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Kompass

Thinkers and political figures

Photographic portrait of Ferdinand Marcos in a suit.

Portrait: Photograph, via Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab) · Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

Ferdinand Marcos

Country
Philippines
Era
1917–1989
Tradition
Authoritarian populism

Philippine president who declared martial law rather than leave office at the end of his second term, ruled for fourteen more years, and was removed by a mass uprising after an election he was found to have stolen.

01

Documented positions

Documented positions come from the sources listed. Similarity is this project’s inference from those positions, and is a much weaker claim.

  • Declared martial law in 1972, closing Congress, suspending habeas corpus and ruling by decree
  • Pursued large-scale infrastructure construction financed by foreign borrowing, quadrupling national debt
  • Awarded monopoly control of major industries to associates, a system documented as crony capitalism
  • Implemented a land reform programme limited to rice and corn lands, with partial effect
  • Held a controlled 1986 snap election, the falsification of which triggered the People Power uprising
  • Was found by Philippine and foreign courts to have taken billions of dollars in state funds
02

Where it sits on each dimension

Wealth and inequality

55

Evidence: Documented

The state in the economy

35

Evidence: Documented

Personal liberty

4

Evidence: Well documented

Nation and the world

80

Evidence: Well documented

Power and its limits

3

Evidence: Well documented

Crime and punishment

10

Evidence: Documented

Dimensions left unscored, for want of evidence: Tradition and change, Religion and the state, Environment and growth

Sources

  • Primitivo Mijares, The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos · 1976
  • Amnesty International, Report of an Amnesty International Mission to the Republic of the Philippines · 1976

Last verified: