Marcos’ World War II medals (8)

President Ferdinand E. Marcos announced on 23 September 1972 that he had placed the entire country under martial law through Presidential Proclamation No. 1081, dated 21 September 1972.

Barely two years and four months later, in January 1975, Americans’ thinking on the effects of martial law in the Philippines was not as bad as the views of the Philippine media. The purging of corrupt and incompetent government workers created a positive impression among broad sectors of the American public.

The study group’s playful reaction to the positive reaction of one participant from Yugoslavia and another from the Middle East was interesting. California has a population of 39,000,000, the largest among the American states; Texas has 30,000,000, the second biggest; whereas the Philippines has 114,000,000, whose representative would easily be the frontrunner in any political race in America if the Philippines were a state.

The game came into the minds of the participants because of the prevailing situation in the United States during the duration of the seminar sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development.

The US president in 1975 was Gerald Ford, a Republican from Nebraska, the only person to serve as president without having been elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency.

At the height of the Watergate scandal, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. Gerald Ford was appointed in his place. When Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Ford took over as president on 9 August 1974, serving until the end of his term on 20 January 1977.

Unknown to the Philippine national government officials and employees, President Marcos had ordered a performance audit of the bureaucracy over the last two years and four months. This was what he said of the results:

“The establishment of constitutional authoritarianism, which enabled this government to seize the reins of national directions, has resulted in the growth of the bureaucracy as a massive machinery that affects every aspect of our national life. But along with this, massive opportunities for graft, corruption, and the misuse of influence have also arisen—opportunities which are now being exploited within the government service.”

Marcos observed that while the government machinery had been remodeled to fit development goals, the human factor in the government had not kept pace with the reforms.

Marcos himself candidly admitted having seen the dangers to the New Society — the birth of a new government elite that emerged amid the privileges that society had opposed in the past, who used the power of high office for personal enrichment, as well as for their business colleagues, relatives, and friends.

“Today, therefore, I hereby announce the beginning of a sweeping, complete, and exhaustive reorganization of the government. This means eliminating those who have violated the trust we had reposed in them. There will be rewards for those who have performed their task with exemplary and outstanding distinction.

“Accordingly, as a first step to be followed later by a broader sweep in the lower ranks of the civil service and in other parts of the government, including the military organization, there will be a sweep which as of today includes a total listing of 2,000 in the national government. I have also decided to accept the resignation of high-ranking officials in the government who have something to do with the procurement of government supplies and materials and, finally, those top officials to whom I entrusted the management and administration of the valuable resources of the Republic of the Philippines.”