[Rappler’s Best] Marcos and his ordinary world

‘I went down the rabbit hole of the Marcos family’s parties in the 1970s and 1980s as millions of Filipinos lived hand-to-mouth’

Did you spend your weekend with Duran Duran on Spotify? I did. Because mortals like us just had to make do with a playlist, unlike the well-heeled, bling-bling few who actually did see and hear them in the flesh, courtesy of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., on Friday, September 13.

Give the man a break, you’d say. After all, he deserved to be rocking to The Wild Boys as fugitives fell into government’s hands one by one. Pastor Apollo Quiboloy? Detained. Alice Guo? Detained. Joel Reyes (almost forgotten!)? Surrendered. 

This President, you’d argue, has not stood in the way of your deep desires to bring the tyrant from Davao — and his family — to justice. He’s also said all the right things on the global stage, making all the ambassadors gush over the hospitality — great meals, amazing show of Filipino talent, and fantastic fireworks — afforded them each time they visited Malacañang. Why, even the majority of Filipinos have given him a thumbs up. Results of a Social Weather Stations survey, released on Marcos’ 67th birthday on Friday, showed a double-digit increase in the satisfaction numbers of his administration in the second quarter of 2024.

So what’s the big deal about one night of British pop rock and pomp? 

Here’s a grim reminder for you. State-funded lavish parties? That’s how things began. Those got cascaded in the bureaucracy, like a license for poorly-paid bureaucrats to party beyond their means. Then came the properties. And then the millions of dollars stashed elsewhere. Last night, I went down the rabbit hole of the Marcos family’s parties in the 1970s and 1980s as millions of Filipinos lived hand-to-mouth.

• In Malacañang, the Marcoses celebrated each birthday of each member like there was no tomorrow. There was a time, at Imelda Marcos’ birthday, when the late dictator and his children Bongbong (now president) and Irene, aided by Filipino balladeer Nonoy Zuñiga, belted out a song (or tried to) that was composed for the first lady. Watch their tortured performance here.
• The late socialite Cristina Ford, wife of Ford Motor Company CEO Henry Ford II and a friend of Imelda’s, came to Manila in one of Imelda Marcos’ birthday parties during Martial Law. There’s a grainy video of that glittering party at the Coconut Palace here. (And let’s not forget the 1966 Beatles fiasco!)
• The presidential yacht was another favorite party place for the Marcoses. Remember the video of the young Marcos Jr., then governor of Ilocos Norte, wearing a red bow tie at his sister Irene’s birthday at the yacht and then singing with friends, the irony of ironies, the song for the starving children of Africa, We are the World? This clip got resurrected during the 2022 presidential elections, which Marcos handily won.
• To top it all, there’s that blistering report by a former US ambassador about the old Marcos’ birthday celebration in September 1973, a year after the declaration of Martial Law. Part of the Wikileaks dump in 2013, the cable sent to Washington by then-US ambassador to Manila William Sullivan talked about an elaborate two-day celebration “carefully orchestrated by his wife Imelda,” which culminated in a party where military generals were asked to perform “in garish female attire.” To Sullivan, “this whole affair was a saccharine suffusion of sycophancy.” Read about it here.

We recall how Ferdinand and Imelda at the time justified their extravagance, or tried to assuage any guilt triggered by it, through massive, efficient, and systematic dole-outs to poor communities and villages. I was reminded of this while reading the Presidential Communications Office’s (PCO) press statement on Saturday, September 14, in its effort to shape the Duran Duran narrative. 

Marcos Jr. started his birthday by opening “the gates of Malacañang, where food booths awaited people from all walks of life who came from near and far to greet him a happy birthday,” the PCO wrote. He “celebrated his birthday with his signature compassion for the needy and the sick, and his deep appreciation for the farmers who feed the nation.” And then: “After a tiring day filled with official engagements, he attended a party thrown by his old friends at a hotel in Pasay, and to his surprise and appreciation, music was provided by Duran Duran.”

Let’s call a spade a spade. It was the President’s party; the invite sent to the chattering political, government, and business elite, carried the seal of the Office of the President. Duran Duran did not play for free; to quibble over whether they were paid by Marcos’ friends or taxpayers misses the point. Which is a graver sin — Filipinos shelling out hundreds of thousands of British pounds as a birthday gift for their president or friends chipping in for greater rewards later? 

The private party in a posh hotel with the high and mighty was a bad call, done in poor taste, and made with the height of insensitivity to the two basic issues where Filipinos have given this administration a failing score: fighting the rise of prices of basic goods (-16) and eradicating corruption (-10).

It seems Marcos can’t help himself, as shown by the fact that the Duran Duran gig was not his first show of his attachment to their past life. Remember how the nation got its first taste of this in July 2022, when Malacañang threw a birthday bash for Imelda Marcos a couple of days after her son assumed the presidency? The inauguration parties have been simple, Senator Imee Marcos assured the public. And then the first family choppered their way to watch the “unmissable” Coldplay concert at the Philippine Arena. After a super typhoon, Marcos also flew to Singapore to watch an F1 race.

Thus it behooves the Filipino public to hammer this into the heads of Malacañang’s residents: we cannot normalize opulence and excessive merry-making at the highest echelons of state power. We cannot go back to that life. The present is barely liveable as it is for most of us.

As Duran Duran would sing:

And I don’t cry for yesterday

There’s an ordinary world

Somehow I have to find

And as I try to make my way

To the ordinary world

I will learn to survive 

– Rappler.com

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