Senate, House agree: PCGG, OGCC won’t be abolished

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the government agency tasked with recovering the ill-gotten wealth of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, lives to fight another day.

Meeting in conference on Monday, the Senate and the House of Representatives officially jettisoned the proposal dissolving the PCGG and the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) even as they approved the measure strengthening the Office of the Solicitor General.

“We did not approve the dissolution of the PCGG and the OGCC,” Sen. Richard Gordon, chair of the Senate justice committee, told reporters after presiding over the conference.

“The PCGG, despite the difficulties, has been able to attain its [mandate]. A substantial amount of [government] resources have been taken back from [the Marcoses] during the previous years,” he said.

According to Gordon, the PCGG recovered about P171 billion in public funds and assets believed to have been stolen by Marcos, his cronies and their families.

The PCGG estimated that the Marcos family pocketed as much as $10 billion before they were driven out of power through the Edsa People Power Revolt.

The decision of both chambers of Congress put an end to the efforts of some lawmakers, led by former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, to abolish the PCGG that critics claimed was part of historical revisionism to rehabilitate the image of the Marcoses.

PCGG Chair Reynold Munsayac thanked the legislators for not writing off the agency.

“The PCGG will faithfully continue the performance of its mandates,” Munsayac said in a text message to the Inquirer. —Marlon Ramos