Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
When Marcos's key allies saw which way the wind was blowing and deserted him, the
game was up. Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff of the
Armed Forces, General
Fidel Ramos
(b.1928) later to become president, announced a
coup d'état. The US prevaricated, but eventually told Marcos to “cut and cut cleanly”.
Ferdinand and Imelda fled from the Malacañang Palace to Clark in helicopters
provided by the CIA, and from there into exile in Hawaii, where Ferdinand died in
1989. Conservative estimates of their plunder put the figure at US$10 billion, US$600
million of it spirited into Swiss bank accounts - rumours persist that Marcos had also
appropriated a hoard of Japanese war loot dubbed “Yamashita's Gold”, though this has
never been proven. Back in Manila, the people stormed through the gates of the
Malacañang Palace.
The return of democracy
Having ousted Marcos, hopes were high for the presidency of
Cory Aquino
, but she
never managed to bring the powerful feudal families or the armed forces under her
control.
Land reform
was eagerly awaited by the country's landless masses, but when
Aquino realized reform would also involve her own family's haciendas in Tarlac, she
quietly shelved the idea: most of the country's farmers remain beholden to landlords
today. Aquino survived seven coup attempts and made little headway in improving life
for the majority of Filipinos who were - and still are - living below the poverty line.
The communist New People's Army (NPA) emerged once again as a threat, and human
rights abuses continued.
Aquino also had to deal with another thorny issue: the presence of
US
military bases
in the country; Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base. Public opinion had been turning
against the bases for some time, with many seeing them as a colonial imposition. In
1987 Congress voted not to renew the bases treaty and the US withdrawal, set for
1991, was hastened by the portentous eruption of
Mount Pinatubo
(see box, p.123),
which scattered ash over both Clark and Subic, causing millions of dollars of damage to
US aircraft and ships. The pullout made jobless six hundred thousand Filipinos who
had depended on the bases for employment either directly or indirectly.
In
Mindanao
, the Aquino administration had mixed success. The
Moro National
Liberation Front
started a war for independence in the 1970s that dragged on until
1987, when it accepted the offer of autonomy instead - the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Mindanao, or ARMM, was created in 1990 (see box, p.403). However, the
more radical
Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) refused to accept the 1987 accord
and continued fighting.
Ultimately, Aquino's only legacy was that she maintained some semblance of a
democracy, which was something for her successor,
Fidel Ramos
, to build on. President
Ramos took o
ce on July 1, 1992 and announced plans to create jobs, revitalize the
economy and reduce the burdensome foreign debt of US$32 billion. But the first thing
he had to do was establish a reliable electricity supply. he country was being paralysed
for hours every day by
power cuts
, and no multinational companies wanted to invest
their hard-earned money under such di
cult conditions. Ramos's success in breathing
new life into the ailing energy sector - at least in Manila and many cities - laid the
foundations for a moderate influx of foreign investment, for industrial parks and new
1983
1986
1989
Benigno Aquino returns to the
Philippines, but is assassinated
as he leaves his plane
People Power Revolution (aka EDSA
Revolution) sees Marcos flee the country;
Corazon Aquino becomes president
Ferdinand Marcos
dies in exile in
Hawaii
