The Marcos half-century

I WAS recently reading The Kennedy Half Century, where Larry J. Sabato not only provided fresh details about President John F. Kennedy’s life and death but also convincingly demonstrated how subsequent White House occupants were influenced by his decisions and rhetoric. It was not a general statement that Kennedy was the end-all and be-all of history, nor discrediting the fact that the people are the true makers of history; but just like how some historians call 1974-2008 as The Reagan Era, it was just a recognition that a personality in history looms large and had impacted many aspects of that era.

And so, I was thinking who could be the personality that loomed large in the past 50 years in the political, economic and cultural life of the nation. I only have one man in mind and that is Ferdinand E. Marcos.