Laurel, Marcos, and Martial Law

This week, especially September 21st, is often associated with President Ferdinand E. Marcos, since he signed proclamation number 1081, which placed the whole country under Martial Law, this week. Filipinos usually commemorate the event, warning people to always remember what we went through those dark days in 1972 to 1986. Over the years, however, less and less people participate in these remembrances. In recent years, even fewer people go out in the streets to continue reminding Filipinos about the Marcos dictatorship. Many martial law victims the primary actors of the 1986 People Power are now long dead, and those who were too young to remember have decided it is best to let go and move on. Perhaps.

The twenty-first of September is not solely attributable to President Marcos. In fact, almost thirty years before he declared Martial Law, another Philippine president had also placed the country under military rule. This was President Jose P. Laurel, who declared Martial Law on September 21, 1944. Officially, the declaration of Martial Law was necessitated by the bombing of Davao on September 18, 1944, by the returning Allied forces. Of course this was simply a pretext designed by the Japanese to legally have the Philippines declare war against the United States and the Allied forces, which Laurel also did through a proclamation the following day of a state of war between the Philippines and the United States and Great Britain. We now know that President Laurel was coerced by the Japanese to make these proclamations. We know what happened to Filipinos who refused to cooperate with the Japanese, and while some historians still say that the reasons for the cooperation of some Filipino leaders with the Japanese remain suspect, Laurel was simply doing his best to protect the Filipinos. While forced to declare war against the Allied forces, Laurel also made sure that no Filipino would be conscripted in the Japanese army, guaranteeing the safety of every Filipino citizen.

After the Japanese had surrendered, Laurel was arrested and charged with treason. During his trial, he insisted that he had been forced to accept the presidency and that his collaboration was ex necessitate re (from the necessity of the thing) and that forced collaboration was not collaboration, as this was a means of national survival and to tide over the people to better times and thus not punishable. He was later pardoned through the general amnesty granted by President Manuel A. Roxas in 1948.

It is interesting to note that there is a deeper connection between Presidents Laurel and Marcos. On September 20, 1935 (still a date this week!), Marcos’s father’s political rival, Julio Nalundasan, was shot to death. Marcos was accused as the gunman and on January 11, 1940, he and his uncle were convicted. However, appealing the lower court’s decision, Marcos was able to successfully defend himself in front of the Supreme Court and on October 22, 1940, he and his uncle were acquitted. It was Justice Jose P. Laurel who had penned the acquittal.

Some historians say that Marcos chose September 21 to sign 1081 because he was obsessed that most important numbers associated with his decisions be divisible by the number “7.” Perhaps there was another reason for choosing September 21. Could Marcos’s signing of Martial Law have anything to do with Laurel’s declaration of Martial Law on the same date, 28 years ago? A sort of homage, perhaps, to the man who acquitted him? The Laurel-Marcos connection is interesting because, had Laurel not acquitted Marcos, he just might not have become president, and later dictator, of the Philippines.

This week, at various points in our history, several seemingly unrelated events happened which ultimately led to the more than twenty years of the Marcos dictatorship. Many times in our history, patterns emerge where, when we step back and look at different moments in time, we see just how interconnected one event from the past is to the future, and if we continue to repeat these actions, then our future would turn out to be just as bleak, if not worse.