Manila: Hundreds of Filipinos gathered in Manila on Friday to mark the anniversary of the mass-power rebellion against the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, ahead of an election that could see their family back in power.
Protesters chanted “never again” to commemorate the 1986 coup, with organizers describing this year’s anniversary as “the most important” as Ferdinand Marcos Jr. holds a key lead in opinion polls for the presidency .
Marcos Jr. came first in a January poll conducted by Pulse Asia, chosen by 60 percent of the 2,400 polled, with the current vice president and opposition leader in second place with 16 percent. More than 67 million Filipinos are expected to cast their vote on May 9.
“This year … (we) face a very serious threat of a Marcos coming back,” Renato Reyes, secretary general of the progressive group Bayan, told reporters.
The elder Marcos ruled the Philippines for more than two decades and took control of the country’s courts, business and media after declaring martial law in 1972.
The period in which thousands of people were killed and tortured was also notorious for corruption and other human rights atrocities and has been described as one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Philippines.
Friday’s rally took place at a site locally known as EDSA, where over one million people gathered in 1986 to oust the disgraced leader.
Organizers in Manila created an educational program to mark this year’s commemoration, which included mock classes detailing Marcos’ dictatorship.
Reyes said the Philippine government had failed to stop historical revisionism and mass amnesia, which resulted in an entire generation thinking that martial law or Marcos “were not that bad.”
“Marcos was able to take advantage of this situation to make a comeback and this is the closest to the Rashtrapati Bhavan in the last 36 years,” he said.
“(Marcos Jr.) is a major threat to the democratic aspirations of our people… so this (upcoming) election is a big battle, and we cannot lose this battle.”
Marcos Jr. has not commented on the anniversary, and posts on his widely followed social media pages on Friday were on upcoming events related to the campaign.
Christian leaders across the country have also expressed concern over the prospect of Marcos Jr coming to power.
The bishops of the country’s Catholic Church under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines on Friday called for the “injustice and cruelty” witnessed by many bishops during the martial law period and the well-documented human rights abuses, corruption, severe debt, and economic downturn that plagued the South. The East Asian country endured.
“Again, we did not create these. These are all written down in our history,” said Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, president of the CBCP, in a pastoral letter.
“We are concerned by this distortion of the truth of history and the attempt to destroy or destroy our collective memory through lies and false narratives. It is dangerous,” he said.
Karma, a coalition of martial law victims, also called on all Filipinos to “stop the return of the corrupt and tyrannical Marcos regime”.
In a statement, it said: “Let us expose and protest the continuing distortion of our country’s history.”