Protesters show up for Marcos visit to Hawaii

About 25 protesters gathered Saturday outside the doors of the Hawai‘i Convention Center waiting for the arrival of visiting Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., where he was scheduled to attend a large dinner gathering.

Marcos’ arrival in Honolulu marked his return from the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in San Francisco. Gov. Josh Green was expected to greet Marcos upon his arrival in Honolulu. During his visit, the Philippine president is expected to meet with Adm. John Aquilino, the U.S. military’s top commander in the Pacific.

But his appearance Saturday evening inside the convention center’s fourth-floor ballroom drew detractors outside.

The group waved signs that read “No Aloha For Marcos,” offered jeers, and held up an unflattering effigy of him at the corner of Atkinson Drive and Kapiolani Boulevard as many motorists honked their horns as they passed by.

Others used megaphones to vocalize their anger and frustration over justice they say was denied to friends and family in the Philippines who suffered, were tortured or simply disappeared under the Marcos family’s reputed, decades-long dictatorship of that Southeast Asian country starting in the 1960s.

Among the protesters, Arcy Imasa, a member of Hawaii Filipinos for Truth, Justice and Democracy, said she believes the old regime that ruled the Philippine nation and its people through terror years ago continues today.

“We in Hawaii are in solidarity with every Filipino globally protesting him,” Imasa said, adding Marcos Jr. and family got “back into power through the ill-gotten wealth, through the wealth that his family got through the dictatorship in the ’70s and ’80s.”

HFTJD, Imasa noted, was launched Sept. 23 — the day which marks the 51st year since martial rule was declared in the Philippines by Marcos’ father, the late, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

Other protesters, like Rick Rothschiller, said he showed up due to the American government’s support for Marcos.

“Especially U.S. military aid for the Marcos regime,” he said. “To build up U.S. military forces in the Philippines and in that region, and the use of our tax dollars for that, especially under the condition that the Filipinos are suffering under Marcos.”

Cat Rey, with the Filipino youth organization Anakbayan Hawaii, said her group “is fighting against imperialism in the Philippines and holding the government accountable to their actions.”

“So, in the Philippines right now — even before Marcos was president — there’s a huge campaign to clear up his family’s name, to rehabilitate his family image,” she said. “And as a result of that there’s a huge public and private campaign to sanitize history.”

Eric Seitz, a local attorney, was also on hand to protest Marcos’ arrival in Hawaii.

“As far as I know he has no qualifications to be president, just basically playing on his family’s name,” Seitz said. “And he’s essentially a throwback, in terms of his own ideologies and beliefs, to what his parents represented.”

However, Seitz would not go as far to say that the new Marcos presidency was a new dictatorship.

“I don’t know that, I don’t have any personal knowledge of that,” Seitz said. “I just know that he’s got no qualifications to be the president. I know that he’s essentially a puppet of the United States in many respects; the United States backs him and will continue to back him for various reasons.”

He added that “Marcos acts in a manner that is consistent with U.S. interests.”

This is Marcos Jr.’s first trip to Hawaii since living here in exile after his father and mother, Imelda, and family fled the Philippines when the Marcos regime was overthrown during the 1986 People Power Revolution.

Marcos Sr. ruled that country from 1965 to 1986.

During the last 14 years of his rule, the Marcos family amassed billions of dollars and kept the country under martial law. After his overthrow, they fled to Hawaii, where they were welcomed by then-Gov. George Ariyoshi, his wife, Jean, and military officials at Hickam Air Force Base.

Marcos Sr. died at St. Francis Medical Center in 1989 after a long battle with kidney disease. The Marcos family was allowed to return to the Philippines in 1992.

Since their return, the Marcos family worked to rehabilitate their image and regain power and influence in a country of 114 million people. Those efforts led to Marcos Jr.’s election as president of the Philippines in 2022.

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Honolulu Star-Advertiser staff writer Kevin Knodell contributed to this report