Coronavirus: is Covid-19 task force Duterte’s ‘Rolex 12’ in plan for Marcos-style martial law in the Philippines?

Scenes of army troops flooding the streets to police the lockdown bring back bad memories for Filipinos who lived through the Ferdinand Marcos era

Some critics liken Duterte’s Covid-19 task force – led by former army chiefs – to the ‘Rolex 12’ junta of the former dictator

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Filipino soldiers wearing face masks to guard against the coronavirus on patrol in the Philippines. Photo: EPA

Published: 7:30pm, 28 Apr 2020Updated: 9:06pm, 28 Apr 2020

Few people are old enough to recall the last time the world faced a pandemic on the scale of the coronavirus, yet to some Filipinos with long memories there is something uncomfortably familiar about their government’s response to the disease.

As the number of Covid-19 infections in the country approaches 8,000, army troops have been flooding onto the streets of Metro Manila to enforce lockdown measures in scenes some observers have likened to the military dictatorship imposed in 1972 by Ferdinand Marcos.

“For the first time [since then], I can see troops crawling out there in the streets complete with armoured personnel carriers,” said Vergel Santos, a former BusinessWorld publisher who was detained aged 26 under the martial law of the Marcos era after writing a piece critical of the dictator.

Santos said there was a similarity between how he was treated and how the country’s current president, Rodrigo Duterte, silences his critics. He noted that the Malacañang Palace, Duterte’s seat of power, had tried to insert a clause in the recent emergency powers act that would have allowed the president to take over broadcast stations. The senate has since deleted the clause.

“This man has been trying to impose martial law but until now could not find the right occasion,” said Santos. “He needed a certain emergency and, of course, the assent of the swing force, which is the military. So [until now] he could not do it.”

A member of the Philippine National Police Special Action Forces oversees government imposed quarantine measures in Manila. Photo: AFP

DUTERTE’S ROLEX 12?

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