Twenty-seven years after a public revolt ousted her dictator husband, Imelda Marcos is the Philippines’ ultimate political survivor: She dazzled voters with her bouffant hairstyle, oversized jewelry and big talk on the campaign trail this week bidding to keep her seat in Congress.
It is close to midnight and Imelda Marcos is dancing in a trademark pink butterfly gown at a small town fiesta with adoring voters who still revere her dead dictator husband.
The political landscape in Ilocos Norte is no stranger to wrangling between members of a political clan or to a circus of former allies becoming fierce enemies.
Former First Lady Imelda Marcos’ jewelry from the so-called Hawaii collection and the contested 18.5-hectare prime commercial property Payanig sa Pasig are among the P18.2 billion worth of recovered ill-gotten assets of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos that the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) plans to sell within the next two years.
Generations of artisans have made a living out of the chisel in this town that carries the tool in its name. And the symphony of gouges carving faces and hands, shaping wood into laments or smiles, becomes ever more vibrant in months like these, when Catholics turn to the town’s shops to find pieces of art that symbolize their faith.
Senators praised President Benigno Aquino III for signing the Human Rights Victim Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 on the 27th anniversary of the Edsa People Power Revolution.
When the phone rang one day in May 1979, he was not to know that he would be caught in one of the most tumultuous chapters in Philippine history.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s claim in his autobiography that he was ambushed in Wack-Wack Subdivision in Mandaluyong City on Sept. 22, 1972, “defies logic,” according to the former Philippine Constabulary general who investigated Ferdinand Marcos’ justification for placing the Philippines under martial law.
Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. shrugged off questions by reporters on Tuesday about the bill that seeks to compensate victims of abuses under his father’s martial law regime with funds from the P10 billion recovered from ill-gotten wealth the family had allegedly stashed away in banks in Switzerland.
So the nation will remember not to forget, a bill that recognizes for the first time that the Marcos dictatorship committed atrocities against Filipinos also mandates the teaching in schools of the abuses inflicted on its opponents and the heroism of those who fought the regime.
Almost four decades after he was arrested and tortured and his sister disappeared into a maze of Philippine police cells and military houses, playwright Bonifacio Ilagan is finally seeing his suffering officially recognized.
The House of Representatives on Monday ratified the bicameral conference committee report on the on human rights compensation bill for martial law victims.
A quarter century after the ouster of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the government will officially hold accountable his martial law regime for human rights abuses and its victims compensated for their sufferings.
