In the Philippines during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, groups and individuals which opposed the regime without subscribing to leftist ideology were usually labeled with the terms "middle force," "third force," the "mainstream opposition," the "moderates" or "centrists," or more rarely, as the "conservative opposition." Mostly consisting of middle class and upper class groups which had been apolitical when Marcos first declared martial law, the most prominent examples of oppositionists in this category include religious groups, business sector groups, professional groups, social democrats, academics, journalists, and artists. Politicians from the traditional opposition are also sometimes counted in this category, although the terms are traditionally associated with ground level opposition, rather than political opposition per se.
Most of these groups rejected the use of armed force in their opposition to the Marcos regime, most prominently the religious and business sector groups, and the various academics, journalists, and artists who voiced opposition to the regime. But there were also a number of small groups who briefly took up arms against the regime without aligning themselves to the national democracy movement.
These middle forces were mostly considered as having been "awakened" some years after Marcos' declaration of Martial Law, compared to the National Democracy movement and the Moro independence movements which were already organizing in the years before Martial Law. Key incidents noted to have convinced these groups to organize themselves in opposition to Marcos include the 1974 Sacred Heart Novitiate raid; the press coverage of the Murder of Macli-ing Dulag; the crackdown on peaceful demonsgtrations such as the September 1984 Welcome Rotonda protest dispersal; election irregularities during the 1978 Philippine parliamentary election and the 1981 Philippine presidential election and referendum; and most prominently the economic crashes of the late 1970s and early 1980s; and the assassination of Ninoy Aquino.
These "middle forces" continued to gain momentum, culminating in a civil disobedience campaign after irregularities during the 1986 Philippine presidential election. This civil disobedience campaign eventually snowballed into the 1986 People Power Revolution which finally ousted Marcos from power and led to the formation of the Fifth Philippine Republic.
Background Martial law under Ferdinand Marcos Barred from running for a third term as president in 1973, Marcos announced Proclamation No. 1081 on September 23, 1972, declaring martial law, using the civil unrest that arose after the 1969 Philippine balance of payments crisis as a justification for the proclamation.
Through this decree and through a controversial referendum in which citizen assemblies voted through a show of hands, Marcos seized emergency powers giving him full control of the Philippines' military and the authority to suppress and abolish the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and many other civil liberties.
President Marcos also dissolved the Philippine Congress and shut down media establishments critical of the Marcos Administration. He also ordered the immediate arrest of his political opponents and critics. Among those arrested were Senate President Jovito Salonga, and the leaders Senator Jose W. Diokno and Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. — whom Marcos sent to Laur, Nueva Ecija — and the man who was groomed by the opposition to succeed President Marcos after the 1973 elections.
A constitutional convention, which had been called for in 1970 to replace the Commonwealth-era 1935 Constitution, continued the work of framing a new constitution after the declaration of martial law. The new constitution went into effect in early 1973, changing the form of government from presidential to parliamentary and allowing President Marcos to stay in power beyond 1973. The constitution was approved by 95% of the voters in the Philippine constitutional plebiscite. The constitution was part of the landmark Javellana v. Executive Secretary case (G.R. No. 36142) that led to the resignation of Chief Justice Roberto Concepcion. Part of the plot of the regime involved legitimizing the military rule through the new constitution providing legislative and executive powers to the president. Simultaneously Marcos conducted the 1973 plebiscite through the simple counting of hands raised by children and adults that involved questions such as the option for more rice in lieu of constitutional affirmation.
With practically all of his political opponents arrested, out of office, and in exile, President Marcos's pre-emptive declaration of martial law in 1972 and the ratification of his new constitution by more than 95% of voters enabled Marcos to effectively legitimize his government and hold on to power for another 14 years beyond his first two terms as president. In a Cold War context, Marcos retained the support of the United States through Marcos's promise to stamp out communism in the Philippines and by assuring the United States of its continued use of military and naval bases in the Philippines.
On November 27, 1977, a military tribunal sentenced Aquino and two co-accused, NPA leaders Bernabe Buscayno (Commander Dante) and Lt. Victor Corpuz, to death by firing squad. In 1978, while still the last opposition leader yet to be released from prison at Fort Bonifacio, Aquino founded his political party, Lakas ng Bayan (abbreviated "LABAN"; English: People's Power) to run for office in the Interim Batasang Pambansa (Parliament). With the elections widely considered to have been rigged, all LABAN candidates lost as expected, including Aquino himself. In 1980, Ninoy Aquino suffered a heart attack, and was allowed to leave prison to undergo a heart bypass surgery in the United States. After the surgery, Aquino stayed in exile with his wife Corazon, and children in Boston College as a fellow for numerous American universities such as Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Inciting incidents
1974 Sacred Heart Novitiate raid The August 24, 1974 military raid on the Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches, Quezon City is considered one of the key contributors to the emergence of the "middle force" against Ferdinand Marcos, and a key event in the Philippine Catholic church's resistance to the Marcos dictatorship.
Marcos' forces raided the Jesuit Novitiate because they had mistakenly thought a communist leader was there to attend a meeting. But when the 150 soldiers who participated in the raid did not find the communist there, they arrested a priest, Rev. Jose Blanco, S.J., and claimed he was the "secretary general of an allegedly anti-government organization." They also arrested the head of the Jesuit order in the Philippines, Benigno "Benny" Mayo, along with 21 leaders of a youth group who were attending a workshop at the seminary at the time. Newly installed Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin's issued a pastoral letter protesting the raid, read aloud in all the churches of the Archdiocese of Manila. It was the first act of protest by Cardinal Sin, who would later be a key opposition figure against Marcos.
Election irregularities in the 1978 Philippine parliamentary election A parliamentary election was held in the Philippines on April 7, 1978, for the election of the 165 regional representatives to the Interim Batasang Pambansa (the nation's first parliament). The elections were participated in by the Marcos regime's party known as the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL), which was led by the then-First Lady Imelda Marcos, and the main opposition party Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN), which whose leading candidate was the jailed opposition leader Ninoy Aquino.
Conceived by the regime in response to the Carter administration's pressure against Marcos, the 1978 election would be the first major election of the Martial Law era, and the political opposition expected Marcos to cheat. As a result, Aquino's own original Liberal Party (LP) boycotted the election and only begrudgingly allowed to run under the banner of a newly formed party, LABAN. Since his LP partymates were not allowed to campaign, only his family campaigned for him in 1978.
In anticipation of cheating, a noise barrage was organized by the supporters of (LABAN) on the night before the election on April 6, 1978. Senator Nene Pimentel later explained that "the noise barrage was meant to demonstrate the people's opposition to the regime even if their votes may not be counted."
Marcos said that fraud was committed by "both sides" during the elections, but not on a scale that would have affected the results. Jovito Salonga disagreed with the assessment and said that he did not observe people celebrating KBL's victory because they felt "like they’ve been cheated."
The Macliing Dulag assassination Coverage of Kalinga tribal leader Macli-ing Dulag's murder in April 1980 proved to be a watershed moment in the Philippine mainstream press' coverage of the Marcos regime. The story of Macli-ing's murder was most actively pursued by journalist Ma Ceres P. Doyohttps://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/38499/3/38499%20Forbes%202015%20accepted%20version.pdf and playwright Rene O. Villanueva, who got the story out in the press, and were interrogated by the military as a result. Editor Leonor Aureus, writing in 1985 for the National Press Club, noted that in the decade since 1972, there had been "no open and serious confrontation between the [mainstream] press and the military following the wave of arrests after martial law was declared."
1981-1986 Economic nosedive
The Philippine economic nosedive of the 1980s traces its roots to debt-driven growth, mostly during Marcos' second term and during the earliest years of martial law. By 1982, the Philippines’ debt was at $24.4 billion, but it had not seen much in terms of returns because of corruption and the poor management of the crony-monopolized sectors of the economy. In the third quarter of 1981, disaster for the Philippines came when the US economy went into recession, forcing the Reagan administration to increase interest rates. "Third world" countries like the Philippines and many of the nations of Latin America were highly debt dependent, and the size of their debt made debt servicing very difficult. The Philippines’ exports could not keep up with the country's debt, and the economy went into decline in 1981.
This economic decline and a succession crisis brought about by Marcos' failing health convinced Marcos' political nemesis, Benigno Aquino Jr., to try to come back from exile to try and reason with Marcos to change his policies. But Aquino was gunned down at the airport before he could even touch Philippine soil. The already-declining Philippine economy suffered further as investors went to Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand instead of the Philippines.
1984 and 1985 saw the worst recession in Philippine history, with the economy contracting by 7.3% for two successive years. Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority for 1985 showed that poverty incidence in families was at 44.2%—4.3 percentage points higher than in 1991 during the presidency of Corazon Aquino.
With Marcos' health going into steady decline, he gradually lost the support of his cabinet, of the Military, and by some of his closest allies. He was finally ousted by the People Power Revolution that culminated from 22 to 25 February 1986.
Crony capitalism and unexplained wealth