Not all was light and hope in the last elections, there was a dark side to them. Agence France-Presse pointed it out last week. The elections also produced a “rogues’ gallery” of winners. Those rogues are:
First off, my monumental thanks to WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange remains cooped up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, unable to set foot outside its gates. In a week’s time, it has given today’s generation a better glimpse of martial law than Juan Ponce Enrile’s not very entertaining fiction about it.
The Year 2012 is now almost out the door. Was it an undiluted “Annus Horribilis” or “Year of Horrors”? Queen Elizabeth II dusted off that phrase in a 1992 address. Fire had gutted parts of Windsor Palace, and family scandals were capped by the Prince of Wales separating from Princess Diana.
“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.
IT COULDN’T have come at a better time—that is, the decision of a US Court of Appeals to cite the Marcoses for contempt for their contemptuous attitude toward an earlier judgment forbidding them from dissipating their assets. Imelda and Bongbong were found to have been trying to repatriate precious artworks, deemed part of the Marcos [...]
Termites, mold and typhoons have been blamed for the rot that reportedly damaged some 150 boxes of clothes, shoes and other personal effects of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos that were recently rediscovered at the National Museum. The stuff was left behind by the Marcoses when they hastily fled Malacañang in February 1986 at the height of the Edsa People Power Revolt, transferred two years ago to an unused, padlocked hall in the museum, and left there untouched. Not until the room was flooded by recent monsoon rains through a leak in the ceiling was the stash brought to light by shocked, apparently clueless employees.
On the front page of the Inquirer yesterday, there is a fascinating photograph of the main personalities who came to the launch of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s memoirs. This picture is worth a thousand words. It shows four seated figures: Imelda Marcos, Cristina Ponce Enrile, Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE), and Benigno S. Aquino III (P-Noy), and is captioned “No permanent friends, only permanent interests.” I think one would have to be of a certain age or to know a little about Philippine politics to draw that message from the picture itself.
(I made these remarks last Friday at the launch of “Not On Our Watch,” a book about the experiences of members of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines during martial law. I wrote the introduction to the book. Something to reflect on the 40th anniversary of martial law by. That falls on Sept. 21.)
Presidential Commission on Good Government chair Andres Bautista proposes that the Department of Tourism turn Imelda Marcos’ jewels into a tourist attraction. Might as well make money off them, he says, until they are auctioned off.
I am still grieving over the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona, and the appointment of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno did not lessen my sadness. Not until I learned that our new Chief Justice’s birthday is the same as that of our former First Lady Imelda Marcos.
The Inquirer column “Cozy amnesia” (Viewpoint, 8/21/12) gives the names of two people still alive who, according to San Francisco columnist Rodel Rodis, “know all too well who ordered the hit on Ninoy [Aquino].” But writes historian-economist Benito Legarda Jr.: “They are unlikely to tell, and for all anyone knows, one of them could be it. [But] is there any possibility of recalling those who declined to testify—from the airport mechanic to [Rolando] Galman’s stepdaughter?
