Conferring the ‘hero’ status to a dictator who was clearly responsible for much of the country’s economic woes, corruption in government bureaucracy and perpetrator of human rights violations–it boggles the mind.

As the year 1972 ended for the Philippines, things that have been set into motion by President Ferdinand Marcos since his first term began in 1965 was coming into fruition.

Up to the smallest of details, Marcos planned out his decades of dictatorship meticulously, including making sham of the 1935 and 1973 Constitutions.

September 23, 1972, Midnight. It began at night, as all crimes are done. That is, Philippine democracy died in the cover of darkness. As the entire country slept soundly, President Ferdinand Marcos had sent out the military to round up the media, the opposition statesmen, activist leaders, writers, artists, all of whom have expressed a…

President Ferdinand Marcos, ever the paranoid leader, never revealed his plans for Martial Law to his close associates, except to a selected few, many of whom were within his inner circle of advisers.

We got it all wrong. Martial Law was not implemented on September 21 but was actually delayed to the following day.