'Protect the truth': A Marcos return in Philippines triggers fear for history

A bookstore owner shows a page of a book containing a newspaper clipping of the declaration of martial law, in Manila, Philippines, May 19, 2022. Picture taken May 19, 2022. REUTERS/Lisa Marie David

MANILA (Reuters) - Books about the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his brutal era of martial law are flying off the shelves, spurred by "panic buying" after his son and namesake won a May 9 presidential election.

Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s presidency, set to begin on June 30, has many people worried about losing access to books and other accounts of his father's rule, given his family's decades-long effort to rehabilitate its name through what critics describe as a campaign of historical revisionism.