“No to Bongbong Marcos as Vice President! No to another Marcos in Malacañang!”
This was the battlecry of a group of anti-martial law activists, Martial law victims and civil libertarians from all over the country gathered to push for the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacanang or CARMMA. They said “We say NO to Bongbong Marcos as vice-president—because he is not the guiltless son that he presents himself to be.
Senator Bongbong Marcos is running for Vice-president in the 2016 Presidential elections with fellow senator Mirriam Defensor-Santiago as his runningmate. Previous reports said that Anti-Marcos movements demanded the young Marcos to say sorry but Bongbong refused.
The gathering was led by Vice President Teofisto Guingona Jr., and former sanator Aquilino ‘Nene’ Pimentel and Rene Saguisag who is known a human rights activist during the martial law. National artist Jose ‘Pete’ Lacaba and director Joel Lamangan also joined the event.
Most of present in the event were the tortured victims during the regime of former president Ferdinand Marcos.
Here are his seven (7) sins of Bongbong Marcos as stated by CARMMA:
1. MARCOSES ILLEGITIMATE WEALTH.
“Sin No.1. Bongbong arrogantly peddles the lie that his father’s unbelievable wealth is legitimate.
“In 2003, however, the Supreme Court defined the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family as those in excess of their total legal income of around $304,000 only from 1965 to 1986.
“This belies the claim of Bongbong that the wealth of his father came from his alleged law practice.
“So far, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has managed to recover about $4 billion, less than half of the $10-billion fortune believed to have been amassed by the Marcoses through the years.
‘These included billions of pesos worth of deposits in Swiss banks, and shares in the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Manila Electric Co., and San Miguel Corporation, among many others.
2. ON BONGBONG’S QUESTIONABLE LIFESTYLE AND ELECTION FUND
‘Sin No.2. While the sins of the father may not be passed on to the son, the son could very well inherit the fruits of the legendary Marcos plunder, much of which has yet to be uncovered, and which Bongbong will never reveal and give back to the people.
‘Bongbong, for 30 years, has been a mere salaried government official.
‘How could the Marcos family live in style all these years?
‘Where is his election fund coming from?
3. BONGBONG’S ACTIVE PARTICIPATION DURING HIS FATHER’S DICTATORSHIP.
‘Sin No.3. Bongbong whitewashes the Marcos dictatorship’s crony capitalism, of which he had been a part.
‘In 1985, when he was 26 years old, his father appointed him chairman of the board of the Philippine Communications Satellite Corporation (Philcomsat), receiving a monthly salary of anywhere between $9,700 to $97,000.
‘This, despite that fact that he rarely went to the Philcomsat office.
‘In 1986, government auditors would discover that Philcomsat was one of the many corporations and organizations used to siphon ill-gotten wealth out of the country.
‘The economy bled to death in large measure due to behest loans granted by Ferdinand Sr. to his cronies who had little or no collateral. But these cronies were mere dummies of Marcos.
‘The biggest Marcos crony was his partner-in-crime, Imelda Romualdez, whose free rides in the Philippine Airlines made its debt balloon to $13.8 billion in 1986 before EDSA 1.
‘She was also the head of the Metro Manila Commission (precursor of the Metro Manila Development Authority), which, by the end of 1985, had accumulated debts of P1.99 billion (which included $100 million in foreign loans) in its 10 years of existence.
4. COVER-UP OF CORRUPTION DURING PRESIDENT MARCOS’S DICTATORSHIP.
‘Sin No. 4. Bongbong covers up the unprecedented plunder and economic sabotage that his father committed in the 21 years of his anti-people rule.
‘Under the Marcos dictatorship, the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line doubled from 18 million in 1965 to 35 million in February 1986.
‘The dictator also left behind a staggering foreign debt of $27 billion.
‘This belies the claim of Bongbong that Filipinos were better off under the Marcoses.
5. BONGBONG’S REFUSAL TO SAY SORRY TO VICTIMS OF MARTIAL LAW.
‘Sin No.5. Bongbong continues to defend and promote Martial Law when Filipinos suffered systematic, widespread, and state-sanctioned enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial executions.
‘At least 3,000 were killed and more than 30,000 were detained, brutally tortured, raped, or suffered various forms of abuse.
‘Bongbong even had the gall to dismiss the 9,539 human rights victims in the Hawaii class suit who won the case against the Marcos estate as purely motivated by compensation.
“’Pera-pera lang ang habol ng mga ‘yan,’ he said.
‘As a reserve officer in the Philippine Army, Bongbong wore the military combat uniform when his father was sworn into office at the balcony of Malacanang after the dictator rigged the 1986 snap presidential elections.
‘Bongbong upheld electoral fraud and was ready to defend the dictatorship by arms.
6. BONGBONG’S ‘GRAND SCHEME TO RECAPTURE MALACANANG.”
‘Sin No.6 At the expense of historical truth and justice, Bongbong now masterminds the Marcosian plot to foist upon our people the redemption of their ‘family honor’ and the perpetuation of the Marcos rule.
‘It is as if the Marcos family, who lived like royalty, were not shamed and repudiated by the people in 1986 after their reign of impunity and greed.
7. BONGBONG’S INVOLVEMENT IN PORK BARREL SCAM.
‘Sin No.7. Bongbong has not come out of clean in the billion-peso Napoles pork barrel scam.
‘He has a lot to explain about his allocation of P100 million for ghost non-government organizations of [alleged pork barrel scam mastermind] Janet Lim Napoles.’
Last year, Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos was slammed by netizens after gracing in the cover of Philippine Tatler Magazine for October 2015.
Meanwhile, The Sandiganbayan Second Division of the Philippine anti-graft court ordered the Marcoses and the Lim family that owns Taggat Industries to return all the properties claimed by government on Monday, January 4.
Source: PEP
Photo credits to Rappler