Does presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. have any respect for the courts of the land? Over the years, the Supreme Court has rendered decisions confirming that the Marcos family had amassed wealth way beyond their legitimate means of earning it and ordered the same forfeited in favor of the government as ill-gotten.
Has Marcos Jr. made good those judicial orders or cooperated with the government to recover all that wealth—if the “sins” were truly his father’s alone? To this day, he and his family have denied the existence of all that ill-gotten wealth. In other words, they have continued to say that what the Supreme Court had ruled upon were nothing but figments of its imagination! Yet, the really weird thing is, if they had nothing to hide, why were they spending obscene amounts of money to secure the best lawyers here and abroad to block all attempts to check their bank accounts, especially overseas?
Way back in September 2020, former chief justice Artemio Panganiban gave the public a lowdown on just some of the enormous wealth of the Marcoses found by the Supreme Court to be “ill-gotten”:
- $658 million (Republic v. Sandiganbayan, 2003)
- PLDT shares (Yuchengco v. Sandiganbayan, 2006)
- $3.37 million (Marcos Jr. v. Republic, 2012)
- collection of jewelry (Estate of Marcos v. Republic, 2017)
Given his and his family’s total lack of remorse for robbing the Filipinos blind during the years they were in power, how, in the name of God, could Marcos Jr. now have the gall to offer himself to do “public service” to the Filipino people as their president? This is definitely the sickest joke being foisted on all the decent citizens of this country.
MARITES DELA MERCED
mardelamerc@gmail.com