Marcos seeks unity as Philippines marks ‘folks energy’ anniversary

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. known as for reconciliation and unity on Saturday because the Southeast Asian nation marked the thirty seventh anniversary of the “folks energy” revolution that toppled his dictator father.

Marcos, who was 28 years previous when a helicopter whisked his household from the presidential palace in 1986, mentioned he was one with the nation “in remembering these occasions of tribulation and the way we got here out of them united and stronger as a nation.”

Marcos, 65, clinched a landslide victory in final 12 months’s presidential election on a easy message of unity. Regardless of its fall from grace, his household returned from exile within the Nineteen Nineties and has remained a strong drive in native politics.

“I as soon as once more supply my hand of reconciliation to these with completely different political persuasions to come back collectively as one in forging a greater society – one that can pursue progress and peace and a greater life for all Filipinos,” he mentioned in a social media put up.

Marcos despatched a wreath of flowers to the Individuals Energy Monument alongside a significant freeway within the capital Manila, the place thousands and thousands of protesters had gathered demanding the ouster of his father amid allegations of plunder and human rights violations. The elder Marcos died in 1989.

The household has denied siphoning off billions of {dollars} of state wealth throughout the dictatorship, and has waged a decades-long marketing campaign to resurrect its fame.

The youthful Marcos’s “presidency is an insult to the sacrifices of those that fought for freedom and democracy”, human rights advocacy group Karapatan mentioned in an announcement.

The household of late former President Corazon Aquino, who assumed energy after the elder Marcos’s ouster, issued an announcement saying the spirit of the 1986 rebellion “guards and protects our democracy, confronting those that try to deceive us and undermine our rights and liberties”.

(Reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz; Enhancing by William Mallard)