Ay Carranza!  

For fun, I sometimes scroll through the social media posts of former PCGG commissioner and now NYU Law professor Ruben Carranza.

I shouldn’t label the entire treasure trove of facts and historical nuggets offered up by Carranza as “fun”. They can be quite sad or even distressing, especially when he details the amount of wealth spirited away by the Marco family. Those can be depressing.

He also reminds us of the construction workers left underneath that grandiose building meant for international image-making. Those buried alive so the construction timetable could be kept. He also recalls the unfortunate sexagenarian who stole food worth ?20 out of hunger and was jailed three years. Those stories can be real depressing. But necessary.

What Carranza marshals to prove his point, together with court documents or testimony, or even past Supreme Court decisions, is always awe inspiring. That he is in command of these datapoints, some occurring 40 or 50 years ago is a marvel. That just shows you how sharp he remains. I can’t even remember my cases ten years ago.

Back to fun. Take what he terms the “Imee List”. This was a 22-page list of companies and stock certificates that Imee Marcos prepared, listing down what her father “owned”, together with the names of the stockholders that had endorsed the shares of those companies. The Imee List provides a glimpse of the movers and shakers in Philippine business who had signed over their ownership of those stock.

In a partial reveal offered by Carranza together with journalist Marites Vitug, we see in the Imee List names like Ricardo Silverio and Eduardo Cojuangco. We see companies still existing now, such as Manila Bulletin and First Philippine Holdings (which I assume to be the holding company of the Lopezes).

According to Rolando Gapud’s affidavit, Imee wanted to “talk” to the “partners” of her father so she could collect the documents of ownership from them. And the takeaway of Carranza is that if Imee’s brother, presidential candidate Bongbong wins the election, those partners (or perhaps, cronies) are going to hear knocks on their door.

That’s fun to imagine! It would be payback time for those cronies who disappeared with the properties entrusted to them. Like 60% of the wealth owned by tycoon Lucio Tan, which Bongbong Marcos is claiming in court was simply held by Lucio for Marcos Sr. After enjoying all that illicit wealth made illicit twice over, it would now be time to make good on the transfer of ownership!

I stress, I’m just imagining this for fun. If this scenario became reality though, it wouldn’t be so much fun. The Marcos family back in the seat of power? Only the cronies and the apologists would be having fun. And the family members of course.

What is even more hilarious is how Carranza disposes of internet trolls. There is always a witty comeback to a dogged Marcos loyalist that is good for a laugh. But how he can find the energy to respond to multiple attackers is beyond me. It’s so enervating to just think of people who keep bugging you just to try to prove you wrong.

And they may not even be real people, just fronts used by troll farms. Why bother responding to those? And reading their comments, if they are real people, it seems they aren’t prepared to listen, or to gain genuine knowledge, or to be convinced otherwise. They just want to attack.

They ask, “where is the court decision that convicted the Marcos family of stealing public funds?” They argue, “Marcos was never convicted of embezzlement or fraud”. They insult and demean. And time and again, Carranza shows the data and the facts and the history that should, and does, shed light on their dim view of history. If only they ended up convinced.

Well, I’m convinced. And I’m having fun too.