Today marks the anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law on September 21, 1972. For the survivors who lived through it, this date is a heavy reminder of a dark time when our democracy was dismantled piece by piece—all hidden behind the excuse of “bringing back order and stability.”
Yet as I look around our campus today, I worry about how easily we are letting collective memory fade. It feels as though today’s generation has disconnected from the Martial Law era, forgetting how deeply it shaped our country’s story and how we view leadership and power.
For many young people, Martial Law is just a random textbook line or a past event you scroll past—or worse, a period glorified by online revisionists. Research shows that while most Filipinos agree “fake news” is out of hand, clout-chasing vloggers and influencers keep getting away with spreading fake history and pushing a nostalgia for a “golden age” that never actually existed.
This collective memory loss is dangerous. Real freedom is fragile, and it vanishes fast the moment we get distracted, tune out, or stay quiet. By looking back at what Martial Law actually taught us, we can see how its lessons connect directly to the same issues we are battling on our feeds and in our streets right now.
Looking back on the Martial Law era, the key takeaway is that dictatorships don’t just show up overnight with tanks in the streets; they usually break democracy from the inside out, using legal technicalities, loopholes, and executive overreach to slowly dismantle institutions while maintaining a facade of legality.
When people are too scared, too comfortable, or too distracted to call out these red flags, that silence becomes a green light for tyranny to grow unchecked.
The cost of looking away isn’t just theoretical—it was paid in real human lives through tens of thousands of arbitrary arrests, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. Beyond the human toll, the popular myth that strongman rule brings “discipline and prosperity” falls flat; in reality, unchecked power destroyed the economy through massive crony capitalism, systemic corruption, and crippling national debt that took generations to pay off.
The Modern Threat: Warrantless Inspections
The insidious nature of authoritarianism is that it rarely advertises itself as tyranny; it usually presents itself as well-intentioned governance aimed at solving an urgent public crisis.
A contemporary example of this warning is the Department of the Interior and Local Government’s (DILG) recent plan to petition the Supreme Court to authorize the Philippine National Police (PNP) to conduct warrantless inspections of private residences to verify whether licensed gun owners are storing their firearms safely.
While preventing gun violence and keeping firearms away from unauthorized individuals are legitimate public safety concerns, the proposed method—granting police warrantless access to private dwellings—is profoundly unconstitutional and deeply alarming.
Article III, Section 2 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution guarantees that:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose shall be inviolable, and no such search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable cause to be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the complainant and the witnesses he may produce…”
The home holds a sacred place in constitutional law as the ultimate zone of personal privacy. Under Philippine jurisprudence, state agents cannot enter a person’s home without a search warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause, except for very narrow, well-defined exceptions (such as plain view, searches incidental to a lawful arrest, or exigent circumstances).
The DILG argues that owning a firearm is a privilege rather than a constitutional right and is therefore subject to regulatory oversight.
However, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed (notably in Acosta v. Ochoa, G.R. No. 211559, October 15, 2019) that while gun ownership is indeed a privilege, the state cannot require citizens to surrender their fundamental constitutional rights in exchange for a license or privilege. Executive agencies cannot use administrative conditions or public safety rhetoric to bypass the requirement for a judicial search warrant. Allowing state forces to enter private homes without a judicial warrant simply to audit compliance turns a constitutional protection into a mere suggestion.
This proposal eerily recalls the police tactics used during the Martial Law era. During those dark times, security forces routinely invaded private homes under the broad banner of “public safety,” “national security,” and “law enforcement,” stripping citizens of constitutional protections against arbitrary searches.
Normalizing warrantless police checks in private homes—even under the guise of safe gun storage—sets a dangerous precedent. When cops can walk past your front door without a judge’s search warrant, they completely sidestep the judicial oversight designed to protect citizens from government overreach.
Once we let the state cross that line for routine administrative checks, the boundary of private space is permanently blurred, making future intrusions much easier to justify. Rights aren’t just taken by force overnight; just like in 1972, they are quietly surrendered through bureaucratic loopholes that put police convenience ahead of constitutional freedom.
How Martial Law Relates to Today’s Challenges
The way power flexes on us has changed, but the playbook is pretty much the same. Back in the day, the dictatorship locked things down by pulling the plug on newsrooms, banning broadcasts, and shutting down anyone who dared to speak out.
Today? Nobody needs to pull a plug—they just flood the feed with fake news, troll armies, and paid influencers. Our daily digital space—from TikTok algorithms to Facebook feeds—has been weaponized. We’re talking coordinate-driven click armies, boosted posts, and slick revisionist edits made specifically to mess with our heads, split us apart, and blur the line between what actually happened and pure fiction.
It’s no coincidence that tech researchers literally call the Philippines the world’s “petri dish” for digital black ops and online manipulation. When our feeds get hijacked and history gets rewritten for likes and votes, we lose our grip on reality—and when that happens, holding those in power accountable becomes almost impossible.
Beating this isn’t about logging off; it’s about leveling up how we read our feeds. We have to fact-check like historians—double-checking primary sources, calling out cap, and exposing the clout-chasers and political operators who are actively trying to rewrite our past.
Why We Must Cherish and Defend Freedom Now
When we hit clear on our history, we leave ourselves totally wide open to the exact same nightmarish mistakes our elders fought like hell to defeat. Ghosting the sacrifices, the systemic abuses, and the real-life trauma of the Martial Law era doesn’t just rewrite the past—it leaves us completely blind to red flags when that same old power trip resurfaces today.
Democracy was never meant to be some set-it-and-forget-it deal that you passively inherit; it’s a living, breathing responsibility that needs our active, everyday energy. Your right to speak out, a free press, and the power to call out BS aren’t forever guarantees—they’re constantly being subtly chipped away by people hoping you’re too distracted or drained to notice. Real freedom depends on us refusing to look away, staying sharp against corruption, and calling out any quiet attempt to crush human dignity.
This is on us now. To everyone scrolling through slickly edited feeds and algorithmically packaged spin: do not let the rights bought with the real blood, sweat, and sacrifices of previous generations be erased by viral apathy or paid troll farms.
The constant noise of digital clout-chasing and revisionism leaves you tired, cynical, and tuned out—but your critical thinking is your strongest shield. See through the hype, double-check the receipts, and stand unapologetically as truth-seekers and guardians of our collective future.
Our history isn’t just some boring textbook assignment; it’s the ground we stand on, and it’s up to us to hold the line. NEVER FORGET. NEVER AGAIN.
*Enrique BUKO dela Cruz, Jr. is the Dean of the College of Law of Baliuag University. He earned his Juris Doctor with honors from UST Manila and his LLM with Distinction from the London Metropolitan University, UK as a Chevening Scholar of the British Council in 2005. He completed an Executive Program on Leadership at the KSG, Harvard University in 2002 and the Future Leaders Program from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School in 2022.