On a wet day in April, the person favoured to turn out to be the following president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, stood earlier than 1000’s of adoring followers in Tacloban and invoked a reputation as soon as thought-about political poison.
It was the identify of his personal mom.
“You realize I’m fairly certain that my mom is watching the reside stream,” he instructed the gang, as a legion of vloggers beamed the rally to their Fb followers.
“As an instance good day Imelda. Hiya Imelda!”
The point out of the Philippines’ infamous former first girl, Imelda Marcos, drew rapturous cheers from the viewers, as they relayed their greeting to the 92-year-old watching at dwelling.
Through the reign of her late husband Ferdinand Marcos Sr, Imelda grew to become a world pariah for raiding the general public purse to fund her extravagant life-style, enduringly symbolised by her huge assortment of sneakers.
In 1986, a well-liked rebellion pressured the Marcoses into exile in Hawaii, however not earlier than they looted as much as $US10 billion from state coffers over 20 years in energy, a lot of which has by no means been recovered.
For some within the Philippines, the Marcos identify is a byword for brutality, corruption and theft, whereas others stay fiercely loyal to the household.
However because the nation’s presidential election marketing campaign enters its closing days, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the one son of Imelda and Ferdinand Sr, is poised to finish a unprecedented rehabilitation of the household’s political model.
The 64-year-old is the clear front-runner within the race to succeed strongman president Rodrigo Duterte when the nation votes on Might 9.
Marcos Jr and his working mate Sara Duterte, the outgoing president’s daughter who’s standing for vp, are campaigning on a message of nationwide “unity”.
A current ballot predicted Marcos Jr may win 56 per cent of the vote, properly away from his nearest rival, vp Leni Robredo.
If profitable, he’ll cap off a political comeback that is been in progress for the reason that household returned to the Philippines in 1991, after the loss of life of Ferdinand Sr.
“Success isn’t solely profitable within the coming election,” Marcos Jr instructed his followers on the rally in Tacloban.
Driving the resurrection of the nation’s most divisive political dynasty is a calculated recasting of the ruthless Marcos dictatorship as a “golden age” of the Philippines.
“How can historical past have been modified so drastically?” journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa requested.
“With the assistance of social media platforms.”
A torrent of disinformation
Final 12 months on September 11 – the 104th birthday of the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr – a video started circulating on Fb, which has since been considered over 4.7 million instances.
A montage of smiling well-wishers maintain handmade indicators studying “Blissful Marcos Day” and “#Marcos Actual Hero”, earlier than the video cuts to Marcos Jr making a prolonged tribute to his father’s imaginative and prescient for the Philippines.
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Set to upbeat music, the eight-minute clip is peppered with photographs of the bridges, energy strains, specialist hospitals – even a nuclear energy plant – constructed underneath Marcos Sr’s rule.
For Marcos Jr’s 10 million social media followers, movies like this feed the narrative of a misplaced period of financial greatness.
It’s this revisionist historical past that Marcos Jr has put on the centre of his marketing campaign, which specialists say is vital to his rising reputation.
The true legacy of Marcos Sr’s infrastructure binge was a mountain of debt that ballooned from $843 million when he took workplace in 1965 to over $39 billion by the point he was deposed.
For many years after Marcos Sr was pushed into exile by the “Folks Energy Revolution”, the Philippines was often called “the sick man of Asia” attributable to its struggling financial system.
The nuclear energy plant – additionally funded by overseas loans – has by no means turn out to be operational.
Professional-Marcos propaganda dominating platforms like Fb, YouTube and TikTok helps to rewrite the previous for a lot of who didn’t reside by the darkish actuality of that period.
Round half the nation’s 67.5 million eligible voters are aged between 18 and 42.
Many do not know the brutal years of martial legislation that started in 1972, when 1000’s had been killed and tortured, or how the Marcoses collected billions in ill-gotten riches at their residents’ expense.
Certainly, on social media, the Marcos period is basking in a second of sunny nostalgia.
In a single viral TikTok development, customers took up a problem to movie their older members of the family’ reactions as they performed March Of The New Society, an anthem related to the interval of martial legislation.
“Primarily based on the tales of my grandmother … it was good in these days,” Chemmy Rivas, a younger Marcos supporter from Tacloban, instructed International Correspondent on the day Marcos Jr visited city.
One falsehood gaining traction on-line claims no arrests had been made throughout martial legislation, regardless of Marcos Snr himself admitting to Amnesty Worldwide in 1975 that fifty,000 individuals had been arrested.
It’s deeply regarding for Tina Bawagan, who was tortured throughout martial legislation after becoming a member of the underground resistance to the Marcoses.
“The younger ones, they do not know that this occurred, they usually imagine that the Marcoses had a superb authorities,” she stated.
“It is important that we proceed to inform the story in order that it does not occur once more.”
However telling the story is more and more difficult within the Philippines, the place social media networks have come to dominate the data panorama.
Sidelining the mainstream media
All through the election marketing campaign, Marcos Jr has largely prevented journalists.
He hardly ever offers interviews and final month refused a public debate together with his high rival, claiming he needed to remain out of the mudslinging and give attention to working a “optimistic marketing campaign”.
In accordance with Aries Arugay, a political scientist from the College of the Philippines Diliman, the technique has not hampered his capacity to get his message out.
“Their disinformation sport is high notch,” Arugay stated of the Marcos Jr marketing campaign.
“They’re resting comfortably in that disinformation infrastructure that has been fairly necessary of their marketing campaign.”
A current examine discovered Fb was the primary driver of disinformation on this election marketing campaign and most of it was benefiting Marcos Jr.
“Fb is our web,” stated Ressa, co-founder of the impartial Filipino information web site Rappler.
“100 per cent of Filipinos on the web are on Fb.”
In accordance with Ressa, social media is more likely to show the decisive issue within the election.
Her workforce has been investigating the rising affect of disinformation networks on social media like these used to amplify President Rodrigo Duterte’s message, with devastating impact, through the 2016 election marketing campaign.
The workforce discovered that, since 2016, social media has come to dominate the centre of the Philippines’ “data ecosystem”, whereas information organisations that “thought they’d great energy had been basically pushed to the aspect,” Ressa stated.
For some Filipinos, Fb is their solely supply of reports. Residents of Manila’s poorer neighbourhoods could not have electrical energy, TV or radio, however most have a cell phone.
Those that run out of cellphone credit score are nonetheless in a position to browse the Fb newsfeed, which suggests they get the headlines however are unable to dive deeper.
Most individuals locally the place she works get their historical past classes from TikTok and YouTube, she stated.
Some social media content material originates from the Marcos marketing campaign, however a big portion is produced by a military of on-line acolytes, who can generate income from widespread posts.
Video bloggers Ruben Gelio and Jay Cho do not work for the Marcos marketing campaign however they make a dwelling reside streaming marketing campaign occasions on Fb and posting optimistic content material about Marcos Jr.
Gelio, 24, believes vloggers like him have turn out to be extra highly effective than the mainstream media.
“A few of the media is so biased about Marcos they usually by no means present something that Bongbong Marcos does a superb deed,” he stated.
“As vloggers, we present the opposite aspect of the coin to the individuals. That is the actual Marcos, not the one which mainstream stated.”
‘Lies unfold quicker than information’
In an effort to push again the tide of disinformation, mainstream media organisations have teamed up with tech corporations to create fact-checking collectives like tsek.ph.
Rappler has launched its personal fact-checking operation, debunking claims together with that the Philippines was “the richest nation subsequent to Japan throughout Marcos’ time period”.
Social media networks are additionally cracking down on the disinformation flooding their platforms.
In January, Twitter suspended greater than 300 accounts and hashtags selling Marcos Jr, for violating its insurance policies in opposition to spam and manipulation.
Then in April, Fb suspended a community of over 400 accounts, pages and teams in a transfer designed to crack down on hate speech and misinformation.
However whereas some pro-Marcos disinformation networks have been taken down, many have regenerated and stand poised to “assist pave the way in which for a [Marcos] win”, in line with Ressa.
“You can’t have integrity of elections if you do not have integrity of information,” she stated.
“And what social media has achieved isn’t solely make information debatable, however to really unfold lies quicker than information.”
Of all of the contested information concerning the Marcoses, maybe probably the most astonishing is that some now doubt whether or not they stole cash in any respect.
The Marcoses’ extravagant theft of state riches has been properly documented, not least by the Presidential Fee on Good Authorities (PCGG), a physique arrange by former president Corazon Aquino as one in every of her first orders of enterprise in 1986 to recoup the household’s hidden loot.
The PCGG estimated the Marcoses amassed someplace between $US5 billion and $US10 billion of belongings, together with jewels, gold, actual property, well-known artworks and money stuffed in Swiss financial institution accounts.
The fee has recovered about $US3.3 billion and one other $2.4 billion is underneath litigation.
In 2018, Imelda Marcos was sentenced for graft, however has by no means spent a day in jail and is at the moment free on bail interesting the choice.
Her seeming impunity has helped gas perceptions that the Marcoses are harmless, a declare that finds a keen viewers on social media.
Many, like Chemmy Rivas, the Marcos supporter in Tacloban, imagine the social media posts that declare the Marcoses by no means stole something.
A fantasy claiming Ferdinand Marcos Sr inherited an infinite quantity of gold throughout his time as a lawyer has been doing the rounds for over a decade.
“About corruption, how can they are saying that?” Chemmy stated.
“They are saying, and I’ve learn, that the Marcoses are actually wealthy, even earlier than he grew to become president.”
Disillusioned by the failure of successive governments to deal with the poverty and corruption that proceed to canine day by day life, many Filipinos seem keen to miss not solely the late dictator’s theft and human rights violations, however Marcos Jr’s personal 1997 conviction for failing to file tax returns, which some opponents have argued ought to disqualify him from the presidency.
The perils of a dynasty reborn
In The Kingmaker, a 2019 movie concerning the lifetime of Imelda Marcos, she admitted to “lacking the clout of being first girl” and stated she had at all times needed her son to comply with in his father’s footsteps.
The youthful Marcos served as a governor in Ilocos Norte, the household’s dwelling province, and as a senator from 2010 to 2016, earlier than a failed bid for the vice-presidency in 2016.
Some concern a Marcos Jr presidency would spell the top of any additional investigation into the household’s corruption.
Aries Arugay stated a Marcos within the presidential palace would additionally guarantee Imelda Marcos continues to get pleasure from impunity for her half in fleecing the nation for her personal private acquire.
“The facility and the position of dynasties loom massive in Philippine politics,” he stated.
“The traditional knowledge is the dynasties are good for dynasties, however they’re actually unhealthy for governance and the individuals.”
Watch International Correspondent’s Marcos Makeover tonight at 8pm on ABC TV and iview, and streaming reside on Fb and YouTube.
