The Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA) strongly opposes a second term for Imee Marcos at the Senate.
Imee Marcos, an unabashed apologist for her dictator-father, believes, contrary to historical fact, that martial law is a panacea to the country’s ills, including high rice prices. When confronted with martial law atrocities, however, she backtracks and claims that she was too young then and therefore blameless. In reality, she was an adult for 14 out of the 15 years of Marcos Sr.’s authoritarian rule and played an active part in deodorizing her father’s regime.
SELDA was organized in 1985 by former political prisoners who experienced first-hand the injustice of martial law. Even those arrested and detained after the Marcoses’ downfall in 1986 have been imprisoned for alleged violation of Republic Act No. 10591, or the law against illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, and/or Republic Act No. 9516 or the law against illegal possession of explosives.
Both of these laws have their origins in Presidential Decree 1866, a martial law-era decree that prescribed severe punishment, including the death penalty, for illegal possession of firearms and explosives (IPFE). Then and now, IPFE has served as the go-to charge for the military and police to unjustly arrest, detain or even kill activists extrajudicially after having planted evidence. The fact that more than 200 out of around 700 political prisoners are in jail for trumped-up IPFE charges forms part of the dark legacy of martial law that Imee Marcos is so proud of.
Imee Marcos benefited immensely from the kleptocracy that was martial law. For one, she is named in the titles to a number of upscale real estate properties known as the “Marcos mansions.” There have been about 50 of these mansions identified, built in different places in the Philippines using government funds, and allotted to members of the Marcos family and their cronies. The Supreme Court has ruled that these properties form part of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth.
Abroad, there is a 13-acre wooded estate bought by the Marcoses for Imee at a cost of US$825,000 while she was studying at Princeton University in the US. A US court had determined that the property had been purchased by the Marcoses using funds embezzled from the Philippine treasury.
These real estate properties obviously form only a small part of Imee Marcos’ profligate lifestyle made possible by her parents’ large-scale thievery.
SELDA is vigorously against a second Senate term for Imee Marcos because she is a living embodiment of the injustices and plunder that characterized martial law. SELDA calls on the public to reject Imee Marcos and their family of thieves.