When Martial Law was declared 38 years ago

While the official date for the declaration of Martial Law is Sept. 21, 1972, most Filipinos only heard of it on the following day, so in that context today we commemorate the 38th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law when our country should have moved forward, because one-man rule could make things work, but in the end, we got stuck in the quicksand of the selfish ambitions of our political leaders all in the name of helping the Filipino people. Thus, it was everyone to himself in our crazy kind of politics.

Incidentally, this week, the Cebu media celebrate the 16th Press Freedom Week as we used the week that Martial Law was declared as a way of reminding ourselves that when Martial Law was declared, the Filipino people lost a lot of their civil liberties and rights and the biggest victim was Press Freedom, where all major newspapers, television and radio networks were shutdown by the military and media personalities like the late Sir Max Soliven were arrested by an arrest, search and seizure order (ASSO) signed by then Defense Sec. Juan Ponce Enrile and the media was given to cronies.

I remember Sir Max complaining that the ASSO presented to him was merely a photocopy of that ASSO, instead of an original copy. But then it was Martial Law and when the military “invites” you for questioning, you’re considered smart if you brought along a sleeping mat or your toothbrush because more often than not, you just might end up locked up in jail, just because the military man questioning you didn’t like your face.

I was only 21 years old when Martial Law was declared. I was fresh out of college and my parents gave me a graduation gift to visit the United States where my brother Rene was working at the United Nations (UN). Hence when Martial Law was declared, we were on our car driving towards Washington D.C. when all of the sudden, the FM radio cut short its program for a breaking news… that Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos had declared Martial Law in the Philippines.

When we got in the hotel, we immediately called home, but the telephone operator (they had operators in those days when the cellphone was still a dream) told us that Philippine lines were shut down and no one can place a call to and from home. Back in New York, I noticed that the Philippine Flag was flying over the Waldorf Astoria so I asked the doorman what was up and he told me that Carlos P. Romulo was in town to defend the declaration of Martial Law in the Philippines before the UN.

With Romulo who was our country’s most popular diplomat defending Martial Law in the international arena, I knew that Pres. Marcos had succeeded in his ploy to fool the Filipino people and the world that Martial Law had to be declared in order to stop communism from taking over the country. Back in those days, America believed any government that fought communism at its roots. Alas, 38 years later we are still in the midst of this internal political conflict that has cost the lives of innocent men and women, lured by a megalomaniac now living in Utretch, Netherlands.

Surely by now, you must have known that Martial Law was declared because Pres. Marcos wanted to stay in power more than the Constitution allowed. This is why in declaring Martial Law he threw the 1935 Constitution out of the window. This was considered the best Constitution that we ever had and perhaps the reason why we are stuck in political limbo is due to the fact that when Pres. Cory Aquino took the reins of power from the Marcos dictatorship, she did not allow the return to the 1935 Constitution and instead created what we now call the Cory Constitution, which many pundits admit should have been an interim Constitution. 

It is for this very reason why I have always supported the calls for Charter changes because it has been 38 years since the best Constitution in this country was forcibly taken from us. I fully agree that the 1935 Constitution needed some amendments, especially those pro-American provisions, but because we did not call a proper constitutional convention, we ended up with a Constitution that bears a hangover of our Martial Law years.

We all acknowledge that Filipinos have very short memories and this is why too often we hear people who are dissatisfied with the government talking about a return to Martial Law . . . hoping for a benevolent dictator. But we know that this is total nonsense. We have to remind you again of that famous quotation taken from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, “Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely!” What this country needs is a new Constitution that would depoliticize our system of governance, making it impossible for political or elective offices to become family heirlooms or businesses that would be handed down from generation to generation.

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