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FOR MARCOS, DEMOCRACY WAS
TROUBLESOME, SO HE SENT IT PACKING SOUTH
THE PHILIPPINES
1/29/73
FAREWELL TO DEMOCRACY
*
Bidding a disparaging farewell
to democracy, President Ferdinand Marcos last week
formally ended the Philippines' 26-year-old
American-style government. In a nationwide
broadcast, Marcos announced a new constitution that
gives him dictatorial powers for as long as he
chooses.
That Marcos found democracy
troublesome had, of course, been evident for some
time. Since imposing martial law last September, he
had steadily moved to consolidate his one-man rule
and has now made it clear that for the moment he
does not want to be bothered by any legislative
body. For the present, Ferdinand Marcos alone will
act as President, Premier and Parliament of the
Philippines.
CHINA
9/20/76
THE HELMSMAN PASSES
*
It was an end that had been long anticipated, but
somehow it came as a shock.
At 4 p.m. last Thursday, loudspeakers throughout
China announced that Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party, had
"passed away" at the age of 82 "despite all
treatment" and "meticulous medical care."
Within minutes of the announcement, China was in
mourning. Mao was, after all, the only leader that
it had known since the communist armies swept
triumphantly into Peking to proclaim the People's
Republic 27 years ago.
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VIETNAM
5/12/75
THE END OF A THIRTY YEARS'
WAR
*
The tricolored flag of the
Communist Provisional Revolutionary Government
fluttered over the presidential palace in Saigon.
On the open-air terrace of the Continental Hotel,
where Americans drank Saigon's infamous "33" beer
and vodka tonics and ogled Vietnamese girls for
more than a decade, Viet Cong troops lounged and
sipped orange juice. Soviet-built tanks and
Chinese-made trucks rumbled through the streets of
Saigon to cheers from the populace. With incredible
suddenness it was over, not only Vietnam's
agonizing Thirty Years' War but also a century of
Western domination. The massive, 20-year American
struggle to build a stable noncommunist government
in South Vietnam was definitively ended, an all but
total failure.
He was not only the architect of
China's socialist revolution but its guide, prophet
and teacher -- the man of legend whom millions
accepted with blind faith as the font of their
country's rebirth to greatness.
When he died, China had been unified -- admittedly
by brutal force and rigid discipline -- and was an
emergent superpower. The country had regained its
once lost pride and was filled with a sense of
purpose. It was Mao far more than anyone else who
gave it that purpose.
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