MARCOS. My countrymen, as of the 21st of this month, I signed Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire Philippines under martial law. This proclamation was to be implemented upon my clearance, and clearance was granted at 9 o’clock in the evening of the 22nd, last night. [AF-001: Proclamation No. 1081 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWu46IyLKwI ]
Signed on the 21st, ordered implemented on the 22nd, announced on the 23rd. Marcos would celebrate it on the 21st and we continue to mark it as the September day when Martial Law was declared, even as Manolo Quezon in “Declaration of Martial Law” insists on the 23rd as the correct date:
… the actual date for Martial Law was not the numerologically-auspicious (for Marcos) 21st, but rather, the moment that Martial Law was put into full effect, which was after the nationwide address of Ferdinand Marcos as far as the nation was concerned: September 23, 1972. By then, personalities considered threats to Marcos (Senators Benigno S. Aquino Jr., Jose Diokno, Francisco Rodrigo and Ramon Mitra Jr., and members of the media such as Joaquin Roces, Teodoro Locsin Sr., Maximo Soliven and Amando Doronila) had already been rounded up, starting with the arrest of Senator Aquino at midnight on September 22, and going into the early morning hours of September 23, when 100 of the 400 personalities targeted for arrest were already detained in Camp Crame by 4 a.m. [Undated. Official Gazette. https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/featured/declaration-of-martial-law/]
But Ninoy Aquino, who was arrested close to midnight of the 22nd, noted it as the day Marcos went totalitarian.
NINOY. On September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos established a totalitarian regime. On that fateful day, he proclaimed himself dictator. He issued General Order No. 1 in which he proclaims that: “I shall govern the nation and direct the operation of the entire government, including all its agencies and instrumentalities, and shall exercise all the powers and prerogatives appurtenant and incident to my position as … Commander-in-Chief of all Armed Forces of the Philippines.”
He placed his acts beyond the reach of the courts. In General Order No. 3, issued that September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos decreed that “the Judiciary shall continue to function in accordance with its present organization and personnel, and shall try and decide in accordance with existing laws all criminal and civil cases, except the following: Those involving the validity, legality or constitutionality of any decree, order, or acts issued, promulgated or performed by me or by my duly designated representative purusant to Proclamation 1081, dated September 21, 1972.”
On the same September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos killed press freedom in the Philippines. In his Martial Law Letter of Instruction No. 1, he ordered the secretaries of information and national defense “to take over and control or cause the taking over of all such newspapers, magazines, radio and television facilities and all other media of communications, wherever they are, for the duration of the present national emergency, or until otherwise ordered by me or by my duly designated representative.”
This tore away – in one stroke of the Marcos pen – the constitutional shield that safeguarded press freedom.
Freedom of the press, as we knew it—the people’s right to know, the very bedrock of democracy—died with that martial law LOI #1. The independent Manila Times and its sister publications, echo chambers of the people’s sentiments since the early American colonial rule, and the weekly magazine Philippines Free Press, always fearless and historically an unpleasant thorn in the side of those who governed, were closed by the martial law Brown Shirts at midnight September 22, the first day of the Marcos martial rule.
Also on September 22, 1972, Mr. Marcos dealt the common people’s freedom a series of mortal blows. Organized labor was singled out for the most devastating blow. He outlawed strikes, the only potent weapon in the puny arsenal of the workingman, and, as for the rest of the populace, he decreed as “strictly prohibited” any and all rallies, any and all demonstrations, any and all “other forms of group action”—under pain, for violators, of arrest and incarceration “for the duration of the national emergency” in General Order No. 5. [Testimony from a Prison Cell. 1984. pp 43-48]
The writer and editor Gregorio C. Brillantes in “Brief History of Martial Law” is also quite certain about the 22nd.
It was not September 21, but September 22, 1972, that signaled the actual start of Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law regime. To be exact, 9:11 p.m. on that day 17 years ago … and the exact hour of the commencement of that infamy, are provided us by I.M. Escolastico, our friend and press brod of long standing (though he prefers to take things sitting down). … Ticong cites as his primary source or authority for the martial law data no less than the extraordinary author of Proclamation 1081: Ferdinand Edralin (Ferdie, Andy, Apo, Tuta, Hitler) Marcos, who in 1980 or eight years after the event found the gall, cost, and ghost to write, in Notes on the New Society, now mercifully out of print, that “the instrument ‘Proclaiming a State of Martial Law in the Philippines’ had been signed on the 21st of September and transmitted to the Defense Authorities for implementation … clearance for which was given at 9:00 p.m., 22nd of September, after the ambush of Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile at 8:10 p.m. at Wack Wack Subdivision, Mandaluyong, Rizal.” [Esquire Magazine. Sept 21 2017. https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/notes-and-essays/a-brief-history-of-martial-law-a1789-20170921-lfrm3 ]
And so is journalist Sol Jose Vanzi in “Little known events of dark September, 1972 come to light.”
On the evening of September 22, 1972, I watched the discreet unloading from military trucks of armed men in uniform at major intersections in Metro Manila. An unusually large number of police patrol cars roamed the streets. Overhead, helicopters were circling the city.
I knew Philippine military choppers were not certified for night flight. It was too dark so see any markings that would identify the aircraft. I sensed something big was happening, something that political observers had been talking about for years but never really expected to see: martial law had been imposed.
To confirm my suspicions, I phoned the Manila Times switchboard and got a curt military-sounding male; the same thing happened when I tried the office of Vic Maliwanag, Manila Bureau Chief of United Press International, then the world’s leading news agency.
All TV stations were off the air, save for KBS (Benedicto-owned Kanlaon Broadcasting System) which was showing cartoons. Privately-owned radio stations were likewise silent; government radio stations Voice of the Philippines and PBS were playing nothing but old songs. [Manila Bulletin. Sept 21 2020. https://mb.com.ph/2020/09/21/little-known-events-of-dark-september-1972-come-to-light/ ]
Birthdays and anniversaries are all about the beginning, not the “full effect” of some stage of implementation. It doesn’t matter that Marcos disclosed the declaration of martial law only a day later, on the 23rd. It doesn’t matter when, what date, a birth is announced. What matters, what is marked and remembered, is the beginning, the birthday itself, the starting point. By most accounts this was an hour or so after JPE was ambushed kunó by communists kunó the evening of September 22 1972. #NeverAgain