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• Ferdinand E. Marcos Administration (1965-1986)
• Topics for discussion

  • From Marcos to Aquino Administrations
• Ferdinand E. Marcos Administration (1965-1986)

  From 1946 to 1947 Marcos was a technical assistant to Manuel Roxas, the first president of the independent Philippine republic. He was a member of the House of Representatives (1949–59) and of the Senate (1959–65), serving as Senate president (1963–65). In 1965 Marcos, who was a prominent member of the Liberal Party founded by Roxas, broke with it after failing to get his party’s nomination for president. He then ran as the Nationalist Party candidate for president against the Liberal president, Diosdado Macapagal. The campaign was expensive and bitter. Marcos won and was inaugurated as president on December 30, 1965. In 1969 he was reelected, becoming the first Philippine president to serve a second term. During his first term he had made progress in agriculture, industry, and education. Yet his administration was troubled by increasing student demonstrations and violent urban guerrilla activities. On September 21, 1972, Marcos imposed martial law on the Philippines. Holding that communist and subversive forces had precipitated the crisis, he acted swiftly; opposition politicians were jailed, and the armed forces became an arm of the regime. Opposed by political leaders—notably Benigno Aquino, Jr., who was jailed and held in detention for almost eight years—Marcos was also criticized by church leaders and others. In the provinces Maoist communists (New People’s Army) and Muslim separatists (notably of the Moro National Liberation Front) undertook guerrilla activities intended to bring down the central government. Under martial law the president assumed extraordinary powers, including the ability to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Marcos announced the end of martial law in January 1981, but he continued to rule in an authoritarian fashion under various constitutional formats. He won election to the newly created post of president against token opposition in June 1981. Marcos’s later years in power were marred by rampant government corruption, economic stagnation, the steady widening of economic inequalities between the rich and the poor, and the steady growth of a communist guerrilla insurgency active in the rural areas of the Philippines’ innumerable islands. By 1983 Marcos’s health was beginning to fail, and opposition to his rule was growing. Hoping to present an alternative to both Marcos and the increasingly powerful New People’s Army, Benigno Aquino, Jr., returned to Manila on August 21, 1983, only to be shot dead as he stepped off the airplane. The assassination was seen as the work of the government and touched off massive antigovernment protests. An independent commission appointed by Marcos concluded in 1984 that high military officers were responsible for Aquino’s assassination. To reassert his mandate, Marcos called for presidential elections to be held in 1986. But a formidable political opponent soon emerged in Aquino’s widow, Corazon Aquino, who became the presidential candidate of the opposition. It was widely asserted that Marcos managed to defeat Aquino and retain the presidency in the election of February 7, 1986, only through massive voting fraud on the part of his supporters. Deeply discredited at home and abroad by his dubious electoral victory, Marcos held fast to his presidency as the Philippine military split between supporters of his and of Aquino’s legitimate right to the presidency. A tense standoff that ensued between the two sides ended only when Marcos fled the country on February 25, 1986, at U.S. urging. He went into exile in Hawaii, where he remained until his death. Evidence emerged that during his years in power Marcos, his family, and his close associates had looted the Philippines’ economy of billions of dollars through embezzlements and other corrupt practices. Marcos and his wife were subsequently indicted by the U.S. government on racketeering charges, but in 1990 (after Marcos’s death) Imelda was acquitted of all charges by a federal court. She was allowed to return to the Philippines in 1991, and in 1993 a Philippine court found her guilty of corruption (the conviction was overturned in 1998).
• Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino Administration (1986-1992)
• Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino Administration (1986-1992)


  Corazon Aquino, in full Maria Corazon Aquino, née Maria Corazon Cojuangco, (born January 25, 1933, Tarlac province, Philippines—died August 1, 2009, Makati), Philippine political leader who served as the first female president (1986–92) of the Philippines, restoring democratic rule in that country after the long dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Corazon Cojuangco was born into a wealthy, politically prominent family based in Tarlac province, north of Manila. She graduated from Mount St. Vincent College in New
• Corazon Cojuangco was born into a wealthy, politically prominent family based in Tarlac province, north of Manila
• Corazon Aquino was succeeded in office by her former defense secretary, Fidel Ramos
• Corazon Aquino became the unified opposition’s presidential candidate in the February 1986 elections against Marcos
• Corazon Aquino's actions after becoming president


  Proclaimed a provisional constitution, appointed a commission to write a new constitution, held elections to the new Congress, broke up monopolies held by Marcos’s allies over the economy
• Benigno Simeon Aquino, Jr., a prominent opposition politician, was jailed by Marcos for eight years (1972–80) and was assassinated in August 1983
• Corazon Cojuangco abandoned further studies in 1955 to marry Benigno Simeon Aquino, Jr.
• Corazon Cojuangco served as the first female president (1986–92) of the Philippines, restoring democratic rule after the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos
• Corazon Aquino was proclaimed the Philippines’ rightful president in February 1986 after Marcos fled the country
• Corazon Cojuangco graduated from Mount St. Vincent College in New York City in 1954
• Corazon Aquino's popularity declined due to economic injustice, political corruption, and warfare between the communist insurgency and a military with uncertain loyalties
• A Constitution is a body of fundamental rules and maxims by which the powers of government are defined and exercised
• Previous Philippine constitutions

  • 1935 Commonwealth Constitution
  • 1973 Constitution
  • 1986 Freedom Constitution
• The Constitution of the Philippines currently in effect was enacted in 1987 during the administration of President Corazon C. Aquino
• Constitution of Biak-na-Bato (1897) was established during the Katipunan revolution
• Constitutions for the Philippines were also drafted and adopted during the short-lived governments of Presidents Emilio Aguinaldo (1898) and José P. Laurel (1943)
• Malolos Constitution (1899) was another significant constitution in Philippine history
• A Constitutional Convention was held in 1971 to rewrite the 1935 Constitution
• The constitution of the republic was drafted by Isabelo Artacho and Félix Ferrer and based on the first Cuban Constitution
• The constitution is known as the "Constitución Provisional de la República de Filipinas" and was originally written in Spanish and Tagalog languages
• The 1935 Constitution was approved and adopted by the Commonwealth of the Philippines (1935–1946) and later used by the Third Republic of the Philippines (1946–1972)
• The Malolos Constitution called for a Presidential form of government with the president elected for a term of four years by a majority of the Assembly
• The Malolos Constitution was enacted and ratified by the Malolos Congress, a Congress held in Malolos, Bulacan
• The Malolos Constitution declared that sovereignty resides exclusively in the people, stated basic civil rights, separated the church and state, and called for the creation of an Assembly of Representatives to act as the legislative body
• The Malolos Constitution was the first republican constitution in Asia
• The original 1935 Constitution provided for a unicameral National Assembly and the President was elected to a six-year term without re-election
• The 1935 Constitution was amended in 1940 to have a bicameral Congress composed of a Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the creation of an independent electoral commission
• The 1935 Constitution granted the President a four-year term with a maximum of two consecutive terms in office
• The 1943 Constitution was ratified in 1943 by an assembly of appointed, provincial representatives of the KALIBAPI
• The Second Republic was formally proclaimed in 1943 with José P. Laurel appointed as President
• The 1943 Constitution remained in force in Japanese-controlled areas of the Philippines, but was never recognized as legitimate or binding by the governments of the United States or of the Commonwealth of the Philippines and guerrilla organizations loyal to them
• After the announcement of Japan's surrender, Laurel formally proclaimed the Second Republic as dissolved
• In late 1944, President Laurel declared a state of war existed with the United States and the British Empire and proclaimed martial law
• The 1943 Constitution was drafted by a committee appointed by the Philippine Executive Commission
• The Commonwealth never constituted a Supreme Court
• The chief justice position for the Commonwealth was formally vacant with the execution of Chief Justice José Abad Santos by the Japanese