Bongbong and the Marcos legacy of impunity

The real test of how seriously we want to reform our country will come when Bongbong Marcos runs for president in 2016. For the moment he is quiet but he is gathering the best people he can to run his campaign. (We can keep our eyes open on those being recruited and identify them).

 The strategy is to lull Filipino voters into believing that it is impossible for the Marcoses to make a comeback and it is being done stealthily and shrewdly. Yes, my friends it is the Filipino people vs. the impunity of corrupt politics that has been the bane of our continuous poverty and the backwardness of our nation.

The Binay-Roxas intramurals is prelude to the real battle between two possible third forces -— the return of the Marcoses or the triumph of Bayanko upholding the people’s sovereignty. Speculation on weaker candidates like Grace Poe et al is a diversion but it will lead the same debacle.

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Many times I have thought just why this impunity persists and continues unabated depriving us of better lives and a well-run country.  There are many but the most crucial is this: up to today, the Marcoses remain unpunished and the hidden millions from graft and corruption are largely unrecovered. The question is why? The answer is we don’t care if we continue with this system of injustice because we think it does not matter in the pursuit of change and reforms. This is a false presumption and the sooner we get over it the better our chances for a great nation commensurate to our potential.

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Imelda Marcos has not concealed her desire to see her son become president. My own interpretation is this: it is still a continuation of the “The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos” with Imelda driving her only son now to re-acquire the power to be able to get hold of the millions still hidden in secret bank accounts.

On the death of my primary witness, Loreto Romualdez Ramos about the history of the Romualdez family and how Imelda became the family’s poor relation, I met Imelda at close range.

She invited me to her flat in her condo in Fort Bonifacio. When I have had occasion to speak to her, I have made it a point to tell her that The Untold Story is her story as told by other people. Still she had her story and that remains to be told if she wanted to.

But she was adamant and insisted that she was never poor and that her father was not the failure the book portrayed him to be that gave her the drive to be the “richest woman in the world.”

She brought me around on a tour of the condo and showed me life-sized pictures of her meetings with leaders of the world. In the center of this line-up of pictures was the picture of Aquino sprawled dead in the tarmac of the Manila international airport.

But this was not the ‘piece de resistance of the tour” and her more than two hours of lecture to me. She left it for the last. She brought me to a room with tables on which were lined up hundreds, no thousands of neatly arranged documents in folders. “These are banking documents, more than 300,000 of them to show that I am still very rich. I own all that. Bank accounts, gold certificates, etc. etc.” I don’t know is she heard me but I said... “but Mrs. Marcos if you owned all that, they remain banking documents and cannot be easily changed into cash or real assets.” She ignored me of course.

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In a flash, I realized what she wanted to convey to me. That may be true if she and the Marcoses remain out of power. But it would be different if they are in power once again. There was an ulterior motive behind her refusal to accept that the hidden millions were gone forever.

She will get it back once Bongbong becomes president.  That is not speculation. The fact remains that portions of these moneys are scattered around the world. It appears now and then, there is the Imee account in Singapore and the sale of a Claude Monet painting to a banker only recently.

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A friend of mine who has good intelligence sources is certain that Bongbong Marcos is organizing for a 2016 presidential bid.

“He is doing it quietly because he does not want to be a target by his political rivals. According to this source he is recruiting some of the best minds to a political strategy and campaign that should ensure Bongbong becomes president in 2016. (Not to be discounted is the utter failure of Aquino III government which is the best asset of an ambitious return of the Marcoses.) This source believes they have enough money to start the ball rolling for a 2016 victory. But not yet. They are biding their time. There is no mistaking that he has the logistics and funding of the Marcos hidden wealth.

“As the two most likely presidential contenders from the LP and UNA engage in a protracted conflict aimed at destroying each other, it is logical to assume Bongbong is biding his time to emerge as a third force in the presidential contest.

“They want to restore the Marcos ‘legacy’ to see Ferdinand finally buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Bongbong’s candidacy cannot be taken lightly. They have enough money to buy the votes and the Comelec machines.“

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Members of the emerging third force, Bayanko, a movement for moral ascendancy in governance and politics, calls on all Filipinos to get into the bandwagon of true reform as the only way forward.

“One percent of Filipinos are too or moderately rich to want to change the status quo.

“Sixty percent of Filipinos are too poor, too disappointed, too cynical to care about any system that promises to change their life,” says Jose Alejandrino, member and adviser to Bayanko.

“Ten percent of Filipinos are abroad, happy to be away to worry about the country.

“That leaves about 29 percent, or 29 million Filipinos, who desire a genuine change. Most of them are in the middle class. The question is how many of them are willing to take affirmative action to change the system beyond talking, complaining and watching events from their TV screens?

“Maybe Dr. Jose Rizal gave the answer. He said Filipinos would revolt when they have reached an intolerable level of suffering.”

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In another posting in FB, Alejandrino of BayanKo wrote a reaction to my column on Amal’s defense of Gloria M. Arroyo. He says, The US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, Section 116  prohibits US assistance to any government found in violation of human rights. This includes prolonged detention without charge as in Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s  case. Both Gloria’s lawyers and Amal Clooney should look into this angle.