General History of the Philippines

Was Marcos directly running the country's apparatus for economic management? No, and that might have been a big mistake on his part. The politician-lawyer left economic management to the following, known as the martial law "technocrats":

It started when a Chinese forex trader violated the peso-dollar trading ban imposed by the then unofficial central bank, the Binondo Central Bank managed and headed by then Trade and Industry Minister Roberto V. Ongpin.

Marcos-era Trade Minister Roberto Ongpin said on January 24, 2012, he felt vindicated by the Sandiganbayan's dismissal of the P51-billion damage suit against him, the late President Marcos, and several others in connection with the Binondo Central Bank case.

From an observer's point of view, the successive dismissal in 2019, by the Sandiganbayan of the alleged ill-gotten wealth against the former President Marcos, his family and cronies of the cases filed by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) for insufficiency of evidence is wrong.

The Philippines may have missed out on up to P1.25 trillion in Malaysian compensation based on an 1878 agreement between the Sulu Sultanate and the British North Borneo Co. (BNBC) of the United Kingdom.

No less than the icon of government service, the late venerable Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, believed that the Philippines has an absolute right over Sabah if the issue is brought into international arbitration.

President Duterte's fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) is historic in that it is the first to make a clarion call for the country to fight the scourge of oligarchy, one of the obstacles to becoming a developed nation. How difficult and messy that could be has been demonstrated in the battle against, and defeat of, the Lopez oligarchic clan.

The installation of the Cory Aquino regime was ominous, for rightly, she appointed Filipinos to run the industry who openly exhibited their fealty to their imperialist brokers. Cesar Buenaventura who once served as president of the Ayala-owned Pilipinas Shell Corporation was appointed to replace Geronimo Velasco whose department was immediately abolished by the vindictive but devoutly Catholic Cory Aquino.

President Ferdinand Marcos was not the first post-World War II president to suggest the existence of a group of business establishments exercising control over the Philippine economy. President Diosdado Macapagal, whom he defeated in the 1965 elections, was the first to do so.

Let us first recall the Mamasapano massacre. The bloody incident occurred on January 25, 2015 when a combined force of Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters waylaid members of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force (PNP/SAF).