Philippines’ Marcos Jnr will take presidential oath at venue linked to father’s brutal legacy

At midday on Thursday, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jnr will take his presidential oath on the steps of the Philippines’ former legislature, the place his late father-president was as soon as confronted by pupil activists with a black paper-mache coffin and a crocodile. His inauguration because the nation’s seventeenth president might be “very solemn and easy”, occasion organisers mentioned. “We won’t stray from custom,” Marcos Jnr mentioned. Historian Ambeth Ocampo surmised that the venue – the Nationwide Museum of Effective Arts constructing which used to deal with the Philippine Congress till Marcos Snr shut it down in 1972 – was chosen for its “optics”. Its American colonial-style interval columns mimic the backdrop for the inauguration of US presidents who take their oath on the steps of the Capitol. Whoever picked the venue didn’t know Philippine historical past, mentioned Ocampo, a former head of the Nationwide Historic Fee, on Sunday. First, Ocampo mentioned, all three presidents who took their oaths there – Manuel Quezon, Jose Laurel and Manuel Roxas – not solely failed to complete their time period, two of them – Quezon and Roxas – died whereas in workplace. Second, “that’s the place the First Quarter Storm started”, mentioned Ocampo, referring to the collection of more and more violent pupil protests following the 1969 election, by which Marcos Snr was accused of getting cheated to win a second time period. What does a Marcos Jnr presidency imply for Asean and democracy within the area? Playwright Bonifacio Ilagan, 70, intends to spend inauguration day protesting Marcos Jnr’s assumption to the presidency, in the identical means he protested towards his father 52 years in the past when Marcos Snr delivered his State of the Nation Handle on January 26, 1970, in the identical constructing. He mentioned on Monday: “I don’t know if Marcos Jnr realises that the venue was a historic web site for pupil unrest and radicalisation.” Ilagan, who was jailed and tortured throughout Marcos Snr’s dictatorship, is the convenor of The Marketing campaign Towards the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Legislation (CARMMA). Authorities have branded Ilagan and his…



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