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Marcos is neither the longest-reigning nor the most dictatorial leader in the region. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, whose autocratic skills are legendary, has dominated his city-state for 27 years; Indonesia's ; President Suharto has been unchallenged for 18 years. But both of those men, as well as Taiwan's Chiang Ching-kuo, have matched their severity with an ability to provide a rising standard of living for an ever increasing number of citizens. Says Whiting: "Many of us are impressed with Marcos' political acumen but feel that some of his economic policies are questionable."
The Marcos who came to power by democratic election in 1965 was a nationalistic social reformer. In his first inaugural address, he claimed that "our government is gripped in the iron hand of venality, its treasury is barren . . . its armed forces demoralized and its councils sterile." Marcos strongly identified himself with economic and social development, land reform and centralized government. Nonetheless, he soon began to fall back into the tradition of Tammany Hall-style politics that, as one American official wryly notes, is "part of the U.S. legacy in the Philippines." He also ran afoul of a simmering separatist insurgency among the Moros, an Islamic minority in the south of the heavily Roman Catholic country, and felt the first stirrings of the fledgling Communist New People's Army.
In 1972, three years after his re-election, Marcos declared martial law, citing the economic crisis of the day and the threat, then barely credible, of the Communist insurgency. His real motive was to remain in power beyond the constitutional limit of two four-year terms. For the next eight years Marcos ruled by decree, with the aim of building a New Society based on "constitutional authoritarianism." He claimed to be a dictator with a social conscience: he pushed forward with land reform (often at the expense of his landed political opponents) and carefully controlled trade unionism. More important, Marcos extended the sway of his New Society to virtually every barangay (village) in the archipelago, creating both a powerful political machine and a new economic class dependent on government patronage.
In 1981 Marcos ended martial law, after finding ways to retain some of his most important dictatorial powers. Chief among them was Amendment 6, an addition to a new constitution that he rammed through in 1973. Amendment 6 allows the President to rule by decree almost whenever he chooses. Other laws give Marcos the power to arrest alleged national-security violators at will under a so-called preventive-detention authority; the right of habeas corpus in such cases is effectively suspended. According to the U.S. State Department, some 500 to 600 people charged with national-security offenses were in Philippine jails at the end of 1985. More sinister are the so-called "salvagings" or death-squad killings, which are carried out as part of the war against subversion by right-wing vigilantes with ties to the security forces. As many as 219 salvagings were alleged to have taken place in the first five months of last year.