twenty explosions which took place in various locations in Metro Manila in the months immediately proceeding Marcos’ proclamation of martial law. The first of these bombings took place on March 15, 1972, and the last took place on September 11, 1972, – twelve days before martial law was announced on September 23 of that year.

Marcos’s declaration of martial law became known to the public on September 23, 1972, when his press secretary, Francisco Tatad, announced through the radio that Proclamation № 1081, which Marcos had supposedly signed two days earlier on September 21, had come into force and would extend Marcos’s rule beyond the constitutional two-term limit. Ruling by decree, he almost dissolved press freedom and other civil liberties to add propaganda machine, closed down Congress and media establishments, and ordered the arrest of opposition leaders and militant activists, including senators Benigno Aquino Jr., Jovito Salonga and Jose Diokno. However, unlike Ninoy Aquino’s Senate colleagues who were detained without charges, Ninoy, together with communist NPA leaders Lt. Corpuz and Bernabe Buscayno, was charged with murder, illegal possession of firearms and subversion. Marcos claimed that martial law was the prelude to creating his Bagong Lipunan, a “New Society” based on new social and political values.

Between 1972 and 1976, Marcos increased the size of the Philippine military from 65,000 to 270,000 personnel, in response to the fall of South Vietnam to the communists and the growing tide of communism in South East Asia. Military officers were placed on the boards of a variety of media corporations, public utilities, development projects, and other private corporations, most of whom were highly educated and well-trained graduates of the Philippine Military Academy. At the same time, Marcos made efforts to foster the growth of a domestic weapons manufacturing industry and heavily increased military spending.

From the declaration of martial law in 1972 until 1983, the US government provided $2.5 billion in bilateral military and economic aid to the Marcos regime, and about $5.5 billion through multilateral institutions such as the World Bank.

According to World Bank Data, the Philippine’s Annual Gross Domestic Product quadrupled from $8 billion in 1972 to $32.45 billion in 1980, for an inflation-adjusted average growth rate of 6% per year, while debt stood at US$17.2 billion by the end of 1980. Indeed, according to the US-based Heritage Foundation, the Philippines enjoyed its best economic development since 1945 between 1972 and 1979. The economy grew amidsts two severe global oil shocks following the 1973 oil crisis and 1979 energy crisis – oil price was $3 / barrel in 1973 and $39.5 in 1979, or a growth of 1200%. By the end of 1979, debt was still manageable, with debt to Debt-GNP ratio about the same as South Korea, according to the US National Bureau of Economic Research.

However, the economy continued to shrink despite the government’s recovery efforts due to a number of reasons. Most of the so-called government development programs failed to materialize. Government funds were often siphoned off by Marcos or his cronies. American investors were discouraged by the Filipino economic elite who were against the corruption that by now had become endemic in the Marcos regime. The failure of the recovery program was further augmented by civil unrest, rampant graft and corruption within the government, and Marcos’s lack of credibility. The unemployment rate increased from 6.25% in 1972 to 11.058% in 1985.

From 1972 to 1980, agricultural production fell by 30%. After declaring martial law in 1972, Marcos promised to implement agrarian reforms. However, the land reforms served largely to undermine Marcos’s landholder opponents, not to lessen inequality in the countryside, and encouraged conversion to cash tenancy and greater reliance on farm workers. Under Marcos, timber products were among the nation’s top exports but little attention was paid to the environmental impacts of deforestation as cronies never complied with reforestation agreements. By the early 1980s, forestry collapsed because most of the Philippines’ accessible forests had been depleted—of the 12 million hectares of forestland, about 7 million had been left barren.”

The Marcos regime had started to kill hundreds of Moros even before the imposition of martial law in 1972. Thousands of Moro Muslims were killed during the Marcos regime, prompting them to form insurgent groups and separatist movements such as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which became more radical with time due to atrocities against Muslims. According to the study The Liberation Movements in Mindanao: Root Causes and Prospects for Peace, a doctoral dissertation by Marjanie Salic Macasalong, the number of Moro victims killed by the Army, Philippine Constabulary, and the Ilaga (a notorious government-sanctioned terrorist cult known for cannibalism and land grabbing that served as members of the CHDF) reached as high as 10,000 lives.

The initial deposit of under $1 million grew into hundreds of millions, especially after Marcos declared martial law in 1972. Marcos and his cronies milked major sectors of the economy, extorted business establishments, skimmed from international loans, borrowed from banks without collateral, established phony companies, and siphoned off vital capital funds to overseas donations.

The Philippine education system underwent two major periods of restructuring under the Marcos administration: first in 1972 as part of the ideology of the Bagong Lipunan (New Society) alongside the declaration of martial law; and second in 1981 when the Fourth Philippine Republic was established.

The 1972 restructuring marked the first major restructuring of Philippine education since the arrival of the Americans at the turn of the 20th century. It re-oriented the teaching of civics and history so that it would reflect values which supported the Bagong Lipunan and its ideology of constitutional authoritarianism. In addition, it attempted to synchronize the educational curriculum with the administration’s economic strategy of labor export.

Martial law was put on vote in July 1973 in the 1973 Philippine martial law referendum and was marred with controversy resulting to 90.77% voting yes and 9.23% voting no.

Marcos’ signature agricultural program, Masagana 99, was thus launched on May 21, 1973, as way to cope with a nationwide rice shortage arising from the various natural disasters and pest infestations in 1972.

Controversy surrounding the BNPP began well after its construction. In 1974, National Power was already negotiating with General Electric to get the order. However, Westinghouse, another energy company, hired a lobbyist: Herminio Disini, a friend of Ferdinand Marcos. Using his proximity to Marcos, Westinghouse made a direct offer to Marcos and his cabinet to supply a plant with two 620 MW reactors at a base price of $500 million. The estimated total price was raised to around $650 million because of other charges like fuel and transmission lines. Soon after, the negotiations with General Electric were scrapped, and Westinghouse won the deal. By March 1975, Westinghouse’s contract price increased to $1.1 billion for interest and escalation costs.

The Marcos regime instituted a youth organization, known as the Kabataang Barangay, which was led by Marcos’s eldest daughter Imee. Presidential Decree 684, enacted in April 1975, encouraging youths aged 15 to 18 to go to camps and do volunteer work.

In June 1975, President Marcos went to the PRC and signed a Joint Communiqué normalizing relations between the Philippines and China. Among other things, the Communiqué recognizes that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is an integral part of Chinese territory…” In turn, Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai also pledged that China would not intervene in the internal affairs of the Philippines nor seek to impose its policies in Asia, a move which isolated the local communist movement that China had financially and militarily supported.

In 1975, Marcos issued Presidential Decree No. 824, placing the four cities and thirteen municipalities in the immediate vicinity of the Province of Manila under the administration of the Metro Manila Commission (MMC), which would serve as the central government of the capital.

The government subsequently captured NPA leaders Bernabe Buscayno in 1976 and Jose Maria Sison in 1977.

A 1976 Amnesty International report had listed 88 government torturers, including members of the Philippine Constabulary and the Philippine Army, which was respectively under the direct control of Major General Fidel V. Ramos and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. According to torture victim Rigoberto Tiglao, nearly all of the human rights abuses President Marcos has been accused of were undertaken by Philippine Constabulary units, especially through its national network of “Constabulary Security Units,” whose heads reported directly to Fidel V. Ramos. The most dreaded of these was the Manila-based 5th Constabulary Security Unit (CSU) which featured the dreaded torturer Lt. Rodolfo Aguinaldo, credited with capturing most of the Communist Party leaders including Jose Ma. Sison and the communist’s Manila-Rizal Regional Committee he headed, the Metrocom Intelligence and Security Group (MISG) under the command of Col. Rolando Abadilla, and the Intelligence Service, Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP).

The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) is one of the six nuclear power plants that the Marcos regime planned to build. It stands in Morong, Bataan, atop Napot Point that overlooks the West Philippine Sea. Construction of the BNPP began in 1976 and was completed in 1985.

By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons. In 1981, Vice President George H. W. Bush praised Marcos for his “adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic processes”. No American military or politician in the 1970s ever publicly questioned the authority of Marcos to help fight communism in South East Asia.

By 1977, reports of “gross human rights violations” had led to pressure from the international community, including newly elected US President Jimmy Carter, put pressure on the Marcos Administration to release Ninoy Aquino and to hold parliamentary elections to demonstrate that some “normalization” had begun after the declaration of martial law. Marcos did not release Aquino, but announced that the 1978 Philippine parliamentary election would be held in 1978.

The elections were held on April 7, 1978, for the election of the 166 (of the 208) regional representatives to the Interim Batasang Pambansa (the nation’s first parliament). The elections were contested by several parties including Ninoy Aquino’s newly formed party, the Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN) and the regime’s party known as the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL).

In 1978, Ferdinand Marcos became Prime Minister of the Philippines, marking the return of the position for the first time since the terms of Pedro Paterno and Jorge Vargas during the American occupation. Based on Article 9 of the 1973 constitution, it had broad executive powers that would be typical of modern prime ministers in other countries. The position was the official head of government, and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. All of the previous powers of the President from the 1935 Constitution were transferred to the newly restored office of Prime Minister. The Prime Minister also acted as head of the National Economic Development Authority. Upon his re-election to the Presidency in 1981, Marcos was succeeded as Prime Minister by an American-educated leader and Wharton graduate, Cesar Virata, who was elected as an Assemblyman (Member of the Parliament) from Cavite in 1978. He is the eponym of the Cesar Virata School of Business, the business school of the University of the Philippines Diliman.

As many student activists like Edgar Jopson and Rigoberto Tiglao, farmers like Bernabe Buscayno, journalists like Satur Ocampo, legal political opposition (Ninoy Aquino and fellow candidate in 1978 election Alex Boncayao), and priest and nuns joined or developed relationships with the CPP/NDF/NPA, many farmers, student protesters, leftists, political opponents, journalists and members of the media accused of being members or sympathizing with the CPP, NPA or MNLF or of plotting against the government were frequent targets of human rights violations. Victims would simply be rounded up with no arrest warrant nor reading of prisoners’ rights and kept indefinitely locked up with no charges filed against them. In a keynote speech at the University of the East, journalist Raissa Robles described how anyone could just be arrested (or abducted) with ease through pre-signed Arrest Search and Seizure Orders (ASSO), which allowed the military or police to detain victims on trumped up charges or unclear allegations according to Rappler research. Anybody could be picked up at any time for any reason by the military or the police, according to Raissa’s husband, journalist Alan Robles.

In a 1979 US Senate report, it was stated that US officials were aware, as early as 1973, that Philippine government agents were in the United States to harass Filipino dissidents. In June 1981, two anti-Marcos labor activists were assassinated outside of a union hall in Seattle. On at least one occasion, CIA agents blocked FBI investigations of Philippine agents.

In 1979, Marcos put a range of 11 heavy industrialization projects on the Philippines’ economic agenda.

After putting in force amendments to the constitution, legislative action, and securing his sweeping powers and with the Batasan, his supposed successor body to the Congress, under his control, President Marcos issued Proclamation 2045, which “lifted” martial law, on January 17, 1981.

On June 16, 1981, six months after the lifting of martial law, the first presidential election in twelve years was held. President Marcos ran and won a massive victory over the other candidates. The major opposition parties, the United Nationalists Democratic Organizations (UNIDO), a coalition of opposition parties and LABAN, boycotted the election.

Because the Marcos administration’s spending had relied so heavily on debt since Marcos’ first term in the 60s, the Philippines was left vulnerable when the US economy went into recession in the third quarter of 1981, forcing the Reagan administration to increase interest rates. The Philippine economy began going into decline in 1981, continuing to do so by the time the Benigno Aquino Jr. assassination in 1983. The economic and political instability combined to produce the worst recession in Philippine history in 1984 and 1985, with the economy contracting by 7.3% for two successive years.

Foreign capital was invited to invest in certain industrial projects. They were offered incentives, including tax exemption privileges and the privilege of bringing out their profits in foreign currencies. One of the most important economic programs in the 1980s was the Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran (Movement for Livelihood and Progress). This program was started in September 1981. It aimed to promote the economic development of the barangays by encouraging its residents to engage in their own livelihood projects. The government’s efforts resulted in the increase of the nation’s economic growth rate to an average of six percent or seven percent from 1970 to 1980.

In 1981, Ferdinand Marcos issued Letter of Instructions No. 1107 mandating the Central Bank of the Philippines to analyze the probability of establishing and funding the operation of a credit bureau in the Philippines due to the disturbing increase of failures on corporate borrowers. In adherence to the order, Central Bank of the Philippines organized the Credit Information Exchange System under the department of Loans and Credit. It was created to engage in collating, developing and analyzing credit information on individuals, institutions, business entities and other business concerns. It aims to develop and undertake the continuing exchange of credit data within its members and subscribers and to provide an impartial source of credit information for debtors, creditors and the public. On April 14, 1982, Credit Information Bureau, Inc. was incorporated as a non-stock, non-profit corporation. CIBI was created pursuant to LOI No. 1107 dated February 16, 1981 and was further strengthened by PD No. 1941 which recognizes and supports CIBI as a suitable credit bureau to promote the development and maintenance of rational and efficient credit processes in the financial system and in the economy as a whole. In 1997, Credit Information Bureau, Inc. was incorporated and transformed into a private entity and became CIBI Information, Inc. CIBI is a provider of information and intelligence for business, credit and individuals. The company also supplies compliance reports before accrediting suppliers, industry partners and even hiring professionals.

While the numbers of political detainees went down, the number of people killed rose and spiked in 1981, the year martial law was officially lifted by Marcos according to Task Force Detainees of the Philippines. According to Senator Jose Diokno, “As torture (cases) declined, a more terrible tactic emerged; unofficial executions”—suspected dissidents were simply arrested and vanished.

Construction of the Manila Film Center began in January 1981 and was spearheaded by Imelda Romualdez Marcos. It cost $25 million.

As a result of the rushed construction, a scaffolding collapsed on a group of workers on November 17, 1981, two months before the deadline. Despite the accident, work continued, and the bodies of the workers were buried in cement. Rescuers and ambulances were only permitted to enter the site 9 hours after the incident.

The Philippine economy began to go in decline in 1981 because of excessive debt, however, and finally went into a tailspin in 1984. This resulted in the closure of factories, massive layoffs, and the end of work on Marcos’ industrialization projects until he was finally deposed two years later.

Changes sought by the second restructuring in 1981 was not extensively implemented as the administration was stymied by economic crises, and was eventually deposed.

In New Jersey while she was still studying, Imee Marcos, President Ferdinand Marcos’ eldest daughter, was given an 18th-century estate to live in. The estate was purchased on October 26, 1982, and includes a mansion and 13 acres of land. The Marcos family spent approximately $3 to $5 million in furnishings and improvements. As for President Ferdinand Marcos’ only son, Ferdinand Jr., he was given a house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, purchased for $119,000, while he was studying in the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. Another property was bought for $90,000 in the area for the servants and security that was serving his son on November 23, 1978.

Construction work was compressed to just 10 months so it could be used as a venue for the first Manila International Film Festival scheduled on January 18, 1982. To meet the deadline, around 4,000 workers were employed to work three 24-hour non-stop shifts. The lobby, which would normally take 6 weeks to finish, was constructed in 72 hours by 1,000 workers.

On August 21, 1983, opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated on the tarmac at Manila International Airport. He had returned to the Philippines after three years in exile in the United States, where he had a heart bypass operation to save his life after Marcos allowed him to leave the Philippines to seek medical care. Prior to his heart surgery, Ninoy, along with his two co-accused, NPA leaders Bernabe Buscayno (Commander Dante) and Lt. Victor Corpuz, were sentenced to death by a military commission on charges of murder, illegal possession of firearms and subversion.

During his third term, Marcos’s health deteriorated rapidly due to kidney ailments, as a complication of a chronic autoimmune disease lupus erythematosus. He had a kidney transplant in August 1983, and when his body rejected the first kidney transplant, he had a second transplant in November 1984. Marcos’s regime was sensitive to publicity of his condition; a palace physician who alleged that during one of these periods Marcos had undergone a kidney transplant was shortly afterwards found murdered. Police said he was kidnapped and slain by communist rebels. Many people questioned whether he still had capacity to govern, due to his grave illness and the ballooning political unrest. With Marcos ailing, his powerful wife, Imelda, emerged as the government’s main public figure. Marcos dismissed speculations of his ailing health as he used to be an avid golfer and fitness buff who liked showing off his physique.

The Philippine economy, heavily reliant on exports to the United States, suffered a great decline after the Aquino assassination in August 1983 because Filipino business and political leaders who studied in Harvard, Yale, and other US universities began lobbying American and foreign firms to discourage them from investing in the Philippines. This was taking place at the same time that China was beginning to accept free-market capitalism and American businesses were jockeying to establish manufacturing plants in China. The political troubles of the Philippines hindered the entry of foreign investments, and foreign banks stopped granting loans to the Philippine government.

Jose Campos Yao, a Marcos ally and crony, along with his associates, purchased a whole city block in Seattle, Washington, in 1983. He used the Unam Investment Corp., a shell corporation based in Netherlands Antilles and a corporation he is the president of, and purchased the Seattle real estate worth S9,178,215 on May 13, 1983. Included in the acquisition are 600 Pike Street, 614 Pike Street, 1506 Sixth Avenue, 1520 Sixth Avenue, 151 Seventh Avenue, 1521 Seventh Avenue and 1575 Seventh Avenue. Throughout the entire process of the purchase, Yao and his associates hid their identities from the Seattle attorney and worked through Simeon Dee until the final negotiations.

Other industrialization projects during the Marcos administration included 17 hydroelectric and geothermal power plants to lessen the country’s dependency on oil. With the commissioning of the Tongonan 1 and Palinpinon 1 geothermal plants in 1983, the Philippines became the second largest producer of geothermal power in the world.

By 1984, US President Ronald Reagan started distancing himself from the Marcos regime that he and previous American presidents had strongly supported even after Marcos declared martial law. The United States, which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, was crucial in buttressing Marcos’s rule over the years, although during the Carter administration the relationship with the US had soured somewhat when President Jimmy Carter targeted the Philippines in his human rights campaign.

In an attempt to launch a national economic recovery program and despite his growing isolation from American businesses, Marcos negotiated with foreign creditors including the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for a restructuring of the country’s foreign debts – to give the Philippines more time to pay the loans. Marcos ordered a cut in government expenditures and used a portion of the savings to finance the Sariling Sikap (Self-Reliance), a livelihood program he established in 1984.

After the lifting of martial law, the pressure on the communist CPP–NPA alleviated. The group was able to return to urban areas and form relationships with legal opposition organizations, and became increasingly successful in attacks against the government throughout the country. The violence inflicted by the communists reached its peak in 1985 with 1,282 military and police deaths and 1,362 civilian deaths.

In August 1985, 56 Assemblymen signed a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Marcos for alleged diversion of US aid for personal use, citing a July 1985 San Jose Mercury News exposé of the Marcos’s multimillion-dollar investment and property holdings in the United States.

In late 1985, in the face of escalating public discontent and under pressure from foreign allies, Marcos called a snap election with more than a year left in his term. He selected Arturo Tolentino as his running mate. The opposition to Marcos united behind two American-educated leaders, Aquino’s widow, Corazon, and her running mate, Salvador Laurel.

Documents uncovered by the Washington Post in 1986 suggested that Marcos’s release in August 1942 happened because his father, former congressman and provincial governor Mariano Marcos, “cooperated with the Japanese military authorities” as publicist.

On the evening of September 23, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos announced that he had placed the entirety of the Philippines under martial law. This marked the beginning of a 14-year period of one man rule which would effectively last until Marcos was exiled from the country on February 25, 1986. Even though the formal document proclaiming martial law – Proclamation No. 1081 – was formally lifted on January 17, 1981, Marcos retained virtually all of his powers as dictator until he was ousted by the EDSA Revolution.

This began a pattern of loan-funded spending which the Marcos administration would continue until the Marcoses were deposed in 1986, resulting in economic instability still being felt today, and of debts that experts say the Philippines will have to keep paying well into 2025. The grandest infrastructure projects of Marcos’s first term, especially the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex, also marked the beginning of what critics would call Marcos couple’s Edifice complex, with grand public infrastructures projects prioritized for public funding because of their propaganda value.

Along with Marcos, members of his Rolex 12 circle like Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, Chief of Staff of the Philippine Constabulary Fidel Ramos, and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Fabian Ver were the chief administrators of martial law from 1972 to 1981, and the three remained President Marcos’s closest advisers until he was ousted in 1986. Other peripheral members of the Rolex 12 included Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. and Lucio Tan.

The elections were held on February 7, 1986. The official election canvasser, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), declared Marcos the winner. The final tally of the COMELEC had Marcos winning with 10,807,197 votes against Aquino’s 9,291,761 votes. On the other hand, the partial 69% tally of the National Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), an accredited poll watcher, had Aquino winning with 7,502,601 votes against Marcos’s 6,787,556 votes. Cheating was reported on both sides. This electoral exercise was marred by widespread reports of violence and tampering of election results.

At 15:00 PST (GMT+8) on February 25, 1986, Marcos talked to United States Senator Paul Laxalt, a close associate of the United States President, Ronald Reagan, asking for advice from the White House. Laxalt advised him to “cut and cut cleanly”, to which Marcos expressed his disappointment after a short pause. In the afternoon, Marcos talked to Enrile, asking for safe passage for him and his family, and included his close allies like General Ver. Finally, at 9:00 p.m., the Marcos family was transported by four Sikorsky HH-3E helicopters to Clark Air Base in Angeles City, Pampanga, about 83 kilometers north of Manila, before boarding US Air Force C-130 planes bound for Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, and finally to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii where Marcos arrived on February 26.

In 1986, following the overthrow of the Marcos regime, it was discovered that as early as 1968, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, under the pseudonyms William Saunders and Jane Ryan, opened bank accounts in Swiss banks, with one account having a balance of $950,000 Ferdinand Marcos’ salary then was only around $5,600 a year while Imelda Marcos did not have any visible means of income.

In March 1986, the Philippine Government had identified an $800 million Swiss bank account held by Marcos, which at the time was the largest asset of Marcos and his wife, Imelda, yet made public. But another commission member, Mary C. Bautista, said the commission actually had information on more than one account held by Marcos in Switzerland. The commission is seeking to regain five buildings in New York worth an estimated $350 million that it asserts are secretly owned by the Marcoses.

There were numerous issues regarding its safety and usability. After the Three Mile Island incident in the United States, construction of the nuclear power plant was stopped. A safety inquiry was done subsequently, which revealed over 4,000 defects. The site chosen for the nuclear plant was also dangerous, as it was built near the open sea, the then-dormant Mount Pinatubo, and was within 25 miles of three geological faults. The nuclear plant was discontinued in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its goal of generating 620 MW of electricity was never achieved.

More than a year after the People Power Revolution, it was revealed to the United States House Foreign Affairs subcommittee in 1987 that Marcos held an intention to fly back to the Philippines and overthrow the Aquino government. Two Americans, namely attorney Richard Hirschfeld and business consultant Robert Chastain, both of whom posed as arms dealers, gained knowledge of a plot by gaining Marcos’s trust and secretly tape recorded their conversations with the ousted leader.

On January 12, 1987, Marcos stated to Hirschfeld that he required another $5-million loan “in order to pay 10,000 soldiers $500 each as a form of “combat life insurance.” When asked by Hirschfeld if he was talking about an invasion of the Philippines, Marcos responded, “Yes.” Hirschfeld also recalled that the former president said that he was negotiating with several arms dealers to purchase up to $18 million worth of weapons, including tanks and heat-seeking missiles, and enough ammunition to “last an army three months.”

He was admitted to the hospital on January 15, 1989 with pneumonia and underwent a series of operations. In his dying days, Marcos was visited by Vice President Salvador Laurel. During the meeting with Laurel, Marcos offered to return 90% of his ill-gotten wealth to the Filipino people in exchange for being buried back in the Philippines beside his mother, an offer also disclosed to Enrique Zobel. However, Marcos’s offer was rebuffed by the Aquino government.

Marcos and his wife, Imelda, were jointly credited in 1989 by Guinness World Records with the largest-ever theft from a government: an estimated 5 to 10 billion US dollars. As of January 2020, Ferdinand Marcos is listed in the Guinness World Records website as holding the record for “Greatest robbery of a Government”.

From 1989 to 1996, a series of suits were brought before US courts against Marcos and his daughter Imee, alleging that they bore responsibility for executions, torture, and disappearances. A jury in the Ninth Circuit Court awarded US$2 billion to the plaintiffs and to a class composed of human rights victims and their families. On June 12, 2008, the US Supreme Court (in a 7–2 ruling penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Republic of Philippines v. Pimentel) held that: “The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions to order the District Court to dismiss the interpleader action.” The court dismissed the interpleader lawsuit filed to determine the rights of 9,500 Filipino human rights victims (1972–1986) to recover US$35 million, part of a US$2 billion judgment in US courts against the Marcos estate, because the Philippines government is an indispensable party, protected by sovereign immunity. The Philippines government claimed ownership of the funds transferred by Marcos in 1972 to Arelma S.A., which invested the money with Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc., in New York.

In 1990 Imelda Marcos, his widow, was acquitted of charges that she raided the Philippine’s treasury and invested the money in the United States by a US jury. In 1993, she was convicted of graft in Manila for entering into three unfavorable lease contracts between a Government-run transportation agency and another government-run hospital. In 1998, the Philippine Supreme Court overturned the previous conviction of Imelda Marcos and acquitted her of corruption charges. In 2008, Philippine trial court judge Silvino Pampilo acquitted Imelda Marcos, then widow of Ferdinand Marcos, of 32 counts of illegal money transfer from the 1993 graft conviction. In 2010, she was ordered to repay the Philippine government almost $280,000 for funds taken by Ferdinand Marcos in 1983. In 2012, a US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit upheld a contempt judgement against Imelda and her son Bongbong Marcos for violating an injunction barring them from dissipating their assets, and awarded $353.6 million to human rights victims. As of October 2015, she still faced 10 criminal charges of graft, along with 25 civil cases, down from 900 cases in the 1990s, as most of the cases were dismissed for lack of evidence.

Switzerland’s federal tribunal ruled in December 1990 that cash in Swiss banks would be returned to the Philippine government only if a Philippine court convicted her. In December 1997 (Reuters 1997:3), Switzerland’s highest court ordered the Swiss banks to return $500 million of Marcos’ secret accounts to the Philippine government, marking a major step forward in efforts to recover the Marcos’ hidden wealth. That same year, the Philippine Senate, through its Blue Ribbon Committee chairman Franklin Drilon, has revealed the existence of 97 alleged accounts of Ferdinand Marcos in 23 banks in Europe, the United States, and Asia, suspected to be depositories of wealth looted from the Philippine treasury. Thirteen of the 23 banks mentioned by Drilon are in Switzerland, namely: Swiss Credit Bank, Swiss Bank Corp., Bankers Trust AG, Banque Paribas, Affida Bank, Copla, S.A., Lombard Odier et Cie, Standard Chartered Bank, Swiss Volkabank, Bank Ricklin, Compaigne Banque Et d’Investissements, Compaigne de Gestion Et De Banque Gonet Sa Nyon, and Bank Hoffman AG.

A number of books were published under Marcos’ name during his term from 1970 to 1983, and a final book was published in 1990. Those published during his term are believed to have been written by ghostwriters, notably Adrian Cristobal.

From 1993 to 2016, his remains were interred inside a refrigerated crypt in Ilocos Norte, where his son, Ferdinand Jr., and eldest daughter, Imee, have since become the local governor and congressional representative, respectively. A large bust of Ferdinand Marcos (inspired by Mount Rushmore) was commissioned by the tourism minister, Jose Aspiras, and carved into a hillside in Benguet. It was subsequently destroyed; suspects included left-wing activists, members of a local tribe who had been displaced by construction of the monument, and looters hunting for the legendary Yamashita treasure.

In 1995, some 10,000 Filipinos won a US class-action lawsuit filed against the Marcos estate. The claims were filed by victims or their surviving relatives consequent on torture, execution, and disappearances.

In the 2004 Global Corruption Report, Marcos appeared in the list of the world’s most corrupt leaders, listed in second place behind Suharto, the former President of Indonesia. But one of Marcos’ own former Ministers of industry, Vicente Paterno, notes that while “the amount of theft perpetrated by Marcos’s regime was probably less than that by Suharto on Indonesia,” it “harmed our country more because the sums stolen by Marcos were sent out of the country, whereas Suharto’s loot mostly were invested in Indonesia.”

On November 22, 2007, Pablo Martinez, one of the convicted suspects in the assassination of Ninoy Aquino Jr. alleged that it was Ninoy Aquino Jr.’s relative, Danding Cojuangco, cousin of his wife Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, who ordered the assassination of Ninoy Aquino Jr. while Marcos was recuperating from his kidney transplant. Martinez also alleged only he and Galman knew of the assassination, and that Galman was the actual shooter, which is not corroborated by other evidence of the case. Even after Benigno Aquino Jr.’s wife, Corazon Aquino, stepped into power, no further investigation was conducted on his assassination.

The failed election process gave a decisive boost to the “People Power movement.” Enrile and Ramos would later abandon Marcos and switch sides and seek protection behind the 1986 People Power Revolution, backed by fellow-American educated Eugenio Lopez Jr., Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, and the old political and economic elites. At the height of the revolution, Juan Ponce Enrile revealed that a purported and well-publicized ambush attempt against him years earlier was in fact faked, and in his claim, it was in order for Marcos to have a pretext for imposing martial law. Enrile would later take retract this statement, and in 2012, he claimed that the ambush actually happened. Despite all this, Marcos never ceased to maintain that he was the duly elected and proclaimed president of the Philippines for a fourth term, but unfairly and illegally deprived of his right to serve it. On February 25, 1986, rival presidential inaugurations were held, but as Aquino supporters overran parts of Manila and seized state broadcaster PTV-4, Marcos was forced to flee.

During the ICIJ’s (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) exposé of offshore leaks in April 2013, the name of his eldest daughter, Imee Marcos, appeared on the list of wealthy people involved in offshore financial secrecy. It was revealed that she is hiding parts of her father’s ill-gotten wealth in tax havens in the British Virgin Islands.

In 2014, Vilma Bautista, the former secretary of Imelda Marcos was sentenced to prison for conspiring to sell a Monet, Sisley and other masterpiece artworks belonging to the Republic of the Philippines for tens of millions of dollars.

The country crafted a large number of decrees, laws, and edicts during Marcos’s term. From 1972 to 1986, the Marcos Administration codified laws through 2,036 Presidential Decrees, an average of 145 per year during the 14-year period. To put this into context, only 14, 12, and 11 laws were passed in 2015, 2014 and 2013, respectively. A large number of the laws passed during the term of Marcos remain in force today and are embedded in the country’s legal system.

On November 18, 2016, the remains of Marcos were buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani despite opposition from various groups. The burial came as unexpected to many, as the Supreme Court’s ruling still allowed 15 days for the opposition to file a motion for reconsideration. On the morning of November 18, using Philippine Armed Forces helicopters, his family and their supporters flew his remains from Ilocos to Manila for a private burial.

In the months prior, opinion on his burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani had been split: 50 percent of the 1,800 respondents of a survey conducted by SWS in February 2016 said Marcos “was worthy to be buried at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani” while the other half rejected a hero’s burial, calling him a “thief.”

On May 9, 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the searchable database from Panama Papers. His two daughters, Imee Marcos Manotoc and Irene Marcos Araneta, have been named, along with his grandsons Fernando Manotoc, Matthew Joseph Manotoc, Ferdinand Richard Manotoc, his son-in-law Gregorio Maria Araneta III, including his estranged son-in-law Tommy Manotoc’s relatives Ricardo Gabriel Manotoc and Teodoro Kalaw Manotoc.

Adjusted for inflation, this would be equivalent to about US$11.16 to US$22.3 billion or over 550 billion to 1.1 trillion Philippine pesos in 2017.

On September 3, 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte said the family of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was “ready to return” their stolen wealth to the government, possibly through a settlement. In January 2018, a draft House Bill proposing a compromise settlement and immunity for the Marcoses submitted by the late Ferdinand Marcos’s legal counsel Oliver Lozano was revealed on social media to have been received by the Duterte government in July 2017.

Its cost reached over $2.3 million and was only paid off by the government in April 2017, 31 years after the beginning of its construction. However, government spending for the BNPP continues long after that. Maintaining the plant costs the government P40 million a year. In 2011, the government had to reimburse P4.2 billion to National Power Corporation for the plant’s maintenance. To contribute to the cost of its maintenance, it was transformed into a tourist attraction.

In July 2017, the Philippine Court of Appeals rejected the petition seeking to enforce the United States court decision that awarded the $2 billion in compensation to human rights victims during the term of former President Ferdinand Marcos.

On November 9, 2018, Imelda Marcos was found “guilty beyond reasonable doubt…” by the Sandiganbayan of seven counts of graft for the private organizations set up in Switzerland during her active duty as a government official from 1968 to 1986. In less than 20 days however, the Sandiganbayan listed Imelda’s “advanced age” and health condition as considerations for allowing the accused to post bail. The Fifth Division’s (of the Sandiganbayan) ruling read that “the fact that she is of advanced age and for health reasons, consistent with the doctrine in Enrile vs Sandiganbayan, bail is allowed for these seven cases.” The Supreme Court of the Philippines affirms that the Marcoses’ assets, that are beyond the legal and declared government salaries, are considered as ill-gotten wealth. In 1998 however, the Supreme Court acquitted Imelda Marcos of corruption charges from a previous graft conviction in 1993.