You know you are getting old when you drive into a religious novitiate and care more about the men and women in the cemetery than the present novices. I realized this as we drove into the Jesuits’ Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches one day.
I continue to receive lawyer-bashing e-mails agreeing with the scathing but not untruthful editorial “Lawyer-dominated society” (Inquirer, 3/23/13). No note has been taken of the following portion in that scathing piece: “…The Marcos dictatorship deglamorized the lawyers by idealizing the technocratic state, elevating an elite of number-crunchers backed by a corps of military bone-crushers. And that is why the heroes of the mainstream anti-Marcos movement were the human rights lawyers of the old FLAG and Mabini. Today, that poetic image of lawyering continues to inspire.”
The Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 is indeed a milestone. President Aquino, legislators and rights abuse victims are right to celebrate it.
On Jan. 28, the Philippine Congress passed the landmark law on the reparation and recognition of victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime. President Aquino brought the “Compensation Act” into force by signing it on Feb. 25. Its passage reflects the high importance the Philippine government is devoting to the promotion and [...]
The signing of Republic Act No. 10368 or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013 by President Aquino is a welcome relic for the 27th commemoration of the fascist dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ ouster from power. This legislation is a piece for jubilation though not necessarily a gust of fresh air.
I read Inquirer’s banner story “Hunt for Marcos loot goes on” (Inquirer, 1/3/13). I was a little bit dismayed for I was looking forward to see a headline “Hunt for mastermind of Ninoy Aquino’s killers goes on.”
I bring to mind Ninoy’s horrible assassination because there is still a lot of time to look for the mastermind.
The government has been at pains to defend Andres Bautista’s proposal to scrap the Presidential Commission on Good Government, and for good reason. Bautista, head of the PCGG, made his proposal known on New Year’s Day. The hunt for the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth, he said, would now go to the justice department.
ALL ADMINISTRATIONS since Cory Aquino, unlike those in other countries, did not have a strong resolve and missed the historic chance to clean up the mess of autocracy and kleptocracy. Letting the Marcoses get away with plunder and corruption and other political-economic transgressions against the Filipino people would be a monumental error that would reverse the gains of People Power and destroy what little faith we have left in this democracy. It is a virtual indictment of our supposed democracy that our institutions, with all their vast powers, have to bow down to and crumble before private, self-aggrandizing interests of the remorseless greedy who wield immense wealth and influence.
THE FIRST official act of the first Aquino administration was to create a special government agency to run after the Marcoses’ vast hidden wealth. Out of the black letter of Executive Order No. 1, dated Feb. 25, 1986, the Presidential Commission on Good Government emerged. Twenty-seven years and a lengthy if checkered track record later, is it time for the PCGG to close shop, under a second Aquino administration?
“THEY DIDN’T only hoard shoes,” Daily Telegraph culture editor Martin Chilton wrote. “Former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and wife Imelda amassed an art collection, paid for with stolen funds.” Today, 146 masterpieces—including works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Rembrandt, Cezanne, Magritte and Brueghel the Younger—are missing.
Twenty-six years after Edsa I, the fabled treasure hoard of the late Ferdinand Marcos continues to dazzle and intrigue. During his 20 years in power, the strongman and his wife Imelda, as well as a number of their cronies, were believed to have moved billions of dollars of public funds to bank accounts and investments in Switzerland, the United States and other countries. So much wealth was taken from the country that no precise amount of the loot has been given to this day. And very little has been recovered so far.
WE WILL not find them in the cemeteries—because they do not know where their dead are buried, or whether their long-missing loved ones are in fact dead. Today and tomorrow, as most of the nation slows down to remember the dearly departed, several hundreds of Filipino families will find themselves yet again confronting the agony [...]
