Am also witness to Marco dictatorship. Imelda was pompous. Revisionists there cast The Marcos family favorably. I knew and witnessed his grandeur and depravity. Gen Ver and Juan ponce Enrile were evil. The cronies were ruthless. No doubt someone spiked Imelda’s punch bowl.
Marcos made out all his enimies to be Marxists, in effect drawing many Liberals and Moderates into coalitions with Marxists and one result was the increasing popularity of the armed Communist/Marxist groups. Marcos helped to create a bigger all around Leftist opposition than the beginning opposition to Marcos ever was. In that process the Marcos military police only had to name a mere opponent of their corruption as a Marxist, and go after them as such - on as if they were all Marxists.
In some ways Marcos was and began as a “populist” and was outside the elite families that had dominated Philippine politics and business, before, during and after WWII.
Rather than purge the political culture of their corruption, when Marcos declared Martial Law he was trying to occupy the whole corrupt system, with the corruption, all by and to himself.
After it was all over and Cory had been in power a few years, my firend’s dad wrote that the biggest problem to be overcome in the Philippines was the systmatic corruption at every level ff government and society. It still is.