For the second time since the beginning of the year, the Sandiganbayan, which judges crimes committed by politicians, acquitted the family and their collaborators on the bench. The verdict was based on the “lack of evidence” to support the accusation: the only witness was considered unreliable. Electoral support for the Marcos, an obstacle to a balanced judgment on the dictatorship.
Manila () – For the second time this year, a Sandiganbayan court, the special court charged with judging crimes committed by politicians or people linked to them, has closed a case of illicit enrichment with an acquittal for lack of of tests. The object of the trial were Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the couple who led a brutal dictatorship between 1973 and 1986, when a nonviolent revolution in which the Philippine Church played a central role forced them into exile. The judicial process had begun in 1987 and referred to the recognition and recovery of the accumulated wealth through companies linked to people very loyal to the dictator of that time.
According to the prosecution, the defendants would have acquired and accumulated enormous wealth by associating with each other at the expense of the government. However, for the judges, there was no concrete evidence of the involvement of the Marcos in the companies that acted as intermediaries in the transfer of money stolen from public coffers. For the judges, the only witness for the prosecution, the custody of the files of the Presidential Commission on Good Government’s records custodian, would lack direct knowledge about the validity of the documents presented, for the most part -according to the magistrates- illegible photocopies.
The trial that has concluded today is just the latest in a long list that ended without convictions for the Marcoses: Ferdinand Sr., who died in Hawaii in 1989; his wife Imelda, 93; his children, including the current president Ferdinad Marcos Jr.; co-workers or family friends. On February 21, another section of the Sandiganbayan, the fifth, had dismissed a civil case filed against the former dictator and others associated with him, accused of carrying out accounting maneuvers to cover up illicit enrichment. Curiously, three months later, another chamber, the fourth, denied the family members the right to recover assets already considered illegal acquisitions, ruling that the petition was without foundation.
While the most direct heirs of the former dictator perform important political functions or direct ambitious economic projects, only in 2019, dejected by a conviction for corruption, Imelda handed over to a nephew the position of governor of the province of Ilocos Norte, the electoral “fief”. of the Marks For a large part of civil society, the electoral support that the dynasty continues to enjoy, the wide network of interests and loyalties that they surround themselves with and, not least, the fact that their son became president last year , remain an unresolved issue. Because not only do they perpetuate the memory of a dynasty whose abuses and ruthless repression are remembered by many, but -in a climate of rehabilitation of the figure of the dictator- they also prevent a balanced assessment of a dark period in Philippine history.
