EDITORIAL - Unresolved cases

How long does it take to settle ownership disputes in this country? Two decades is not enough. Since the 1986 people power revolt, several companies or corporate shares have been under sequestration on suspicion that they are part of the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their cronies. A transitory provision in the 1987 Constitution allowed the sequestration or freeze orders to be in effect for no more than 18 months after the ratification of the Charter, although it authorized Congress to extend the period upon the certification of the President.

The extension has been indefinite. Eighteen years after the ratification of the Constitution, ownership claims over sequestered assets remain locked in litigation. The Presidential Commission on Good Government, which should have bowed out of existence years ago, is still around and has just had a new chairman and commissioner. Board seats in sequestered companies have become sinecures dispensed as political favors by whoever is in power. As a result, sequestered assets are badly managed, with some rare exceptions.

The hunt for ill-gotten wealth scored a major victory in the recovery of Marcos deposits in Swiss banks. Since then the hunt has stalled, even as the judicial system has failed to make any of the Marcos heirs account for stolen wealth. Nearly two decades after the creation of the PCGG, the nation does not seem to be any closer to establishing the ownership of sequestered assets. The wheels of justice move at a glacial pace. Anyone who may be liable for acquiring wealth illegally may be dead before final resolution is reached.

Meanwhile, taxpayers continue spending for the upkeep of a commission whose main job seems to be the maintenance of the status quo; the job security of its rank and file depends on keeping sequestered assets in limbo. The message in the unresolved sequestration cases is that people can get away with plunder in this country. The arm of the law has a short reach, and this can only encourage more looting of public coffers.