FILE PHOTO: President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. | Photo from the Official Facebook page of Bongbong Marcos
MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People for 2024.
In an article published on Thursday (Wednesday in US time), the renowned magazine recognized Marcos’ attempt to rehabilitate the name of his dictator father and namesake, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
READ: Maria Ressa in Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World
“Bongbong’s desire to rehabilitate the Marcos name has resulted in other shifts. He brought technocrats back into government, steadied the post-pandemic economy, and elevated the Philippines on the world stage,” Time’s news correspondent Charlie Campbell wrote.
Time also lauded Marcos’ stance against China’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea and his work to bolster the Philippines’ relationship with the United States amid the territorial dispute.
READ: Marcos: Philippines will not lose one inch of its territory
The President, however, could not escape his family’s infamy, as Campbell summarized Marcos’ history in the piece, mentioning the plunder of people’s money and massive human rights violations during his father’s regime.
“For Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos to make history, he first needed to rewrite his nation’s. His dictator father plundered billions of dollars from state coffers and stood accused of grievous human-rights violations until his ouster in 1986,” wrote Campbell.
“Bongbong’s rise to the Philippine presidency in 2022 was owed to whitewashing this family legacy through clever manipulation of social media,” he likewise wrote.
The release of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People for 2024 came days after Marcos said it is not his duty to apologize for his father’s atrocities during martial law.
Continuing to follow in his father’s footsteps, Marcos made it to Time’s list almost 68 years after his namesake was on the magazine cover. The Time wrote a story on the pre-martial law of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1966.
“As the sixth President of the Philippine Republic, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, 49, has been in office only ten months, but in that time he has taken significant steps toward providing the Philippines with the dynamic, selfless leadership it needs to cope with the Southeast Asian burdens of poverty, lawlessness, Communist insurgency, and, most [importantly], the quest for national identity after centuries of colonial occupation,” the Time’s article for its October 21, 1966 cover story reads.
Other Filipinos who made it to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People were former president Rodrigo Duterte, former senator Leila De Lima in 2017, and Maria Ressa in 2019.
The late former president Corazon Aquino, a central figure in the ouster of the Marcos family via the bloodless 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution and mother of the Philippines’ 15th President, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, was honored as Time’s Woman of the Year for 1987.