Ex-political detainee slams Marcos’ plan to recover ill-gotten wealth
LUCENA CITY — A former political prisoner during martial law said on May 10 that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s latest attempt to distort history is merely a smokescreen to hide the family’s plan to recover their ill-gotten wealth.
In a statement, Judy Taguiwalo, co-convenor of the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (Carmma), rebuked Marcos Jr. for trying to downplay the dictatorial rule of his overthrown father by asserting that Filipinos are more interested in the present than the past.
She said it was Marcos Jr.’s “latest attempt to lull the Filipino people into collective amnesia about his family’s sordid history.”
Taguiwalo spent over three years in various prisons to resist the Marcos dictatorship.
In a recent interview after his recent US visit, the president dismissed criticism that his campaign played down the corruption and extravagance the Marcos family was known for during his father’s rule.
He blamed the political opposition for always digging up the old issue to malign his family.
“But of course, we answer to the voting public, and the voting public has given an [obvious] and loud response to that and said that they are not worried,” he said.
“A fractured society that continues to fight battles that are 45 years old is selling itself short because it’s the future that we’re worried about, not the past,” he added.
But for Taguiwalo, a former social welfare secretary during the Duterte administration, the president’s “glossing over of history is actually a smokescreen.”
“What lies behind is his family’s frenetic bid to recover and consolidate their ill-gotten wealth … With this goal in mind, we can expect Marcos Jr. to flex his power as president and bend future rulings in his family’s favor,” she warned.
Taguiwalo refers to the Sandiganbayan-Fourth Division ruling on May 4, which again denied the attempt of former first lady Imelda Marcos and his sister Irene Marcos-Araneta to recover more than 20 properties and assets sequestered from their family.
The Marcoses tried to recover the assets obtained by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) after the end of the rule of the family patriarch, former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., as the Sandiganbayan previously dismissed the civil case in December 2019.
However, the Sandiganbayan, on January 25, denied the Marcoses’ bid to recover 23 assets and has now declined their motion for reconsideration for lack of merit again.
PCGG filed Civil Case No. 002 against the heirs of former President Marcos to recover at least P200 billion allegedly plundered by the late strongman during his two-decade rule.
On top of the P200 billion sought by the PCGG for actual damages, the commission also sought P50 billion in moral damages and P250 million as compensation for expenses incurred in the recovery process.
From the supposed ill-gotten wealth, P976 million was deposited at the Security Bank and Trust Company and another P711 million at the Traders Royal Bank.
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