Ferdinand Marcos

Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. (September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino lawyer, military officer, and politician who served as the tenth and longest serving president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. His regime has been widely referred to as a kleptocracy. From 1972 to 1981, Marcos ruled the Philippines under martial law as a dictator, embracing a policy of "constitutional authoritarianism." Following the reestablishment of democracy in 1981, a wide-ranging economic crisis, and the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, Marcos was deposed in 1986 by the People Power Revolution and was succeeded as president by Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino. He was also the father of Bongbong Marcos, the incumbent president of the Philippines since 2022.

Marcos was born in Ilocos Norte in 1917. His father, Mariano Marcos, was a lawyer and politician who was later executed by guerillas for collaboration with the Japanese Army during World War II. In 1940, Marcos and his father were convicted of assassinating a political rival, Julio Nalundasan, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. Marcos joined the United States Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and fought the Japanese, who held him as a prisoner of war in 1942. After the war, he practiced law and was elected to represent Ilocos Norte in the Philippines House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959. He elected to the Senate of the Philippines from 1959 to 1965, as served as Senate president from 1963 to 1965. He advanced his political career by exaggerating his military record, including claims that he was "the most decorated war hero in the Philippines."

In 1965, Marcos was elected to his first term as president; he was-relected in 1969. His initial policies included massive infrastructure development and construction, which made him popular but were funded by foreign lending. During his second term, debt and inflation crises and growing Philippine involvement in the Vietnam War triggered domestic social unrest. In 1972, Marcos declared martial law, ruling the country as a dictator until 1981. His rule was ratified through a 1973 plebscite administered and overseen by the military. During this period, the constitution was revised to empower Marcos, and media outlets and opposition politicians were silenced. The Marcos regime used violence to suppress political opposition, including Muslims and suspected communists, whom he declared a threat to the Philippines. He referred to his ideology during this period as the "movement for a new society" and founded the political party Kilusang Bagong Lipunan to advance his ideas.

After the formal end of martial law in 1981, Marcos was elected to a third term. His popularity suffered in 1983, however, due to an economic collapse and the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, leader-in-exile of the opposition. Disapproval manifested in the resurgence of the political opposition in the 1984 parliamentary elections. Subsequent investigative reporting on his family's extensive overseas financial holdings and false war records led Marcos to call snap elections in 1986. He was challenged by Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino. Although official results declared Marcos the victor, allegations of mass electoral fraud, political turmoil, and human rights abuses led to the People Power Revolution of February 1986, which ultimately removed him from power after two decades. On advice from United States president Ronald Reagan, the Marcos family fled to Hawaii, where he died in 1989.

Marcos remains a controversial figure in the Philippines, with his period of rule widely condemned as a kleptocracy and infamous for corruption, extravagance, and brutality, having allegedly stolen as much as $10 billion from the Central Bank of the Philippines. His wife, Imelda Marcos, became infamous in her own right for the excesses that characterized their "conjugal dictatorship," coining the term Imeldific. Despite his removal from office and death in exile, many members of the Marcos regime remained in politics, including Fidel Ramos, who succeeded Aquino as president in 1992. Though his children, Imee and Bongbong Marcos, remain active in Philippine politics, with Bongbong serving as president since 2022, they have sought to distance themselves from their parents' legacy and views.