Filipinos Rally to Mark ‘People Power’ Anniversary

More than 1,000 Filipinos converged on a historic highway in the Philippine capital on Friday to mark the anniversary of the “people power” revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

Now, 36 years on, his son and namesake is leading in early surveys as a candidate for the May 9 presidential election.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., widely known as Bongbong, is vying to replace President Rodrigo Duterte, whose constitutionally limited single term ends this year, in the country’s top office. Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of the president, is Bongbong’s running mate.

Their potential election could protect the elder Duterte, who will lose presidential immunity once he leaves office, from international prosecution over his administration’s war on drugs in which thousands of Filipinos have died in extrajudicial killings. 

“Our hard-won rights and freedoms are now under even greater threat amid the efforts for a Marcos restoration and a Duterte extension in the upcoming elections,” Cristina Palabay, secretary general of human rights group Karapatan, said at a rally commemorating the anniversary.

“Today, we are called to continue the struggle for justice and democracy, and to resist the despotic Marcos-Duterte tandem.” 

Students, priests and nuns joined Palabay and ordinary Filipinos along the EDSA highway in Manila as they chanted slogans and vowed to “never again” give power to the Marcos family, whose members were allowed to return after the dictator died in exile in Hawaii in 1989.

Thousands had gathered along the same highway in 1986 to drive the elder Marcos from office, 14 years after he imposed martial law.

The Marcos family is believed to have plundered as much as U.S. $10 billion (513 billion pesos), but the government has recovered only a fraction of that amount in more than three decades.