Blog 6: Darkness of Constitutional Authoritarianism

On September 21, 1972, the exact date when Marcos declared Martial Law, Proclamation No 1082.His main reasons for proclaiming it were “to save the Republic” and “to reform society”, but there were different results from what he expected to have. Primarily, this exploit signaled people for them to start a new fight for sovereignty, not against foreign invaders, but a mad dictator blinded by absolute power. The students took part by taking over the presidential palace after a series of ferocious street battle in Manila, and writers’organization with a programmatic vision for social change came into being. Next, there was an abundance of non-humanitarian movements. Military picked up and detained thousands of Filipinos suspected to treason. Along with them were his critics and political opponents namely Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., Franciso “Soc” Rodrigo and Jose W. Diokno. The captors tortured hundreds of them however others disappeared and never found again. Then, there was censorship. It meant that all the articles in the newspaper or magazines must follow the guidelines given. Under the guidelines, the President, his family and armed forces could not be criticized. Before publishing, armed forces scrutinized the articles. This kind of situation brought as back to the Spanish era, where the friars were the armed forces and Marcos. They did not want to hear something against them while the Filipinos were the Indio, suffering from friars’ acquisitiveness of power.