Read on Twitter
Why you have to be aware that picking September 21 as the martial law anniversary is a tribute to Marcos who engineered it so people alive then actually forgot there was no martial law on September 21, 1972: a thread.
Marcos himself zigged and zagged about when he proclaimed martial law, but he turned September 21 into Thanksgiving Day enshrining a date that mattered only because of backdating. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/featured/declaration-of-martial-law/
Marcos began planning martial law when he became only the second president elected to a second term, in 1969, seeing he would have to step down from office in 1973. He also pursued other schemes ranging from shifting to parliamentary government or running Imelda to succeed him.
He gauged how the public and institutions would react by testing the waters, for example by suspending the writ of habeas corpus. He also engineered the removal/retirement of older officers who were constitutional in outlook, replacing them with officers who would support him.
Marcos chose September because under the system at the time Congress would go into recess, not reconvening until January, when its session would open with the State of the Nation Address (SONAs were in Jan. hence First Quarter Storm in 1970). Recess meant Congress silent.
Even people in his administration who had misgivings, like Executive Secretary Melchor, were sent abroad; this is why ML proclamation was countersigned not by ES but by a Presidential Assistant. The Speaker was also abroad.
But Congress then and now has been lax so to his irritation Marcos found out Congress would still be in session Sept. 21 because some committees still had work to do so he had to postpone things. The problem was, word was leaking: on Sept. 21, Ninoy gave his last senate...
...privilege speech warning of martial law; the next day’s papers reported this. There was a big rally in Plaza Miranda. The initiative was slipping away from Marcos who faced institutions becoming alert to what was afoot. He had already sent his kids abroad just in case...
This explains the Enrile assassination gambit: something had to be done to make people forget the snowballing news of martial law; it provided cover for postponed plans to be put in operation at last. This was Sept. 22 and it was late at night on Sept. 22 that the military...
...fanned out to close down communications and the media, shut down the airports/ports, and decapitate the opposition and other groups by arresting media, civil society and political personages. Ninoy was the first rounded up at midnight Sept. 22/23 while media was being shut...
...and it was in the early morning hours of Sept. 23 that the majority of arrests were made; the only armed resistance briefly came from the Iglesia ni Cristo when its radio station was shut down. Then Marcos raised the ante by invoking powers that exceeded the general...
...understanding of martial law: he took lawmaking power upon himself, for example (usurping Congress’ lawmaking power), and declared his acts as beyond the review of the courts. Having sandbagged his legal position with instruments never imagined under our laws, he waited...
...to see what people would do. Which was: nothing. But he had to revise his script so it was only in the evening of September 23 after hours of rumor and confusion, that Marcos told the country the game was up, lying of course (this is not a coup he said; yes, but only because..
...the word for self-coup still had to be invented). Marcos himself seemed surprised then delighted, crowing in his diary on Sept. 25, “nothing succeeds like success!” He would of course, still have to bully and intimidate the Supreme Court (which he did by threatening to...
...proclaim a revolutionary government which would deprive the SC justices of their jobs), and coming up with a scheme to replace the 1935 Constitution before Congress could convene as scheduled in January 1973 (potentially providing a venue for resistance): he feared a...
plebiscite to approve a new constitution would lose if an ordinary-style election was held; so he replaced barrios with barangays and then decreed a showing of hands instead of secret ballot, “winning” ratification in a photo finish enabling a cowed SC to feebly say the new...
constitution was a done deal, allowing Marcos to send the army to padlock Congress so it could never convene. And the clincher was, to make people forget this dizzying series of events that almost nearly didn’t happen, he revised time itself:
by insisting on September 21, people forgot Ninoy was still making a warning on martial law in a privilege speech, or that congressional joint committees were holding meetings, or that the Left was having rallies in Plaza Miranda, or that the papers and radio and TV were abuzz...
with talk Marcos was poised to declare martial law which he’d been denying; people forgot that Congress was due to reconvene in January or that so many legal challenges to the arrests and decrees were pending before the court, etc., etc. Instead a whole chunk of time was...
erased and instead what was magnified and replaced reality was the line that Marcos had heroically intervened to save the Republic: and what followed was referendum after referendum —conducted in his self-created barangays— to make it the public will to keep himself in power...
...and tear up the contract that explains why so many institutions rolled over to make martial law possible: in rushing a draft for the new constitution through the ConCon, he offered its members a deal. Delegates who voted for the Marcos-written draft would sit in the new...
Interim Batasan Pambansa, together with incumbent congressmen and senators. This deal is why the ConCon approved a draft constitution it didn’t write and most senators and congressmen went along with “ratifying” a new constitution that formally abolished their jobs. But in his...
plebiscites Marcos amended the 1973 Constitution abolishing this provision, leaving the ConCon delegates, senators and congressmen holding the bag while LGU officials, with no elections owed their job security to Marcos personally. So legal fiction became reality even in memory.
Which is why to recognize September 21 is to uphold Marcos’ revising time and memory itself with his legal, moral, political fictions.
This timeline provides the details behind this summary. You can go through it to see how ML was planned and the actual events from Sept., 1972. https://twitter.com/mlq3/status/1173425571994296320
I remember this because when interviewing people active in 1972 it actually took a lot of repeated questioning to make them remember that on September 21, 1972 life was still normal. They themselves even if anti-Marcos, had been brainwashed by Marcos. They would sometimes be...
surprised to remember that they actually saw Marcos on TV on September 23. That is the power of propaganda personified.
Meanwhile even those who turned against the Great Dictator returned to the fold: after all now no one can find that Feb. 1986 recording where he admitted his ambush had been faked. In his book and since he’s back on script. https://twitter.com/dwiz882/status/1307893151634305026
Personally what made me very conscious of September 23 was my father’s story of finding out about martial law and resigning his ambassadorship upon hearing the news. https://www.arabnews.com/node/288872
But there were many more who viewed martial law as a solution: parents, for example, discombobulated by the 60s and 70s: https://news.abs-cbn.com/blogs/opinions/09/20/16/opinion-martial-law-and-parental-guilt
In the end Marcos tied many threads together: authoritarian instincts among the political class, a way out for him and others from the consequences of their rule... http://www.quezon.ph/2006/09/17/the-explainer-remembering-martial-law/comment-page-1/
All he and they needed and continue to need, is an alibi, the big lie. https://opinion.inquirer.net/124185/the-big-lie
