There is a post going around in Viber which features a column in the Manila Bulletin by former Vice-President Salvador Laurel dated July 14, 1998 — some 23 years ago.
The column was called “Turning Point” and the title of that day’s piece was, “A dying Marcos wanted to settle nine years ago.” By “nine years ago,” Mr. Laurel referred to an event that purportedly happened from Feb. 2 to 4, 1989 in Manila and Hawaii. The column appeared to have been posted on Viber by “#The Selfie Patriot.”
In his column, the former Vice-President claimed that “at this time nine years ago, a dying (Ferdinand) Marcos personally asked me to convey to then President Cory Aquino a 90-10 settlement in favor of government, but Mrs. Aquino would not hear of it.”
As the former Vice-President narrates it, “on Feb. 2, 1989, at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. I was at home when an urgent call came from Honolulu. I was surprised to hear Imelda Romualdez Marcos on the other line. She was sobbing, ‘Doy, gusto kang kausapin ni Ferdinand! Mayroon siyang gustong sabihin sa iyo! Masama na ang kanyang tayo! (Doy, Ferdinand wants to meet you. He has something to tell you. He’s not in good health) Please come right away!’ she pleaded.”
Mr. Laurel left for Honolulu on Feb. 3. Upon arrival in Hawaii, Laurel reported he went to the Intensive Care Unit of the St. Francis Hospital. After describing the physical state of Marcos, the former Vice-President wrote that Marcos said, “Tell her (President Corazon Aquino), ‘I am willing to turn over 90% of all my earthly possessions to the Filipino people. Only 10% will go to my family. I have already created a foundation for this. Enrique Zobel has all the papers. All I ask is that I be allowed to die in my own country… I returned to Manila the next day, Feb. 4, and immediately sought an appointment with President Aquino to convey the offer of the dying Marcos.”
Mr. Laurel wrote President Aquino and asked to meet her to relay Marcos’s offer. According to Laurel, President Aquino refused to meet him.
I had read that same account many years ago. I discussed that visit of former Vice-President Laurel to Marcos with mainly columnist-friends who said they had “scoops” of that visit. Mr. Laurel’s relationship with President Aquino somehow soured several months after taking his oath as Vice-President at Club Filipino on Feb. 25, 1986. Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency of the revolutionary government also on the same day.
Vice-President Laurel was later appointed by President Aquino Secretary of Foreign Affairs, a post from which he resigned in September 1987. A month earlier, August, military rebels unsuccessfully staged a coup but at the cost of many lives. Other military elements tried to seize power by taking over the main Manila airport and the television network, GMA. Early into President Aquino’s term, soldiers and civilians led by former Senator Arturo Tolentino by occupied the historic Manila Hotel under the direction of Marcos by remote control from Hawaii.
The Viber post and the supposed offer of Marcos to “turn over of 90% of all my earthly possessions to the Filipino people; only 10% will go to my family,” aroused my research instincts and led me to Bloomberg.com. The website had an article with a fascinating title, “Where did Marcos hide his $10 billion fortune?” The well-researched article was written by Andreo Calonzo.
The moment I saw the title, Marcos’s proposed settlement crossed my mind: 90% of $10 billion is $9 billion “for the Filipino people” and 10% of $10 billion “for my family” amounts to about P50 billion.
What was intended to go to the family should be compared with the proposed Department of Health (DoH) budget of P73.99 billion for COVID-19 response for 2022.
Calonzo narrates the work done by lawyers Sherry Border, based in Hawaii, and Robert Swift, a Philadelphia lawyer. Swift who had traveled to the Philippines at least 40 times to represent relatives of human rights abuses during the Marcos regime, developed an interest in the Philippines as he watched the EDSA People Power Revolution unfold before him on prime-time news together with millions of people all over the world.
Together with Broder, Swift was able to get a US court to award about $100 million to relatives of human rights victims during the 14 years of Martial rule that formally ended on Feb. 25, 1986.
The court-instigated award was funded by the sale of Marcos properties (in Hawaii, New York, and Texas) and art pieces, some of which were in the custody of prominent Filipino families who willingly served as Marcos’ property and art work “custodians.” Imelda eventually accused one of these keepers of trying to “steal a property” in Texas that belonged to her. Imelda complained to a Texas businessman that this keeper hadn’t turned over to her the papers of the property.
Etta Rosales, herself a human right victim and activist, a former party-list congressman representing Akbayan, and chair of the Commission on Human Rights from 2011 to 2015, cites the tremendous work done by Broder and Swift especially in the light of competition offered by the government’s Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) in recovering ill-gotten wealth.
Rosales said that before her release from detention during martial law — during which she was suffocated and electrocuted — she warned a military officer that the Marcos camp would lose in the long run. Calonzo quotes Rosales, “I told them: I am going to win because we are on the side of justice and truth.”
Ruben Carranza, former PCGG commissioner who now works for the International Center for Transnational Justice, a human rights non-profit, points out that the Marcoses were never held directly accountable for the human rights violations they committed in any sort of legal proceedings in the Philippines, making it easier to whitewash their family’s history, writes Calonzo.
As of this point, Broder and Swift aim to recover more of Marcos assets, including a $2-million deposit Ferdinand Marcos made in 1972 in a Merrill Lynch account owned by Arelma, Inc., a Panamanian shell company set up on his behalf “at the same time he was declaring Martial Law,” according to Swift.
So far, a US court has awarded about $100 million to victims of human rights abuses while the Philippine government, through legislation sponsored by Rosales, awarded victims about $150 million or a total of $250 million or about P12.5 billion to more than 11,000 victims. The government award was administered by the Human Rights Violations Compensation Board, once headed by PNP General Lina Sarmiento, now with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
The Bloomberg article says “the immediate trigger (for People Power) was Marcos’s victory in a seemingly fixed election, but the ire was much deeper. In the 1970s, Marcos had led a military government of uncommon brutality, disbanding congress, silencing media and using the army to torture and kill thousands of citizens.”
The people know better. Never again.
Philip Ella Juico’s areas of interest include the protection and promotion of democracy, free markets, sustainable development, social responsibility and sports as a tool for social development. He obtained his doctorate in business at De La Salle University. Dr. Juico served as Secretary of Agrarian Reform during the Corazon C. Aquino administration.