Victims of martial law and activist groups will picket the vice presidential debate today at the University of Santo Tomas to reiterate the “sins” of candidate Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who continues to defend his father’s dictatorial rule “at the expense of historical truth and justice.”
The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang (Carmma) also hopes the debate will zero in “not only on historical revisionism, but more so on each one’s participation and accountability in the perpetuation of martial law and economic plunder.”
Carmma convenor Bonifacio Ilagan noted that all the vice presidential candidates were at least “of age” during martial law.
“All did something or nothing in relation to it. Marcos Jr. is going to come out the most culpable,” Ilagan told the Inquirer.
He described Marcos Jr. as a “swindler who styles himself as the proponent of our bright future without acknowledging that he came and profited much from one of the darkest and most evil chapters in Philippine history.”
Peddling the lie
Marcos Jr. “arrogantly peddles the lie” that the wealth of his father, former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, is legitimate when the Supreme Court in 2003 defined the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth as that which is in excess of their total legal income of $304,000 from 1965 to 1986, Carmma said.
The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has so far recovered $4 billion of the $10-billion fortune believed amassed by the Marcoses.
The group noted that Marcos Jr. also has not explained his purported allocation of P100 million to bogus nongovernment organizations set up by alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.
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