Calm before the storm: The first term of President Marcos Sr.

FERDINAND Marcos Sr. started as a Kennedy-like candidate in 1965 — young, good-looking, war hero and highly intelligent, with a beautiful wife, Imelda, and very young and adoring children Imee, Irene and Bongbong, a true picture of Camelot. His leadership looked promising. He inherited an exchange rate of about P3.9 to a dollar and a foreign debt of only $600 million. We had an active two-party system, with the Nacionalista Party, to which the president belonged, and the opposition, the Liberal Party; our media was dubbed the freest press in Asia. His first term was remarkable for its infrastructure projects and the building of a lot of classrooms. He also launched the Green Revolution to emphasize agricultural security by producing our own food. He also got young, idealistic and highly intelligent people to join the top leadership, the technocrats, which produced a lot of sound policies and ideas.

The first lady, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, also wanted to make a mark and had become the embodiment of the Philippines herself in front of the world. When the president was invited by President Lyndon B. Johnson to make a state visit in 1966, Imelda looked splendid in a yellow-green terno, which she launched anew to the world stage. She was also collecting from the rich to build the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which, during its inauguration in 1966, was graced by California governor and future president Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy. Marcos did not start out as America's boy, but with many countries in Asia already under the hands of strongmen, the Philippines was a breath of fresh air for American-style democracy. In the context of the Cold War fight against the communist bloc, the US bases like Clark and Subic were important to the global geopolitical balance and as support for the US campaign in the Vietnam War. We became part of an important alliance, a la NATO — the South East Asia Treaty Organization (Seato).

WALKING HISTORY