Which One to Trust on Marcos' Narratives: Social Media vs. Traditional Media
Was the Philippines the “Tiger of Asia” Under the “golden era” or the Marcos Regime?
One of the widely disseminated misleading information on social media about the Marcoses is on how the late dictator was able to transform the country into the “Tiger of Asia” and how he led the Philippine economy to its “golden era” after he declared Martial Law. Some believe that if the Marcos regime was not stopped and if this claimed Philippine condition continued, then the country could have been the most powerful and richest one around the world and that Filipinos could have lived a much greater life with cheaper goods by now and without the need to work for other races.
Rappler, ABS-CBN, PDI, among other traditional media, however claim otherwise. Reports from these media shows that the country was not even the richest in Southeast Asia during the Marcos’ rule in 1965 to 1986. The Philippines in 1965 had a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita or average income per person that was only in the 3rd rank across Southeast Asia. But by 1986, that rank fell to 5th place. Philippine GDP may have greatly increased in 1972, 1973, and 1976 but it was due to a commodity boom when the prices of major Philippine commodity exports like coconut and sugar went up. However, it was also under Marcos when the country hit the worst recession in its history with a 2-year contraction in 1984 and 1985. Traditional media further reported that from 1978 to 1991, the country’s debt stood at more than 200% of exports, peaking in 1985 during the last full year of Marcos and the country’s underemployment peaked at 33% in 1984. In that same year, reports also said that inflation shot up to 50% and peso devalued down to P16.70 per dollar, that is even after its weakening at P8.54 to the dollar in 1982 and also in 1969-1970 when it plummeted from P3.92 to P6.02 against the dollar. By 1985, the peso fell even further down to P18.61 to the dollar. Moreover, traditional media also presented that during the Martial Law, prices of basic commodities tripled and those that amounted to only P100 in 1976 ballooned to P400 by 1986. While external debt increased from $0.36 billion in 1961 to $28.8 billion in 1986.
Whereas, VERA Files, a nonstock, nonprofit independent media organization published by veteran Filipino journalists claimed that the country was neither the richest country in Asia or the “Tiger of Asia” during the Marcos’ rule as economists even pointed out the historically low GDP during those years, a huge external debt, and the decline of income per person after 1982 that was not seen it other countries. Data from the World Bank also supports the same claim as it shows that in terms of GDP per capita, the Philippines was ranked 6th in Asia in 1965 and later on dropped to 165th place in 1986. It was the United Arab Emirates that was on the top of the list. University of the Philippines (UP) economist JC Punongbayan also explained that the country was actually called the “sick man” of Asia during Marcos’ rule because its income remained stagnant while the economies of its neighboring countries soared. He also shared the same claim that the country’s external debts ballooned and underemployment spiked under the dictatorship. Agence France-Press (AFP) Fact Check, a leading global fact-checking organization also said that the claims on these social media contents are false. Multiple expert analyses of economic data from the Marcos era show that economic growth in the Philippines lagged behind several other nations across the region. And a 2002 paper co-written by Professor Hal Hill of the Australian National University and the Philippine Competition Commission chair Arsenio Balisacan also found that in 1975, three years after the declaration of Martial Law, GDP per capita in the Philippines was below Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Korea. And in a special feature article from the Official Gazette, the official journal of the Republic of the Philippines, economist James Boyce was mentioned to had confirmed that the Philippine development strategy in the Marcos era was a failure as the Philippine economy nearly halted during the last years of the Marcos regime. The article said that even though Marcos implemented a three-pronged development strategy including the green revolution in agriculture, profits of the country from his strategies were disproportionately distributed to the Philippine population and just caused a large disparity between the wealthy Filipinos and the poor Filipinos. The same article also stated that even though the country experienced growth in its exports, specifically in sugar and coconut, serious cases of monopoly by associates of Marcos hindered this growth from benefiting the masses. Only the hacienderos close to the dictator benefitted here while the small landowners and plantation workers starved.
