A Patriot Gone Rogue

by Tom A. Liria

Overview

The Story of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and his Martial Law Regime.

A New Perspective

Ferdinand Marcos has been called names: demagogue, ruthless dictator, murderer, thief, among others and, truly so. He must have believed that the spirit of the 1898 Revolution from Spain with victory robbed by the United States being inconclusive, was real. His lust for power appeared to be a manifestation of a desire to set it aright. He believed that it was his destiny to correct it. The time to act came and he grabbed it. His mistake was that he never told anyone about it.

Sadly, circumstances beyond his control intervened. At the outset, he was in complete control but in 1975 his health started to fail him. All the people who he depended upon to help, found reasons to desert him and get their own share before he finally lost it. The rest is history.

This is by no means an effort to justify or seek forgiveness but to show a man who had an obsession to continue the patriotic fervor that his forbears had and took the leap. Thus he can be said to have been "A Patriot Gone Rogue."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940157116545
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	07/19/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	114
File size:	429 KB

About the Author

I was the Secretary of the Provincial Board of Albay (renamed the Kalihim ng Sangguniang Panlalawigan ng Albay), the administrative support department of the Board, from 1972 to 1986. I acted concurrently as the chief of staff for Governor Felix S. Imperial, Jr., throughout the Martial Law Regime of President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

The Provincial Board/Sanggunian is the highest local legislative body of the country and is the equivalent of the state legislature of the United States, with considerably more limited powers.

Albay is one of the six provinces of the Bicol Region V and its Regional Center. It is located in the southern part of the Island of Luzon.

I was initiated into the political world when President Ramon Magsaysay was elected president, while I was a college freshman who participated in one of his rallies. Shortly after that, I was employed in the office of Congressman Pio Duran, a Liberal Party member. There, I met Felix S. Imperial, Jr., then one of the Congressman’s young District political leaders. Through Duran, Imperial was appointed by President Magsaysay as the Chairman and General Manager of the Abaca Corporation of the Philippines (ABACORP), a public corporation created to help develop the country’s abaca (Manila hemp) industry. He lost his job when President Magsaysay died in an airplane accident.

Diosdado Macapagal (Liberal Party) was elected president in 1969. The widow of Congressman Duran, Josefina ran for his seat and won with Macapagal. With her endorsement, Imperial was reappointed to the same ABACORP. He appointed me as one of his executive assistants. We parted ways after Macapagal lost to Marcos (Nacionalista Party) in 1965. We came together again when he ran for the office of Governor of Albay in 1971, and I managed his campaign headquarters. He won over a most formidable opponent, the wife of the Secretary of Public Works, who was known to be the most loyal crony of Marcos and whose wife was a very close friend of Imelda’s. The rest is history.

The narrative of this book was inspired by news reports and major opinion-makers of various local, national, and international broadsheet publishers and from the internet over the last twenty years and then some. More came from my personal observations and experiences before, during, and after that regime, Whatever opinions and conclusions you may find in the book are exclusively my own. I immigrated to the United States and am a citize