Status: 06/30/2022 09:02 a.m
The dictator’s son Ferdinand Marcos Junior has taken office as President of the Philippines. The notorious Marcos dynasty returns 36 years after their expulsion from the island state.
The new Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Junior has been sworn in. Thousands of supporters gathered for the swearing-in ceremony for the 64-year-old son of longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos outside the National Museum in Manila.
Marcos Junior had clearly won the presidential election on May 9th. Together with Sara Duterte as Vice President, the daughter of the draconian drug warrior and previous President Rodrigo Duterte. The notorious Marcos dynasty is thus taking over political leadership again 36 years after being expelled from the island state. Human rights activists and survivors of the dictatorship under the father of “Bongbong” Marcos protested against the inauguration.
Dictatorial regime under Ferdinand Marcos
The new head of state has never distanced himself from the crimes committed during his father’s rule, which left thousands dead, tortured and kidnapped. He even used the ceremony to celebrate his father’s achievements. “I once knew a man who realized how little had been achieved since independence.” He got it done, Marcos Junior said after his swearing-in ceremony in the presence of his 92-year-old mother Imelda.
His father built more roads and planted more rice than all his predecessors combined. “So will it be with his son. You will hear no apologies from me.” Ferdinand Marcos had ruled dictatorially in the Southeast Asian country for 14 years until he was ousted from office. In 1986 the family fled to Hawaii. After the dictator’s death in 1989, she returned to the Philippines in the early 1990s.
Duterte’s daughter is vice president
Rodrigo Duterte says goodbye after six years as head of government – his daughter takes over her father’s political legacy as deputy head. Under Duterte, respect for human rights in the Philippines has plummeted.
Duterte’s devastating and bloody anti-drug war has cost the lives of tens of thousands of people – drug addicts, petty criminals, but also completely uninvolved, defenseless teenagers who begged for their lives but were brutally and deliberately shot by police officers.
Human rights activists alarmed
After six years of an authoritarian Duterte government, human rights activists, representatives of the Catholic Church and political experts fear that Marcos Junior could be even more autocratic as president. “It will be even harder for the victims of the drug war and their families. A Marcos victory makes it almost impossible for them to find justice and accountability,” said Carlos Conde of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch before the election in the Philippines.
Philippine lawyers filed a lawsuit against Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court in 2018. As a result, he had resigned from the World Court. After the Criminal Court began its investigations in 2019, they were suspended in November 2021 – the Philippines wanted to investigate themselves. However, the International Criminal Court has now announced that it will resume its investigations – the postponement is no longer justified. One has to assume, however, that Rodrigo Duterte will be protected by the new government.
With information from Isabella Kolar, Deutschlandfunk