Category: marcos

marcos, kleptocracy, moral turpitude

indeed, as president duterte declares, there is no law that expressly names and bans ferdinand marcos from burial in the libingan ng mga bayani.

however, AFPR G 161 374, the AFP’s implementing rules and regulations for Republic Act 289 (that created the national pantheon), is said to very clearly state:

The remains of the following shall not be interred in the Libingan ng mga Bayani:

Personnel who were dishonorably separated/reverted/discharged from the service.

Authorized personnel who were convicted by final judgment of the offense involving moral turpitude.

i submit, mr. president, that the dictator marcos meets both criteria easily and unequivocably.

dishonorably separated/reverted/discharged from the service:  in 1986, for sins too many to mention here, marcos was ousted by the direct actions of great numbers of people in a huge non-violent 10-day protest (six days crony boycott, 4 days EDSA) never before seen in the world.  take note, please, that marcos was so freaked out, he voluntarily left the palace, the seat of power, in effect dishonorably discharging himself from his post as president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces at the people’s behest.

(the story that bongbong and imelda peddle, by the way, that they only meant to go to paoay but were “kidnapped” by the americans and brought to hawaii instead, even if true, is no excuse — it was their mistake, trusting the americans rather than the loyalist pilots of presidential choppers who had been on standby from 10 a.m. of EDSA monday, the day before his tuesday night escape from the wrath of the people.)

convicted by final judgment of offense involving moral turpitude:  may i refer you, sir, to the supreme court’s final decision dated july 2003 (G.R. No. 152154), Republic of the Philippines vs. … Ferdinand E. Marcos (Represented by his Estate/Heirs: Imelda R. Marcos, Maria Imelda [Imee] Marcos-Manotoc, Ferdinand R; Marcos, Jr. and Irene Marcos-Araneta) and Imelda Romualdez Marcos, respondents, in the ill-gotten wealth case involving the aggregate amount of $658,175,373.60 (inclusive of interest as of january 31, 2002) held by five account groups using various foreign foundations in certain swiss banks.

the PCGG showed in detail, very clearly and overwhelmingly

… how both respondents clandestinely stashed away the countrys wealth to Switzerland and hid the same under layers upon layers of foundations and other corporate entities to prevent its detection. Through their dummies/nominees, fronts or agents who formed those foundations or corporate entities, they opened and maintained numerous bank accounts….

…On the part of Mrs. Marcos, she claimed that the funds were lawfully acquired. However, she failed to particularly state the ultimate facts surrounding the lawful manner or mode of acquisition of the subject funds. Simply put, she merely stated in her answer with the other respondents that the funds were lawfully acquired without detailing how exactly these funds were supposedly acquired legally by them. Even in this case before us, her assertion that the funds were lawfully acquired remains bare and unaccompanied by any factual support which can prove, by the presentation of evidence at a hearing, that indeed the funds were acquired legitimately by the Marcos family.

… In the guise of reporting income using the cash method under Section 38 of the National Internal Revenue Code, FM made it appear that he had an extremely profitable legal practice before he became a President (FM being barred by law from practicing his law profession during his entire presidency) and that, incredibly, he was still receiving payments almost 20 years after. The only problem is that in his Balance Sheet attached to his 1965 ITR immediately preceeding his ascendancy to the presidency he did not show any Receivables from client at all, much less the P10,65-M that he decided to later recognize as income. There are no documents showing any withholding tax certificates. Likewise, there is nothing on record that will show any known Marcos client as he has no known law office. As previously stated, his networth was a mere P120,000.00 in December, 1965. The joint income tax returns of FM and Imelda cannot, therefore, conceal the skeletons of their kleptocracy.

sabi nga ni senator rene saguisag:

No doubt Macoy was a criminal genius.

He opened his secret bank account in Switzerland in 1968.

The Supreme Court ruled him a kleptocrat on July 15, 2003 and ordered the Marcoses to return billions. Done.

He had political foes detained, Ninoy, Pepe, Soc, Monching, et al. Only Ninoy was charged, after years of detention.

He destroyed the natural evolution of leaders and many young leaders were killed in the flower of their youth.

75,000 claims of human rights victims are now being processed.

The world hailed his ouster in 1986.

He was super-exec, super-court, super-legislature and a one-man continuing constitutional convention.

Which other Pinoy President does the world see in such light?

No one comes close.

and may i add, contrary to the marcos camp’s online propaganda that marcos himself was the true hero of EDSA because he restrained his loyalist soldiers from firing on the throngs of unarmed civilians, in fact marcos gave the kill-order twice.  on sunday through army general josephus ramas to marine general artemio tadiar whose tanks were ordered to “Ram through!” the crowds gathered in the EDSA-ortigas intersection so that the soldiers could get close enough to eliminate rebel leaders enrile and ramos and RAM; this was between 2 and 3 p.m., just as enrile was leaving camp aguinaldo and crossing EDSA to consolidate forces with ramos in camp crame.  unfortunately for marcos, tadiar could not bring himself to harm innocent civilians.

the next morning, monday, ramas again, and col. irwin ver, too, relayed marcos’s kill-order to marine lt. col. braulio balbas whose troops had breached the libis barricades and made it into camp aguinaldo; looking down from the high ground of aguinaldo’s golf course, balbas had awesome firepower “boresighted” on camp crame, just 200 meters away: 3 howitzers, 28 mortars, 6 rocket launchers, 6 machine guns, and 1000 rifles.  balbas defied repeated orders to fire even when his commander, gen. tadiar, confirmed that the orders were from marcos himself.

my sources are unimpeachable:  the historian alfred mccoy and his team’s account is based on interviews with rebel and loyalist soldiers after EDSA, published in two parts by Veritas in october 1986.  and cecilio arillo, the military journalist identified with enrile who was in the camps and told it as he saw it in the book Breakaway (May 1986).

if all of the above do not qualify as moral turpitude upon moral turpitude upon moral turpitude, mr. president, then, pray tell, what does?

The $10bn question: what happened to the Marcos millions?

Nick Davies
theguardian.com

In the early hours of a February morning in 1986, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos flew into exile. …  In the two C-141 transport planes that carried them, they had packed: 23 wooden crates; 12 suitcases and bags, and various boxes, whose contents included enough clothes to fill 67 racks; 413 pieces of jewellery, including 70 pairs of jewel-studded cufflinks; an ivory statue of the infant Jesus with a silver mantle and a diamond necklace; 24 gold bricks, inscribed “To my husband on our 24th anniversary”; and more than 27m Philippine pesos in freshly-printed notes. The total value was $15m.

This was a fortune by any standards, easily enough to see the couple through the rest of their lives. Yet the new government of the Philippines knew this was only a very small part of the Marcoses’ wealth. The reality, they discovered, was that Ferdinand Marcos had amassed a fortune up to 650 times greater. According to a subsequent estimate by the Philippine supreme court, he had accumulated up to $10bn while in office.

Since his official salary had never risen above $13,500 a year, it was blazingly clear this was stolen wealth on the most spectacular scale.

Read on…

fretting over marcos burial

while fretting (and getting a headache) over news of preparations to bury marcos sa libingan ng mga bayani this coming september, i checked out my blog archives and found this post of june 2011, burying marcos, when president aquino reportedly sent vp binay to ilocos to settle once and for all the matter of the former dictator’s burial.  and this, escudero, marcos, libingan ng mga bayani, of september 2015, when vp-wannabe chiz proved very much the son of a marcos man.  ito muna.

The Bong is Wrong

Marian Pastor Roces

The Marcos spawn was germinated between despots and suckled on the teats of tyranny.

Hyperbole?

Impossible to overstate Martial Law and the cruelties it has visited on the country. Not the least, 30 years after the lupusman’s fall, his son the Bong can still deploy stolen wealth to hoodwink the gullible.

The fat purses for hacks and sycophants, the expensive operations of spin on the body politic, the studied pooh-poohing of outrage, the rewards for opportunists, the sustainability of corruption, the social acceptance of thieves, the subversion of democratic debate by incendiaries deliberately lobbed onto the platforms, the wholesale revision of history (the liberties taken with facts), the pillage of all sense of decency — this is still the aftermath of Martial Law; its continuing radioactivity.

So, too, is it MartialLawAfterlife, for the Bong to think we are all fools. It is a tenacious culture produced by Martial Law that will consign all Filipinos to the hell of Marcosian recuperation via the sheer power of money and a vast reservoir of callousness.

But the Bong is wrong to imagine he can have his way with us. He is wrong to think that 5-some years of paying for and cranking up sleek revisionist history targeting the youth will hand him an entire generation of zombies. He is wrong to think that my children, who are bright and passionate about the Philippines, are his to stand on en route to Malacanang. While true, the capital invested in his comms juggernaut has paid off in enough kids mouthing fairy tales about some weird 1972 – 1986 Camelot, I am certain that the computations of the Bong’s magicians are off. And my certitude is not based on wishful thinking.

The Bong is wrong, too, to think that Martial Law torture victims, grassroots orgs with 4 or 5 decade long histories, advocates of democratic process, and just-citizens, like myself, who have cultivated a refined sense of indignation, wield no political clout; can be taken out of the election math. The Bong’s campaign appears to be built entirely of cynical calculation, which cannot possibly account for the power of the right side of history.

It is also miscalculation to equate the failures of the Philippine presidents since 1986 to the horrors of Martial Law. This is disingenuousness on a monster scale: to foist on the citizenry a bizarre moral vacuum, where all error and success have similar therefore non-value. And he spices up this hogwash with the similarly spurious assertion that things have remained the same; have gotten worse; have made Martial Law, in hindsight, a bit of heaven on earth

The Bong miscalculates our capacity, as a people, to endure the indignity of spin. He thinks he can slather us in shit ideas like political and economic degeneration in the past 30 years; and slide on our carcasses onto Marcosian resurrection, He misjudges our minds, sharpened by 30 years of struggling to correct the damage wrought by Martial Law on our political, economic and cultural systems; and our hearts, made robust by 30 years of exercising people-powered democracy.

People power, I agree, has been diminished by its branding as a middle class conceit. People power, however, is a cultural and political truth bigger than the middle class abilities to articulate and grasp; and bigger than any presidency, Aquino’s included, can “harness.” The majority of Filipinos, no matter how poor, have a real taste and capacity for democratic action, and this proclivity has so developed in the last decades that authoritarianism is not an option. Merely catching a whiff of Martial Law odium around the dictator’s namesake is enough to trigger a recoil.

Neither is it viable, his snake-oll salesmanship of prosperity under the shadow of centralized governance. The vision will not move Filipinos, at this point in time, who have tasted the sweet success of their self-empowerment. Indeed the culture of self-empowerment that was born under the fatal threats imposed by Martial Law is now in the cusp of full maturity.

The Bong spits on our democratic achievements to try to restore shine to his name and slick-slide his clamber to the top. He has become the smooth operator he was honed to be within the incubator that was Martial Law. He is as much a Frankensteinian creature of that unlamented regime, as are all recent exercises of impunity, whomever were the perpetrators. They are all Marcosian children. But the Bong, in particular, in his inability to recognize the Philippines of today — a nation now built on the mantra of self-empowerment, a nation so comfortable with its decentralizing systems that it will be hard put to revert to autocracy — he exhibits his own lack of credentials for the job he seeks.

The Bong is wrong to think the Filipinos haven’t, in fact, moved on.