Martial law victims scores Aquino government for its insincerity in going after the Marcoses

By SELDA
January 7, 2013

QUEZON CITY  –  Members of the Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto or SELDA criticized the Aquino government today for its lackadaisical efforts in making the Marcoses accountable for their crimes against the Filipinos and retrieving their ill-gotten wealth, as expressed in Mr. Andres Bautista’s call to abolish the Philippine Commission on Good Government (PCGG).

“The PCGG has long been wrought with reports of corruption, as admitted by PCGG chair Andres Bautista, but its failure in retrieving the remaining Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth should not completely be the PCGG’s sole accountability, government should also take responsibility over this,” said Marie Hilao-Enriquez, SELDA chairperson.

“The administrations after Marcos did not wield a strong political will to go after the dictatorship and make it pay for the crimes against the people, especially the plunder it committed. If these governments thought of defending the people’s interests before their own, they should have strengthened the PCGG, vested it with vast powers and allotted a bigger budget to enable it to go after the Marcos billions and pursue with earnest the cases against them.

What the administrations after Marcos did was just to accommodate the Marcoses politically so that the remaining members of the family were able to weild economic and political power again and even taunt the sitting governments, flaunt their plundered wealth and even try to clear their name. Persons they appointed to the PCGG who should have earnestly went after the Marcoses were allowed to taint their hands into the corporations and ill-gotten wealth or were pressured to keep silent on the compromises some of the administrations conducted with the Marcos family, to the detriment of the majority of the people.

Selda also pointed to the fact that the Filipinos especially martial law victims expect that the President, whose parents they had worked and fought alongside with in ousting a dictator, will earnestly pursue in going after the dictator and his family to answer for their misdeeds against the Filipino people. “It is disappointing that we have failed to see any results nor concrete action from the government in going after the Marcoses, whose greed, corruption and human rights violations we bitterly fought for 14 long years, and now it chooses to close down an agency tasked to do just this,” Enriquez declared, adding that PNoy is squandering the chance to show that it is different from other governments.

Selda warned that despite Malacanang’s declaration that it will not stop in going after the Marcos ill-gotten wealth, it may use the enactment of the Marcos Victims Compensation Bill as quid pro quo to the government’s failure in tracking down and recovering the Marcos’ stolen millions.