Editing Ferdinand Marcos (section)

== Life as a President ==
[[File:Ferdinand Marcos 2.jpg|thumb|240px]]
Ferdinand Marcos was inaugurated to his first term as the tenth President of the Philippines on 30 December 1965, after winning the Philippine presidential election of 1965 against the incumbent President, Diosdado Macapagal. His inauguration marked the beginning of his two-decade-long stay in power, even though the 1935 Philippine Constitution had set a limit of only two four-year terms of office.

Before Marcos' presidency, the Philippines was the second-largest economy in Asia, behind only Japan. He pursued an aggressive program of infrastructure development funded by foreign loans, making him very popular throughout almost all of his first term and eventually making him the first and only President of the Third Philippine Republic to win a second term, although it would also trigger an inflationary crisis which would lead to social unrest in his second term, and would eventually lead to his declaration of martial law in 1972.

On the evening of September 23, 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos announced that he had placed the entirety of the Philippines under martial law. This marked the beginning of a 14-year period of one-man rule which would effectively last until Marcos was exiled from the country on February 25, 1986. Even though the formal document proclaiming martial law - [[Proclamation No. 1081]] - was formally lifted on January 17, 1981, Marcos retained virtually all of his powers as dictator until he was ousted by the EDSA Revolution.