KARAPATAN and the Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA), an organization that led the efforts on the historic class suit against the dictator Marcos Sr. in Hawaii, strongly condemn the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the Sandiganbayan’s conviction of former First Lady Imelda Marcos on seven counts of graft.
Imelda Marcos did not spend a single day behind bars despite her conviction, and now, the Supreme Court has now overturned it, in a ruling that cited the prosecution’s failure to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt. It is as though the Filipino people did not witness how the Marcoses rose to power, accumulated vast wealth during the dictatorship, and held on to power in Malacañang for two decades.
Her acquittal is one of the gravest blows to the decades-long struggle for justice and accountability for the massive plunder attributed to the Marcos dictatorship. It spits in the face of the victims of human rights violations whose lives were robbed while the Marcoses lived an extravagant lifestyle.
This is how hollow justice can be in a country where those accused and convicted of plunder continue to evade accountability, while ordinary Filipinos are made to bear the cost of corruption and the big-time robbery of public funds. We are the ones made to pay, over and over again, for the lingering tyranny of the Marcoses—from the dictator father to the son in Malacañang.
We are enraged that the Marcos family is taking the rehabilitation of its name and legacy to its fullest extent under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Marcoses’ intent to keep the billions they stole during Marcos Sr.’s rule is now in full view. This Supreme Court ruling is yet another indication of how far that rehabilitation has come. From the outset of Marcos Jr.’s presidency, the Marcoses’ agenda was clear: to keep the wealth they had stolen and to systematically secure their exoneration from accountability before the country’s courts. The Marcoses continue to wield power, even in the highest court in the land, alongside the impunity, human rights violations, and plunder that have marked their rule.
We also cast doubt on the belated announcement of this ruling, which appears intended to quell the people’s clamor for accountability. We now clearly see why corruption cases have focused heavily on the administration’s political rivals, whom the administration itself has tolerated and with whom it has been in alliance with, as the administration continues to evade the larger question of the Marcos family’s history of plunder and of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s responsibility as the sitting president amid massive corruption allegations involving government infrastructure projects.
The Marcos family’s return to power did not erase its history. Neither this ruling nor efforts to distort or revise the historical record can erase the suffering of martial law victims or the continuing struggle to recover all of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth.
We call on the Filipino people not to allow such brazen rehabilitation of the Marcoses to erase the crimes of the dictatorship or cover up the plunder of public funds under the current Marcos Jr. regime.
As we take to the streets on September 21, we shall express our strongest conviction that Imelda Marcos, the deceased dictator father, all the way to the seated son, may have gotten away in the courts—but we will never forget, and will again and again throw them in the dustbin of history.
Imelda Marcos, ikulong!
Marcos, mga magnanakaw!
Nakaw na yaman, ibalik sa bayan!