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MANILA — They bopped alongside to the beat of a martial legislation anthem up to date right into a pop tune. They cheered when an A-list superstar proclaimed that the spirit of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the previous dictator, was alive. And when Mr. Marcos’s son and namesake held up the peace signal made well-liked by his father a technology in the past, the shrieking crowds mirrored it in return.
It’s election season within the Philippines, and historical past is being rewritten, one marketing campaign rally at a time.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has spent many years defending his household’s title towards accusations of greed and corruption and downplaying the legacy of his father’s brutal rule. Throughout his presidential marketing campaign, he has portrayed himself as a unifier, whereas false narratives on-line reimagine his father’s regime as a “golden period” within the nation’s historical past.
Now, as patriarch of the Marcos dynasty, Mr. Marcos is anticipated to be the primary particular person to win the presidential election within the Philippines by a majority in additional than three many years.
The race is being forged as a contest between those that bear in mind the previous and those that are accused of making an attempt to distort it, the final chapter in a brazen try and absolve the Marcoses of wrongdoing and quash any effort to carry the household accountable. 5 years of President Rodrigo Duterte — a powerful Marcos ally identified for his bloody warfare on medication and for jailing his critics — could have presaged a Marcos household comeback.
“It is going to decide not simply our future however our previous,” mentioned Maria Ressa, a journalist and Nobel Prize winner who’s an outspoken critic of each Mr. Duterte and Mr. Marcos.
The Marcoses are accused of looting as a lot as $10 billion from the federal government earlier than fleeing to Hawaii in 1986, when the peaceable “Folks Energy” protests toppled the Marcos regime. The household returned to the nation shortly after the loss of life of the elder Mr. Marcos in 1989.
Regardless of the exile, the Marcos title by no means actually left the political institution.
Mr. Marcos, identified by his boyhood nickname, “Bongbong,” served as vice governor, governor and congressman in Ilocos Norte, the household stronghold, for a lot of the interval between the Eighties and 2010. That 12 months, he entered the nationwide political scene when he was elected senator. Imelda Marcos, his 92-year-old mom, ran for president twice and misplaced within the Nineties.
Rehabilitating the household title has been a recurring theme. Over the many years, the Marcoses have sought to focus on younger voters with no reminiscence of martial legislation or the torture and killing of political prisoners. Fifty-six p.c of the voting inhabitants within the Philippines is aged between 18 and 41, and most didn’t witness the atrocities of the Marcos regime — very best circumstances for the unfold of disinformation, opponents say.
In January, Twitter mentioned it had eliminated greater than 300 accounts selling Mr. Marcos’s presidential bid for violating guidelines on spam and manipulation. The influential Roman Catholic Church within the Philippines mentioned in a press release that it was appalled by the “historic revisionism” within the election, and “the try and delete or destroy our collective reminiscence by way of the seeding of lies and false narratives.”
Mr. Marcos’s spokesman, Vic Rodriguez, mentioned there was “no certainty” that the Twitter accounts belonged to his supporters.
Final week, Meta, Fb’s dad or mum firm, mentioned it had suspended greater than 400 election-related accounts, pages and teams for violating its requirements. The corporate cited a video on Mr. Marcos’s official Fb web page that falsely accused his election rival, Leni Robredo, who’s vice chairman, of dishonest within the 2016 vice-presidential race. (The president and vice chairman are elected individually within the Philippines.)
A number of teams have sought to disqualify Mr. Marcos’s candidacy, pointing to a 1995 tax evasion conviction and the $3.9 billion in property taxes that his household nonetheless owes the federal government. Mr. Marcos, 64, has disregarded the assaults as “pretend information,” and refused to take part in almost all presidential debates.
At a rally in Las Piñas, Ella Mae Alipao, 15, mentioned that she obtained most of her information about Mr. Marcos from TikTok and Fb, and that she didn’t “imagine a lot in books.” After Mr. Marcos’s father was ousted, Ms. Alipao mentioned, “the Filipinos came upon how good he was; that’s after they realized that they need to have made him president for an extended time.”
Mr. Marcos has made related feedback: “I’m not going to vindicate my father’s title as a result of his title doesn’t want vindication,” he mentioned in 1995. “I’m so assured that historical past will choose him nicely.”
Within the 36 years because the father was ousted, many Filipinos have turn into disillusioned with the nation’s democracy. Poverty is widespread, revenue inequality stays excessive and few folks belief their elected leaders. When Mr. Duterte got here to energy, he promised radical change, ushering in a brand new period of strongman politics that has been embraced by many throughout the nation.
Mr. Duterte fashioned an alliance with the Marcoses early in his six-year presidential time period. In 2016, he organized for the daddy’s physique to be moved to the Philippines’ equal of Arlington Nationwide Cemetery, regardless of protests. And it was not till Sara Duterte, Ms. Duterte’s daughter, made the shock announcement that she would run for vice chairman as a substitute of president that Mr. Marcos gained his giant lead within the polls.
In current weeks, the opposition has been working furiously to counter the false narratives on-line concerning the Marcoses. Sergio Osmena III, a former political prisoner, senator and a grandson of the fourth president of the Philippines, mentioned he had employed 10,000 volunteers to wage a counteroffensive towards the Marcos marketing campaign by releasing movies on the financial devastation and human rights violations of the Marcos years.
“It’s in all probability too late,” he mentioned.
The Marcoses have been remarkably adept at avoiding jail time. Mr. Marcos was sentenced to as much as three years in jail in 1995 for tax-related convictions, however his sentence was overturned on attraction two years later, although his conviction remained on the books. In 2018, his mom was sentenced to as much as 11 years in jail for creating personal foundations to cover her unexplained wealth. She posted bail, and the Supreme Court docket remains to be reviewing her attraction.
The federal government has recovered simply $3.3 billion of the estimated $10 billion that the Marcoses are accused of stealing, however $2.4 billion in property are nonetheless below litigation, with varied teams tussling over them. Ought to Mr. Marcos win the presidency, many worry these proceedings, together with the $3.9 billion in property taxes, can be swept away, cementing the false concept that the Marcoses are harmless.
Amongst some younger voters, that view has already taken maintain. “If he’s a thief, how come he hasn’t been jailed?” requested Rjay Garcia, a 19-year-old rug salesman, at a current rally within the metropolis of Santa Rosa. Mr. Garcia mentioned that he believed the circumstances towards Mr. Marcos’s household have been meant “to destroy his popularity,” and that he had “by no means heard” of the Folks Energy protests.
Even these with intimate recollections of the nation’s battle for democracy could really feel it’s time to transfer on.
Benjamin Abalos Jr., Mr. Marcos’s marketing campaign supervisor, led protests towards the Marcos regime as a pupil council officer of the Ateneo Legislation College. He mentioned he by no means talked about these days together with his candidate. “No matter justice was achieved in these 36 years, I believe that’s already sufficient,” he mentioned. “Maybe now it’s about shifting ahead.”
Such attitudes may sign {that a} full rehabilitation of the Marcos title could quickly be full. The household now features a governor, a senator, a mayor and a doable congressman. Mr. Marcos’s eldest son, Ferdinand Alexander, 28, is operating for a congressional seat in Ilocos Norte, the place his cousin, Matthew Marcos Manotoc, is governor.
Mr. Marcos has seized on his alliance with Ms. Duterte to current himself as a unifier who is able to lead, however his political monitor report is usually skinny.
Whereas in his six years within the Senate he helped cross legal guidelines on defending older folks and increasing emergency reduction to kids, almost 70 p.c of the 52 legal guidelines he pushed for have been on designating holidays and festivals, renaming highways and reapportioning provinces and cities, a evaluation by The New York Occasions discovered.
An investigation in 2015 discovered that his résumé on the Senate web site had been embellished to incorporate a bachelor of arts from the College of Oxford. The college later mentioned he didn’t full his diploma, however obtained as a substitute a particular diploma in social research. Mr. Marcos has denied misrepresenting his schooling.
Although Mr. Marcos is seen because the front-runner within the Might 9 election, rallies for Ms. Robredo, the vice chairman, have drawn tons of of hundreds of younger supporters in current weeks. Hecklers have shouted “magnanakaw,” or “thief,” at Mr. Marcos’s motorcade, and the petitions to disqualify his candidacy are nonetheless below attraction, although consultants say they’re unlikely to succeed.
“The battle of man towards energy is the battle of reminiscence towards forgetting,” mentioned Ms. Ressa, the journalist, recalling a quote from the writer Milan Kundera. She described the election as a “microcosm of a world battle for information.”
“If information don’t win,” she mentioned, “we’ll have an entire new historical past.”
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