as if the omicron surge and the duterte government’s care-less response weren’t bad enough, we have to deal with a marcos jr. running for president…
one who brings back awful memories of martial law, the conjugal dictatorship, the greatest robbery of a government, the murder of ninoy aquino…
one who faces disqualification cases filed by civil society groups on grounds of income tax evasion and moral turpitude that the COMELEC is taking its sweet time deciding.
not surprisingly there’s talk of “insider” info that the COMELEC, whose seven commissioners are duterte appointees, is “not inclined to disqualify the client of legendary solicitor general Estelito Mendoza of the elder Marcos.”
raissa robles is right. “The Marcoses never really left home” (Inquirer 2014).
In 1998, by Imee Marcos’ own reckoning, “we waited 12 years to be on the right side of the fence.” Right side meant a political alliance with then victorious President-elect Joseph Estrada, velvet seats in Congress for Imee and her mother, and a governorship for Bongbong.
An ecstatic Imee spilled the family’s secret to success: “Many professionals were appointed by my father. So you have this immense bedrock of Marcos appointees who keep moving up.”
Like secret stay-behind units, this vast army of professionals scattered in all sectors of society have defended the Marcoses and helped erase the dark legacy of their regime.
it’s like ferdinand marcos laid a cruel curse on the nation that the children are happily carrying on in his name, in his memory, with the eager support of a “bedrock” of grateful and beholden loyalists, bureaucrats and professionals from all sectors, who held the fort while they were away, and who have since moved up to real positions of power.
maybe this explains why the court of appeals dropped the jail sentence in marcos jr’s appeal of the RTC decision vis a vis his failure to file income tax returns for four years?
and maybe why COMELEC’s 2nd division ruled against canceling his COC despite the NO to question #22 because the respondent daw “cannot be said to have deliberately attempted to mislead, misinform, or hide a fact which would otherwise render him ineligible” ?!?
really ?!? as in, he didn’t mean to lie? is that like saying it was an honest mistake?
but is there anything honest about marcos jr. who has lied again and again about historical facts vis a vis martial law and his parents’ plundering ways, human rights violations and EDSA ’86?
and isn’t the fact that he took 4 years to follow the court of appeal’s order to pay up an indication of moral turpitude — a demonstration of arrogance, as though he were above the law? isn’t that of a piece with the supreme court’s 2016 definition of moral turpitude in G.R. No. 219603?
Moral turpitude is defined as everything which is done contrary to justice, modesty, or good morals; an act of baseness, vileness or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes his fellowmen, or to society in general. Although not every criminal act involves moral turpitude, the Court is guided by one of the general rules that crimes mala in se involve moral turpitude while crimes mala prohibita do not. G.R. No. 219603
mala in se are acts wrongful in itself. mala prohibita are acts that are not inherently evil or wrong.
i submit that tax evasion and lying about having been convicted are inherently wrong — no ifs or buts, no benefit of any doubt — and the liar and tax evader marcos jr. should be disqualified.
here’s praying the COMELEC en banc — or failing there, the supreme court — sees the light and disqualifies marcos jr. once and for all time.
otherwise these institutions would be complicit in perpetuating, keeping alive, the marcos curse on nation, and history and posterity will judge them harshly for betrayal of public trust.
RAUL FABELLA. By PD 1994, Section 286, the law applying at that time of the tax evasion and by the uncontested facts of the case alone, rule of law demands that BBM is “perpetually disqualified from holding any public office, voting or participating in any election.” Legal snares will be hoisted by legal eagles to confuse and suggest otherwise. But BBM’s eligibility can be legalized only by a subversion of the rule-of-law. Other considerations such as the certificates of candidacy misrepresentation, moral turpitude, or non-payment of fines may be made to additionally bear but their necessity is secondary.
Due process is one of the cornerstones of the rule-of-law, but it is its diseased variant, the “dupe process” as it were, that in the Philippines repeatedly delivers the rule of men in the guise of the rule-of-law. Is it even conceivable that Commission on Elections and/or the Supreme Court will in this case uphold the rule-of-law? That will be a massive surprise and a welcome one as rare as such a courageous upholding of the rule-of-law which will signal a national rebirth. It will reverse somewhat what the newly departed National Artist and Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, F. Sionil Jose, identifies as one of the maladies that keep us shackled as a nation: “This is what ails us all — we do not ostracize them, we do not punish them — no we anoint these vermin instead.”
If they don’t, we continue our commerce with vermin and once more the prosperity of the Filipino is the casualty. The stakes cannot be higher.
“BBM’s eligibility, the rule of law and economic catch-up” by Raul Fabella
https://www.bworldonline.com/bbms-eligibility-the-rule-of-law-and-economic-catch-up/