Forgiveness

For two decades it looked like the heirs of Ferdinand Marcos would take the secrets of their family’s massive wealth to their grave. This was to keep the dirty paws of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) off the assets, estimated at between $2 billion to $10 billion.

Now, curiously, the Marcos heirs are not only making public declarations of their assets but even staking legal claims to the wealth.

If they ever recover that vast fortune, the PCGG is mandated to pounce on it, claiming the wealth on behalf of Juan de la Cruz. But the Marcoses must know something we don’t, or they won’t bother staking a claim to assets that, if recovered, will go to the agrarian reform program as required by law.

Inevitably, suspicions boil down to two possibilities: either the Marcoses are sure of getting – and keeping – the assets they are after, or the administration has made them an offer in exchange for whatever assets are recovered, an offer so irresistible they can’t refuse.

Either way, it doesn’t look like the nation will ever find out how a president and his wife, whose combined legitimate income from 1965 to February 1986 was estimated by the Supreme Court to total only P2.3 million, could have amassed such a colossal fortune.

And whichever speculation turns out to be accurate, the message will be the same: in this country, people can get away with plunder and murder.

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It’s as if people power – the original one in 1986, not the second one in 2001 that many of the participants are now regretting – never happened.

Imelda Romualdez Marcos is singing again, though she never really stopped, crooning “New York, New York” on the US plane that brought her and her family plus their top crony to exile in Honolulu in 1986. At the height of her power, omitting Imelda’s maiden name in news reports was a mortal sin. She’s now hawking a line of costume jewelry, but she still occasionally flashes her collection of real jewelry with precious stones so huge their glitter is blinding.

The Marcos and Romualdez clans are not only fully rehabilitated, they are moving aggressively to get back the wealth that they claim belongs to them. And they are going about it with the air of sure winners.

What gives them that air is the subject of much speculation. Malacañang officials have repeatedly denied any secret deal between the government and the heirs of Ferdinand Marcos. But suspicions persist, because such a bold claim to enormous wealth can only succeed in this country with the support of those in power.

So far the Marcoses have openly staked a claim on substantial chunks of GMA-7 network shares held by the Duavit family, 60 percent of the assets of taipan Lucio Tan, and large tracts of prime real estate that include the Payanig sa Pasig.

Certain individuals close to those in power, including a tycoon rumored to have presidential ambitions, are also said to be interested in the assets of industrialist Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. and the Lopez clan.

At the rate the Marcoses are racking up court victories, Imelda Marcos’ promise to eradicate poverty in this country by giving every Filipino a share of her family’s vast wealth could turn out to be more than an idle boast.

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Hoi polloi like you and I can only watch the old and new cronies, the old rich and the nouveau riche, the same faces or at least the same surnames slug it out for control of 98 percent of the country’s wealth.

It is a country of short memories, a Christian country where people are forgiving to a fault.

When is the time to forgive? Twenty-one years is a long time; someone sent to prison for corruption in 1986 could have been eligible for parole by now.

The administration thinks Filipinos have forgiven the Marcoses, forgotten and moved on. President Arroyo has been photographed several times in the company of Imelda Marcos and her relatives. The administration openly courts the political support of the Marcoses in the Ilocos Region and the Romualdez clan in Leyte. Like Joseph Estrada, the Marcoses have retained a solid following – a precious asset when dealing with this administration.

It was not supposed to be this way. People power was supposed to lead to national cleansing. The battle cry of the post-EDSA 1 revolutionary government, which wielded absolute power with great reluctance, was justice first before reconciliation.

The aim was noble but something got lost in translation. After 20 years of Marcos, there was simply too much dirt to clean up; almost everyone had been tarnished in some way by the dictatorship. Resentment quickly replaced the euphoria of the revolution, and justice came to be associated with vindictiveness.

Six years later, the country had neither justice nor reconciliation. We failed to even identify beyond reasonable doubt the brains behind the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. The soldiers who are serving double life terms for the crime are insisting that the assassin was hired gun Rolando Galman, but they were too low in the military totem pole to know who ordered the hit.

With their full rehabilitation, the clans of Ferdinand and Imelda must be the role models of every venal politician and public servant in this country.

The lesson imparted by the past 21 years is that if you want to steal and kill in this country, you must steal big. Then you can get away with anything including murder.