MY TWO CENTS’ – The Bongbong Marcos folly

Perhaps the most unfortunate turn for the ambitious Senator Bongbong Marcos last week came as a renowned Asian leader passed away. Lee Kuan Yew, revered by many as the father of Singapore, finally passed on after having successfully steered the city state from third to first world. Many plaudits have been given him, yet the most common observation made by most was that he was a CONSISTENT leader. Consistently straightforward and outspoken, and consistent with a vision and drive to make things better, consistently frugal in his personal tastes and finances, and consistently able to deal with his opponents, detractors, and friends in a manner consistent with the way he toughly practiced governance. From a difficult start, he drove the consistency needed to create the discipline that made multiethnic Singaporeans believe in their government, and credibility that made the outside world take him – and his fledgling city state with no resources and lots of unrest – seriously.
In a recent editorial, the Philippine Daily inquirer shed light on Senator Marcos’ assertion a few years back that had his dad, former President Ferdinand Marcos, been allowed to continue in office, the Philippines would have been another Singapore. Whether it was a play on words meant to deceive, or an ill-informed opinion or downright delusion, it tried vainly to create a false impression. Before World War II, the Philippines, then rich in various resources, was a picture of Asian progress under a more “benevolent “ colonial ruler in America when Singapore was an agglomeration of kampongs and districts divided across ethnic and religious lines reeling from the divide-and-rule of the British, who operated military bases, yet was prepared to leave their former colonial outpost as their global influence waned in the post WWII era. Indeed, they left Singapore earlier than announced. As many of us already know, things in the Philippines deteriorated as the decades passed, and took its worst turn with Marcos as President. As the Marcos regime proceeded, the Philippines further sunk economically, while Lee’s Singapore developed rapidly. 
The Inquirer anecdote taken from Lee’s memoirs about Marcos sending his minister Bobby Ongpin to Lee to borrow money from Singapore to make interest payments is perhaps an embarrassing testament to the rapid decline of the Marcos political fortune, and the steady rot of the Philippine economy and society, under his rule.
True enough, Marcos blessed those who benefited from his rule – this includes cronies, or those who got in his favor. Everybody else challenging him was fodder for his political games, including the thousands of human rights victims tortured and/or killed, the thousands of coconut farmers whose meager contributions to the coconut levy are still an issue today, and the millions robbed of tax money used as collateral and payment for behest loans incurred to fund crony projects like the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. While Marcos consolidated power and plundered our economy, Bongbong then was the playboy son who never had it so good while the rest of the country suffered.
Thus Bongbong’s recent words about his fathers’ supposed legacy to have created the next Singapore constitutes the Bongbong Marcos folly, which I define as an unfortunate outcome that exists on two planes. One, the thought that the father is like the son, and can replicate or exceed the fathers supposed achievements. The second plane is the thought that his father, Ferdinand Marcos, is the Philippine Lee Kuan Yew. Again, it is another non sequitur, with evidence to the contrary as obvious as the slums that grew to occupy almost half of Metro Manila. Had Marcos continued, the entire country would have been a slum, where more than most Pinoys live on land they no longer own, survive on borrowed food and time.
Now, looking at our current President, is he also victim to the Bongbong Marcos folly?