Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities

Dapat na nga lang BUWAGIN ang PCGG (Puro Calokohan, Gagong Gago). Pati ang naipanalong konpensasyon ng mga BIKTIMA ng (CLAIMANTS) HUMAN RIGHTS, KINULIMBAT! - doy

Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC)
PRESS STATEMENT03 August 2007
The recent appearance of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the late strongman before the Sandiganbayan as a ‘hostile witness’ for the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) raised not only a few eyebrows but has signaled PCGG’s complete and total decay. (kuha sa: www.mb.com.ph/.../camilo-edt1158083257.jpg)
And why not? In an effort, or should we say in exhaustion, from PCGG’s part to bolster its claim that 60 percent of Lucio Tan’s business assets were ill-gotten, the commission callously had an unrepentant Marcos heir as a witness to testify that it is in fact their family who owns the said wealth which includes Tan’s beer and tobacco commerce, as well as some other pieces of property.

If this is not total madness, we don’t know what kind of lunatic ride the PCGG is taking us for. This is not a creative or an ingenious legal tactic to win a specific court case but rather the exercise of political laziness, crudity and extreme incompetence. The thought of an institution created precisely to recover the Marcoses ill-gotten wealth acquiring the services of a Marcos heir as its own witness, who in return is aggressively asserting their family’s claim to the same wealth in question betrays all common sense and basic coherence we know. It is profoundly stupefying.

Weird is such a soft word to describe this bizarre situation. We say, this is the height of oddities, abnormalities and curiosities.
(mga kuha sa : www.gmanews.tv)
For how could the PCGG explain the dung heap mess they got themselves into? For the sake of argument, let us assume the PCGG in tandem with the Marcoses succeeded in proving their present claims; still, the government will go after these ill-gotten wealth now in the possession of the Marcoses. Why will the Marcoses enter this set-up if they will be prosecuted in the end? What is the catch? Why not pursue the Marcoses directly if it clearly implicates them as well?
(kuha sa: www.pcij.org/i-report/2007/imee-marcos.jpg)
Suspiciously, the Marcos family has been very aggressive of late in seeking to reclaim their alleged properties, including sequestered estates in the provinces and shares in GMA Network Inc. Truly; this gives weight to thoughts that a secret deal had been made with the Marcoses. This is the only logical conclusion.

Clearly, PCGG’s track of blanket compromise deals with the Marcoses and his cronies is an abdication of the institution’s mandate. Likewise, we are alarmed with the fate of other behest loan cases being pursued by PCGG, the payments for which continue to burden the Filipino people.
Without doubt, from an institution supposedly out to recover the Marcos’s’ ill-gotten wealth and bring justice to a nation long plundered, PCGG has become a spectacle of political freaks, grotesque compromises and unholy alliances. Not only did it fail in delivering on its promise of recovering ill-gotten wealth, it failed in establishing values precedents and in raising our ethical and moral standards as it repeatedly insulted the Filipino people with its unprincipled compromises, negotiations and settlements.

It has not only outlived it usefulness, it has become an anomaly, a major glitch in our search for genuine justice and political closure. ###