CEBU ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL COLLEGES

SAN VICENTE ST., BOGO CITY, CEBU

S.Y. 2018-2019

“PHILIPPINE MARTIAL LAW OF

1972: ADVANTAGES AND
DISADVANTAGES”

Proposed by:
Jerico Roa Edulan
Iwo Villegas
Alyssa Charm Maglasang
Milke Ungui
Mariel Salas
Zybel Quijardo

Proposed to:
Mrs. Morena V. Tan
 ABSTRACT

“This research sought to find information that provides the "Advantages and

Disadvantages of Martial Law to the Filipinos". The investigation aims to identify the causes and

effects of Martial Law not just to the Filipinos but also to the country. A study was created

containing a reliable source from different sites, books, magazine, and newspapers.

Furthermore, this study was conducted through deeper research about Martial Law and

was found out the causes of Martial in the Philippines and its effect on the masses. According to

our results, the implementation of Martial Law created a vast of critiques and bad effects than

good effects.”
 CHAPTER I

Introduction

The reign of Ferdinand Marcos, the sixth president of the post-war Republic of the

Philippines, placed his country under the dictatorship of his cruelty and vindictiveness. President

Marcos has assumed powers as Chief Executive for more than 20 years (December 30, 1965 –

February 25, 1986). Marcos was born in the year 1917 of September 11. He joined the military

forces and guerilla forces during the Second World War. After the war, Marcos was designated as

Special Assistant to the President in the year 1946-1947. He was also known as a member of the

Philippine Veterans Commission, and after the Independence was granted to the Philippines, he

ran as a representative of the 1st district of Ilocos Norte and being elected twice from the year

1949-1959. He was named Chairman of the House Committee on Commerce and Industry and

member of the Defense Committee headed by Ramon Magsaysay. He became Senate President in

1963. Being a lawyer and master politician, he is one of the legislators who had established a

record of introducing a number of significant bills, many of which passed to the Republic statute

books. The power that Marcos gained made him superior in implementing Martial Law in his

countrymen.

On September 21, 1972, the Philippines was in the regime of darkness and violence.

President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law and signed the Proclamation 1081 placing his

country under his absolute power. According to research under Martial Law by Ledivina V.

Cariño, the declaration of Martial Law was by the means of creating a "New Society"- a revolution

that seeks the betterment of the lives of the masses, and Equality is the fundamental demand of the
rebellion of the poor. This declaration made a certain goal of reforming the old society in the

Philippines. In such reformation, Filipino people will no longer live in penury, corruption, mass

deception, hunger, and death. In such a conclusion, Filipinos could now live in a way worthy of

their dignity. But such promises of Marcos reformation became a nightmare to the masses.

Statement of the Problem

The study discussed the “Philippine Martial Law of 1972: Advantages and disadvantages”.

Its purpose is to explain further the effects of Martial Law in the lives of every Filipino citizen.

Specifically, this study aims to:

1. Identify the advantages and disadvantages of the implemented Martial Law during

the Marcos regime to this current generation.

2. Know the bad effects it causes to the Filipinos; and

3. Understand the effects it brings to the country.

Significance of the Study

The results of this study will be deemed important to the following:

Students. This study would help them understand the cause and effects of Martial Law to

the Filipinos and to this generation. It would surely enlighten their minds and would surely pursue

greater research about Martial Law.

Teachers. This study will be beneficial to their field of teaching about the history of our

country.

Future Researchers. This study would help them achieve more credible research

regarding Martial Law. The findings of this study would contribute to their needs for information.
 CHAPTER II

Review of Related Literature

The period of martial law that is set in the Philippines was one of the darkest periods in

history. What was felt by the nation was his absolute power that became the vehicle which made

violence and lawlessness to be widespread. It was during those hard times that the patriotic spirit

of the Filipinos was reawakened as many people decided to face the harsh abuses of the regime.

In turn, the whole country witnessed the massive outpouring of courage and resistance from

different sectors in the society.

On September 21, 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos placed the Philippines under

Martial Law. The declaration issued under Proclamation 1081 suspended the civil rights and

imposed military authority in the country. Marcos defended the declaration stressing the need for

extra powers to quell the rising wave of violence allegedly caused by communists. The emergency

rule was also intended to eradicate the roots of rebellion and promote a rapid trend for national

development. The autocrat assured the country of the legality of Martial Law emphasizing the need

for control over civil disobedience that displays lawlessness. Marcos explained citing the

provisions from the Philippine Constitution that Martial Law is a strategic approach to legally

defend the Constitution and protect the welfare of the Filipino people from the dangerous threats

posed by Muslim rebel groups and Christian vigilantes that places national security at risk during

the time. Marcos explained that martial law was not a military takeover but was then the only

option to resolve the country’s dilemma on the rebellion that stages national chaos threatening the
peace and order of the country. The emergency rule, according to Marcos’s plan, was to lead the

country into what he calls a “New Society”. (Philippine history)

Typically, the imposition of martial law accompanies curfews, the suspension of civil law,

civil rights, habeas corpus, and the application or extension of military law or military justice to

civilians. Civilians defying martial law may be subjected to military tribunals (court-martial).

Aside from the negativity that Martial Law brought it has also an advantage: According to

Emmanuel Ikan Astillero, Licensed Environmental Planner (1975-present);

“The advantage of martial law is to cut a long due process to a short one. For
instance, a suspect can be arrested without an arrest warrant. A house can be searched
without a search warrant. Etc. The disadvantage is that the enforcers or an influential
person may abuse this privilege of the State which may result in innocent suspects being
jailed. Some for years. This happened during martial rule of Marcos, in the Phil’s,
1971–1985. The lowest number cited, and given cash benefits from the Marcos Estate,
was 10K. The payout is still going on as of 2018. There could be more.”

This stated advantage is true yet it cannot hide the fact that Amnesty International (AI) has

estimated that during martial law, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240

were killed. The AI mission, which visited the Philippines from November to December 1975,

found that 71 of the 107 prisoners interviewed alleged that they had been tortured.

Historian Michael Charleston Chua published a study entitled, "TORTYUR: Human

Rights Violations during the Marcos Regime," that detailed the different kinds of torture used by
authorities during this dark chapter in Philippine history, as recounted by victims and published in

different reports.

STATISTICAL facts about the human rights violations in the Philippines as noted by the

Commission on Human Rights (CHR) belied the accusation that Marcos is a human-rights violator

compared to those recorded during the time of Presidents Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, and Arroyo.

Even if none of those violations could be directly attributed to Marcos, the statistical figures

presented by the CHR, on its face value, was more than enough to refute his detractors who tagged

him a dictator. As per record, less than 50 alleged violations were noted during the period before

the declaration of martial law (from January 1965 to September 21, 1972) and roughly 1,500 for

the remaining 14 years (up to February 1986) he was in office.

In the case of Mrs. Aquino, who had been hailed as the defender of human rights, the 16

months that she ruled as a revolutionary dictator by virtue of her scrapping of the 1973 Constitution

(from 1986 to 1987), close to 800 alleged human-rights violation were recorded. From 1987 to

1992, she logged more than 9,000 alleged human-rights violations, including the bloody carnage

of protesting farmers and students in 1987 after the police indiscriminately fired on them, killing

12 and wounding several others. Another carnage also occurred in Hacienda Luisita after the

Mendiola incident and many innocent civilians were also killed and wounded. Those days of

infamy, under the supposed era of newly regained freedom and democracy, shattered the myth of

Mrs. Aquino as the people’s restorer of their rights.

 Ramos, for the six years he stayed in office (from 1993 to 1998), recorded more than 7,000

alleged human rights violations, while in the three-year rule of Estrada (1998 to 2000) just over

100 incidents of alleged human-rights violations were recorded. In the case of the Arroyo

administration, it turned worse because of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances, where

more than 900 were recorded. More worrisome was the fact that the CHR, the Karapatan

Foundation, and IBON Foundation have listed an aggregate of more than 10,000 alleged human-

rights violations, a figure that caught the attention of the United Nations representative on human

rights.

Aquino’s human-rights violations: Facts and figures

To the current generation of Filipinos who had to rely on textbook accounts and biased

media reports of the martial law years up to the Edsa revolt, Ferdinand Marcos was a tyrant and

oppressor and the Aquino couple, Ninoy and Cory, icons of democracy.

However, unknown to the general public, Mrs. Aquino’s regime, compared with Marcos,

was tainted with a more gruesome record of human-rights violations during the period from March

1, 1986, to December 1991 with the number of warrantless arrests and detentions reaching an

alarming level of 15,999 and extrajudicial executions of 1,733 cases, including 189 that occurred

in 1990 alone.

Records in Congress, the Human Rights Commission (HRC) and Task Force Detainees of

the Philippines (TFDP) for the same period showed 335 cases of disappearances and 146 cases of
massacres, which happened between March 1, 1986 and 1989, including the infamous Mendiola

carnage that claimed the lives of 12 farmers who joined a protest against the takeover of Hacienda

Luisita and Aquino’s defective agrarian-reform policy at the Mendiola Bridge. A subsequent

massacre also occurred inside Hacienda Luisita were many farmers died of bullet wounds.

Mrs. Aquino’s dismal human-rights record was also mirrored in figures during her term,

showing a total of 71,111 families, 23,424 individuals, 229 barangays and 207 sitios affected by

464 cases of forced evacuations; 20 cases of segregation which affected 2,306 individuals and

1,675 families; and 23 cases of economic and food blockades, affecting 8,925 families and 427

individuals in 36 barangays in the countryside. Of the 8,925 families affected, 4,024 were

victimized in 1990.

Former Supreme Court Justice Abraham Sarmiento, one of four Philippine-based

oppositionists who Ninoy said he admired the most, also drew attention to the massive human-

rights violations under Cory Aquino.

He noted that from 1988 onward, an average of 200 persons has been arrested daily, with

94 percent of the arrests done illegally. He reported 4,408 political detentions in the 21 months

from January 1989 to September 1990. Of those arrested, 535 showed signs of torture, 109

disappeared following their arrest, 218 people died from massacres while 157 were wounded in

54 cases of frustrated massacres. It was estimated that from 1988 until April 1991, over 1 million

people suffered injuries in the course of the government’s counterinsurgency drive.

 The Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA), in a report covering

January 1987 to September 1991 stated that the rights of over 20,700 persons were violated as a

result of 18,281 arbitrary arrests, 701 involuntary disappearances, 1,000 extrajudicial executions,

and 727 summary killings. The Children’s Rehabilitation Center also reported that from 1988 to

1989, the rights of 346,789 children were violated.

The TFDP documented human-rights violations during the first 1,000 days of the Aquino

regime (March 1986 to November 1988) as follows: 11,911 cases of illegal arrest, 705 summary

executions, 88 frustrated summary executions, six deaths associated with cruel treatment of prison

conditions, 125 massacres with 480 fatalities and 138 wounded, 136 counts of frustrated massacre,

1,676 torture victims, 224 involuntary disappearances, 25 civilian deaths in counterinsurgency-

related hostilities, 37,133 dislocated families in 64 refugee camps and 500 families in 37 barangays

were subjected to food and economic blockade.

The disturbing figures came about despite Aquino’s creation of the Commission on Human

Rights on May 5, 1987, through Executive Order 163. The book Lost in Time noted:

“Aquino experienced how difficult it actually was to defend democracy. It was

a lot easier to condemn her predecessor, Marcos, and to keep on ascribing to him

problems that plagued her reign. To her dismay, the human-rights class suit against the

Marcos Estate in America did little to spare her regime from intense criticism for its

own human-rights record.”

 The late nationalist Renato Constantino, whose house was raided by government agents in

August 1988, added:

“The success of Mrs. Aquino’s advisers in institutionalizing vigilantism, food

blockades and other counter-insurgency measures shows us that… the Aquino

administration cannot keep up with its own rhetoric of upholding human rights even in

its narrow sense.”

So, while the illusion created was that the Aquino government is markedly different from

that of Marcos since it was not as politically repressive as its predecessor, this perception was

accepted in a shrinking group of Cory believers. Granting that Mrs. Aquino was sincere in her

human-rights pronouncements, this was contradicted by factual record. The figures on human-

rights violations could be more as other incidents committed by the military, the communists and

the secessionists were not documented at all.

Main Discussion

Marcos imposes Martial Law in 1971. Marcos declared Martial Law in the form of

Proclamation 1081 over the entire country on September 21, 1972, using the activity of leftist

student groups and insurgent groups such as the New People's Army (NPA), anti-Vietnam-War

demonstrations and a series of bomb explosions in downtown Manila as an excuse. Marcos

dissolved Congress, suspended rights of habeas corpus, freedom of speech, press, and assembly:

and imprisoned the opposition Liberal Party Leaders.

 The days after the proclamation became lugubrious and became the darkest days in

Philippine History. There are advantages and disadvantages in the 1972 declaration. However, the

disadvantages were greater than the advantages. In the case of Phil. Martial Law, discipline in

cleaning up the streets happened also, more orderly traffic flow. So, see? Unlike what we have

right now. Unfortunately, as we observed that in every place we can witness the garbage and also,

the traffic flow that may ruin our day most especially if people will go in their respective work

areas. Another advantage of Marcos administration is that a suspect can be arrested without an

arrest warrant and a house can be searched without a search warrant. But, this privilege may abuse

by an influential citizen which may result that an innocent suspect may put in jail without due

process.

In contrary side, there are disadvantages during the said event that marked in the history of

our country. There were over 10,000 citizens tortured, imprisoned, and killed because Marcos

administration was powerful over the ordinary citizens. And even today, we can still feel the

sufferings that they have before and the truth is, they can't fight against the enemy because they

were already losing the battle. Also, the amount of kleptocracy by the Marcos family which stole

billions of pesos in gold, money and property. Sad to say, that wealth crowned them to be known

popularly not just here in the Philippines but all over the world. Maybe this time that kind of

amount is still missing in the bank of Filipino citizens whom really the owner of that wealth. Also,

curfew hours were enforced, group assemblies were banned, privately-owned media facilities

shuttered. (Rappler.com)
 Furthermore, Marcos declared Martial law to become powerful and to protect his

companion. He just wanted to be in his position as always. Also, the said democracy during Marcos

leadership was no more. Why? Because even the Newspapers was under control and unfortunately

were shut down. The mass media doesn’t have the freedom to reveal their sides. So, people, that

time was empty and blinded on what is really happening in their society.

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

President Ferdinand Marcos announced that he had placed the entirety of the Philippines

under martial law. This marked the beginning of 14yr. Period of one rule which would effectively

last until Marcos was exiled from the country on February 25, 1986. Even though the formal

document proclaiming martial law -Proclamation No. 1081 was formally lifted on January 17,

1981, Marcos retained virtually all of his powers as dictator until he was ousted by the EDSA

Revolution. While the period of Philippine history in which Ferdinand Marcos was in power

actually began seven years earlier, when he was first inaugurated president of the Philippines in

late 1965, this article deals specifically with the period where he exercised dictatorial powers under

martial law and the period in which he continued to wield those powers despite technically lifting

the proclamation of martial law in 1981. When he declared martial law in 1972, Marcos claimed

that he had done so in response to the "communist threat” posed by the newly founded Communist

Party of the Philippines. This 14 years period in Philippine history is remembered for the

administration record on human rights abuses, particularly targeting political opponents, student

activists, journalist, religious workers, farmers and others who fought against the Marcos

dictatorship. Based on the documentation of Amnesty International, Task Force Detainees of the
Philippines and similar human rights monitoring entities, historians believe that the Marcos

dictatorship was marked by 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 350,000 documented tortures, 77

disappeared and 70,000 incarcerations. Numerous explanations have been put forward as reasons

for Marcos to declare Marti law enforcement in September 1972, some of which were presented

by the Marcos administration as official justification, and either mainstream political opposition

or by analysis studying the political economy of the decision.

The three reasons expressed by the Marcos administration, saying that martial law:

1. Was a response to various leftist and rightist plot against the Marcos administration:

2. Was just the consequence of political decay after the American style democracy failed to

take root in Philippine society.

3. Was a reflection of Filipino society's history of authoritarianism and the supposed need for

iron-fisted leadership.

4. Opposition to Marcos declaration of Martial law ran the whole Philippine society.

5. Ranging from impoverished peasants whom the administration tried to chase out of their
home to the political old-guard whom Marcos had tried to displace from power to

academics and economist who disagreed with the specific of Marcos Martial law policies.