Candles with flames/ people light candles.

Hall:  The Philippines is a country that knows the agony of dictatorship.

0.12

During Marcos's two decade stranglehold on power, tens of thousands of people were arrested and tortured, many never to be seen again.

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Woman:  All those who died, disappeared, and were tortured during those dark years are here to commemorate and let the nation remember that we should never again let a dictatorship rule our country.

0.42

Man blows whistle

Hall:  Many fear if the nation doesn't remember, history will repeat itself.  There are signs already that it is.

1.02

Super:  ELEANOR HALL

Bust/ interiors

Certainly Imelda is back. And in her version of the past the woman who to so many epitomises the evil of the Marcos years need offer no apology. Far from it.

1.25

Imelda Marcos

Marcos:  We are the victims of not only our legal rights, our human rights, our constitutional rights but our divine right, our sacred right of home, of home  our homeland. You see all my friends, here, so you see, they are friends.  Here is Fiddle  Castro driving for me.

1.36

Hall:  Under previous presidents, Imelda Marcos found it difficult even to return to the country.  Now she's back in favour at the palace.

1.57

Hall:  And I notice that you've got the current president up there in pride of place.

2.05

Woman: Oh yes, that is President Estrada.

2.08

Hall:  And the woman accused of bleeding her country dry is trying to do a deal with the Estrada government to share the missing billions.

2.13

Imelda Marcos to camera

Hall:  What is the amount of money that you are actually negotiating about at the moment?

2.20

Marcos

Woman:  I really have lost track because they talk about money and the resources of Marcos.  That's the fact that you know my relationship with Marcos was romantic, not economic, and I really did not know too much about this, and I'm looking here and they are just telling me this is this much, this is this much.

2.26

Rally

Hall:  While the former first lady has been wooing the palace in the streets below Filipinos have been burning the president they elected so overwhelmingly last year.

2.54

Cory Aquino in her symbolic people power yellow has once again been leading thousands in protest against the conduct of a president.

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And once again in this strongly Catholic country, the church led by Jaime Cardinal Sin is speaking out.

3.27

Cardinal Sin

Sin:  A corrupt government of immoral leaders is a breeding ground for lawlessness and radical ideologies.

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Hall:  When Estrada took to the streets during his election campaign last year, he didn't look like a dictator in the making.

A former movie star with a reputation for womanising, Estrada - known as Erap or buddy - rode to power on his promises to help the poor. 

3.50

Then he was derided as a bumbling incompetent. 

But once in office Estrada chose powerful friends.

4.14

Man

Man:  Take a snapshot of who are around him and you will see a lot of the people who were with Marcos. 

4.28

Hall:  As well as Imelda, there's Marcos' closest business and political associate, Dando Cojuanco, who's back at the helm of Miguel beer after a decade out of favour. 

Lucio Tan, another Marcos favourite, owns the national airline.

4.41

Zamora and Hall

And then there's President Estrada's right hand man, his executive secretary, Ronaldo Zamora.  The last time he was in the palace he was running it, for President Marcos.

5.00

Zamora:  I really wish people would not raise the question too often but it is there, it is something that I have to live with.  In the end President Estrada will have to decide whether I have become such a liability that I will have to go, then I will go.  I will go quietly.

5.11

Interior church

Woman:  Let us be vigilant against forces and individuals who think only of their selfish interests to the detriment of our country and our people.

5.32

Dodi:  We're saying no, let's not forgive and forget, let's not let bygones be bygones.  We should not be forgotten because when you forget, history might repeat itself.

5.41

Hall:  The fear that Estrada is following in Marcos' footsteps is stirring the same grassroots emotions that brought people power to the streets in 1986.  Dodi Limcaoco is Cory Aquino's spokesperson. 

5.54

Dodi:  It's a call for freedom.  It's a call to stand up for freedom.

6.06

Sin at lectern

Sin:  We are here to remember the lessons of the past so that we may not repeat them any more.

6.09

Hall:  Now frail and ill, Cardinal Sin is calling on younger leaders to carry on the fight.

6.19

In the exotic wildlife sanctuary at the back of his suburban chapel, you'll find the priest who just might be the next generation's Cardinal Sin.  But for now he is just known as the serpent priest.

6.36

Man:  People think I'm mad, I'm a mad priest, they call me the serpent priest.

6.48

Hall:  An affinity for poisonous snakes is an unusual attribute to bring to the priesthood.  But when it comes to dictators, Father Robert himself can be venomous.

6.53

Close up snake and Father Robert

Super:  Father Robert Reyes

Father Robert:  The Marcos years was poison.  We were dying slowly and Marcos was killing us left and right.  I had friends who were tortured and executed during those times, and so we had to tell them.   Marcos was poison and dictatorship is poison, and if we don't know that it is poison, then we will start drinking the same poison, and this is what Erap and the people around him are beginning to sell. 

7.03

Street scenes

Hall:  As more and more comparisons are made between Marcos and the new president, September 21 is shaping up as a critical day of protest.  It's the anniversary of the day 27 years ago when Marcos declared martial law and what had been a democracy, became a dictatorship.

7.33

President Estrada will neither hear nor see the protests.  He's out of the country.  But from that other former dictatorship, Chile, he tells Filipinos to forget what happened under martial law.

7.55

Father Robert

Father Robert:  Let's forget it, he made that statement and that's a terrible statement.  It's like Germans saying we should forget Hitler and the Holocaust.

8.09

Hall:  But these protestors are not just dwelling on the past.  They're fearful Estrada is about to tear down the very foundation of their future freedom. The president plans to change the cherished Aquino constitution which gave Filipinos back their democracy.

8.21

Super:  Dodi Limcaoco, Aquino Spokesperson

Dodi:  We're not sure that we want this cast of characters, these congressmen who are obviously, many of whom are obviously motivated by self interest to do the amending of the constitution.

8.40

Hall:  The most controversial of the president's constitutional changes would allow foreigners to own more land and industry in the Philippines.  

Opening the doors to international corporations would benefit the economy and the people, so the argument goes.

8.56

Zamora

Super:  RONALDO ZAMORA, Estrada's Executive Secretary

Zamora:  The president thinks, why don't we liberalise the economy, why don't we do it by opening up even the constitution.   That is how we help the poor.

9.11

Father Robert:  There are people identified with the Marcos' who want this law passed because they have been buying land left and right, they'll be the first to sell land and the first to make a killing.

9.23

Zamora:  I'm not sure that the president will gain anything personally out of this.  I certainly don't think so, whether his friends will or will not, that is something for experience to tell us eventually.

9.33

Father Robert

Hall:  Father Robert doesn't need to wait.  He is sure that his friends, the poor, will not benefit in any way from the president's constitutional changes.

9.56

Father Robert:  So far he has promised a lot and he continues to promise and so his latest promise is, if we change the charter then you will not be poor any more and that's a lousy promise.

10.07

Hall:  These people have of course heard promise after political promise for decades.  Just like Estrada, the Marcos' saw the poor as their power base.

10.20

Imelda to camera

Imelda:  And all these projects for the poor, deliver a basic service, water, power, food, shelter, I was very active and I had to keep my feet intact and so I had espadrille shoes.

10.29

Hall:  Regardless of the criticism, Estrada is vowing to go ahead with the changes.  And just as with Marcos, it's being made increasingly clear to a now nervous press that what the president wants he gets.

10.48

Garcia

Garcia:  He's clearly out to intimidate the press.  He's not using the guns, he's not using martial law, the cronies are doing the job for him.

11.02

Hall:  Ermin Garcia was the publisher of the oldest newspaper in the Philippines, the Manila Times.  But three months ago, after the president began a libel suit against the paper, pressure was put on the owner to sell.  The next day the Manila Times was closed.

11.13

Hall:  So who closed your paper?

11.30

Garcia:  Ah, crony of the president.  He pressed for the selling of the paper, actually to him and to his other partners.

11.32

Zamora

Zamora:  [laughs] I have a personal stake in this ...

11.50

Hall:  Ronaldo Zamora certainly does.  The president's executive secretary was the subject of the corruption expose that the president sued the paper over.  

11.54

Zamora:  At the moment, we see newspapers being out of line, we will still take that, if they go even more out of line we are prepared to take that, but if they go beyond a certain line in the sand then perhaps even newspaper men will understand why we have to go, to go to the court and to defend our own personal integrity.  That is not a threat against press freedom, that is a threat against people who tell lies.

12.04

Garcia with Hall

Garcia:   It was his own paper ...

12.38

Hall:  For Ermin Garcia, the echoes of the past are strong.  Like so many people we spoke to in the Philippines, he too has a story of terror under Marcos.  Then it was his father who was the newspaper publisher.

12.40

Garcia:  He was shot in his office when he refused to agree to the demand of the government official that he stop the publication of a story involving himself.

12.53

Hall:  And Garcia wouldn't be surprised to see more deaths under this president.

13.07

Garcia:  But if somebody still persists in being critical, they probably find, say, very sensitive material involving a crony, it just might happen.

13.11

Hall:  They might get killed?

Garcia:  Yes.  Some can be killed.  I don't doubt that.

13.23

Street and Virgin Mary statue

Hall:  Dawn on the 21^st of September, the anniversary of the declaration of martial law.

13.39

Father Robert says mass while the final touches are put on his vehicle for the protest, a push cart, the slowest and lowliest form of transport in the Philippines. 

Just as in 1986 the political activists and the church have joined forces.

13.50

Dodi:  It's better for us to go down here.

14.10

Hall:  The serpent priest accompanied by a team of rosary reciting nun pushes the Virgin Mary out into the Manila traffic .

14.13

Father Robert and Hall in the march

Father Robert:  Mary on the cart is a symbol of Mary who really is Mary.  Mary who never really left her people, the poor and the lonely of Jerusalem and now the poor and the lonely of the Philippines.

14.20

Hall:  Gathering supporters as they go, Father Robert and the cart pushers make their pilgrimage through the city, stopping at schools to warn the young about dictatorship.

14.36

Father Robert:  ... What did he do? What is martial law?

14.46

Hall:  Not only do the school children not remember, they're now contending with conflicting messages.

14.53

Marcos

Marcos:  Well, it looks so funny already at this point in time because for me it was the most enlightened period of our country.

15.00

Dodi:  Can you believe that?  With her multi-carat diamonds, saying that today should be celebrated because it was the greatest day that her husband  ever ...  Because they want us to forget so that they can laugh all the way to the bank. 

15.12

Street march

Across Manila people are gathering, tens of thousands voicing their anger, not only at the memory of martial law but against President Estrada, his powerful friends and the increasingly dictatorial stance of the government.

15.31

Twelve hours after they began their march, Father Robert and his followers reach Manila's Santo Domingo church, in time for the media crush as Cardinal Sin and Cory Aquino arrive.

15.54

Six o'clock, and it's not only church bells ringing out.  Led by Cory Aquino and Cardinal Sin the city erupts in a barrage of noise.

16.11

Virgin Mary statue and rally

The president can't hear them.  He's still overseas.  But perhaps he should be listening.

The church and the woman in yellow brought down President Marcos.  They now seem determined to exorcise his ghost.

16.32