Exerpts from Ramon J. Parolan's original article at opinion.inquirer.net with
"Lee Kuan Yew on Philippines" as original title
What has the late former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has to say about this? Is the son of the former dictator Sen. Bongbong Marcos, telling the truth?
Here is what the prime minister statements about Marcos from his autobiography “
From Third World to First” discrediting Bongbong’s assertions.
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| Courtesy: Google Images |
“ It was not until January 1974 that I visited President Marcos in
Manila… Marcos received me in great style... I was put up at the guest
wing of Malacañang Palace in lavishly furnished rooms, valuable objects
of art bought in Europe strewn all over. Our hosts were gracious,
extravagant in hospitality, flamboyant.
In Bali in
1976, at the first ASEAN summit held after the fall of Saigon, I found
Marcos keen to push for greater economic cooperation in ASEAN. To set
the pace, Marcos and I agreed to implement a *****eral
Philippines-Singapore… to promote intra-ASEAN trade…I was to discover
that for him, the communiqué was the accomplishment itself; its
implementation was secondary, an extra to be discussed at another
conference.
He once took me on a tour of his library at
Malacañang, its shelves filled with bound volumes of newspapers
reporting his activities over the years since he first stood for
elections. There were encyclopedia-size volumes on the history and
culture of the Philippines with his name as the author. His campaign
medals as an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader were displayed in glass
cupboards. He was the undisputed boss of all Filipinos. Imelda had a
penchant for luxury and opulence. When they visited Singapore…they came
in style in two DC8’s, his and hers.
Marcos, ruling under martial
law, had detained opposition leader Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, reputed to
be as charismatic and powerful a campaigner as he was. He freed Aquino
and allowed him to go to the USA. As the economic situation in the
Philippines deteriorated, Aquino announced his decision to return. Mrs.
Marcos issued several veiled warnings. When the plane arrived at Manila
Airport from Taipei in August 1983, he was shot as he descended from the
aircraft...
International outrage over the killing
resulted in foreign banks stopping all loans to the Philippines, which
owed over US$25 billion and could not pay the interest due. This brought
Marcos to the crunch. He sent his minister for trade and industry,
Bobby Ongpin, to ask me for a loan of US$300-500 million to meet the
interest payments. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “We will
never see that money back.” Moreover, I added, everyone knew that Marcos
was seriously ill and under constant medication for a wasting disease.
What was needed was a strong, healthy leader, not more loans.
…
In February 1984, Marcos met me in Brunei at the sultanate’s
independence celebrations. He had undergone a dramatic physical change.
Although less puffy than he had appeared on television, his complexion
was dark as if he had been out in the sun. He was breathing hard as he
spoke, his voice was soft, eyes bleary, and hair thinning… An ambulance
with all the necessary equipment and a team of Filipino doctors were on
standby outside his guest bungalow. Marcos spent much of the time giving
me a most improbable story of how Aquino had been shot.
With
medical care, Marcos dragged on. Cesar Virata met me in Singapore in
January the following year… He said that Mrs. Imelda Marcos was likely
to be nominated as the presidential candidate. I asked how that could be
when there were other weighty candidates. Virata replied it had to do
with “flow of money; she would have more money than other candidates to
pay for the votes needed for nomination by the party and to win the
election. He added that if she were the candidate, the opposition would
put up Mrs. Cory Aquino...
The denouement came when Marcos held
presidential elections which he claimed he won. Cory Aquino disputed
this and launched a civil disobedience campaign...A massive show of
“people power” led to a spectacular overthrow of a dictatorship. The
final indignity was on 25 February 1986, when Marcos and his wife fled
in USAF helicopters from Malacañang Palace and were flown to Hawaii.
…There
was no reason why the Philippines should not have been one of the more
successful of the ASEAN countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the
most developed, because America had been generous in rehabilitating the
country after the war. Something was missing, a gel to hold society
together. The people at the top, the elite mestizos, had the same
detached attitude to the native peasants as the mestizos in their
haciendas in Latin America had toward their peons. They were two
different societies: Those at the top lived a life of extreme luxury and
comfort while the peasants scraped a living, and in the Philippines it
was a hard living… They had many children because the church discouraged
birth control. The result was increasing poverty.
“The Philippines had a rambunctious press but it did not check
corruption. Individual pressmen could be bought, as could many judges. Something
had gone seriously wrong. Millions of Filipino men and women had to
leave their country for jobs abroad beneath their level of education.
Filipino professionals… are as good as our own. Indeed, their
architects, artists, and musicians are more artistic and creative than
ours…
“The difference lies in the culture of the Filipino people.
It is a
soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like
Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over twenty years, still
be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot
have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return
and engage in politics. They supported the winning presidential and
congressional candidates with their considerable resources and
reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election
that returned President Joseph Estrada.”
“Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If they could get their
elite to share their sentiments and act, what could they not have
achieved?”
