Part Four
US-Aquino political agenda shifted to blackmail
DIRTY politics marked the litigation of the Marcoses in America. This became obvious from the remarks of Los Angeles Second District Court Judge Marian Pfaelzer when she issued a freeze order on Marcos assets worldwide:
“Undersecretary [Michael] Armacost asserted that the Aquino government will view the United States’s actions on this matter as an important indicator of the future course of our bilateral relations, and stated that it is in the foreign-policy interest of the United States to honor the Philippine government’s request at the earliest possible time.”
The prosecution witness, Timothy Khan, provided the incontrovertible proof of the trial’s political agenda. He admitted that the suit was used for political leverage when he testified: “Mrs. Aquino said, ‘No prosecution, no bases.’”
Apparently, diplomatic relations between the two nations had shifted to the level of blackmail.
For the Aquino regime, it wanted to get its hands on the Marcos Estate and wanted the Marcoses to be declared guilty of plunder and human-rights violations by the US courts, and for the US, it wanted its military facilities and strategic interests maintained in the Philippines.
The orgy of sequestration undertaken in the rush to recover “ill-gotten wealth” tempted some of the trackers to launder some of the wealth through a mere change of custody, if not outright ownership.
Libertarian Prof. Renato Constantino wondered: “Will the so-called recovered ill-gotten wealth benefit the people directly? Or will these sequestered companies, when finally
privatized, go to some members of the new oligarchy? Disenchantment is fueled by indications that the latter course is being taken.”
Vice President Salvador “Doy” Laurel, too, had also his doubts as he was being steadily “eased out of Malacañang’s inner circle” in the power struggle between two camps, which he described as “a left-leaning clique bereft of experience in statecraft and the other just as inexperienced but allied with big business.” Although the former got the early upper hand, the latter, better endowed, ultimately prevailed.
Laurel sensed that some of Cory’s “hidden advisers” were also out to monopolize the action insofar as recovering wealth was concerned. He was briefly hopeful after President Aquino, perhaps dismayed by the slow and meager results from the Presidential Commission on Good Government, proposed the creation of another body.
On February 20, 1987, she wrote to Vice President Laurel to ask him to head the Presidential Blue Ribbon Commission. The PBRC was to prosecute the Marcos associates for offenses related to billions of pesos in “behest loans” from government financial institutions and other entities. Laurel accepted, but it took another month for Cory to issue Executive Order 150 (March 19, 1987), which created the PBRC.
After another four months, the PBRC was ready to go to court.
Then came a shocker, said Laurel: “But just as we were about to file the 10 biggest and strongest behest loan cases, the PBRC was abolished by a four-paragraph Executive Order signed by President Aquino and countersigned by Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo!”
Laurel asked Cory to reconsider the abolition of the PBRC. In his letter dated July 21, 1987, he recounted that it was Sen. Teofisto Guingona who had advocated the abolition of the PBRC. Laurel disputed the solon’s role, inasmuch as the PBRC’s functions were executive in character.
Laurel should also question how Guingona was able to make himself officially heard, inasmuch as the new Congress had not yet convened and would not do so until July 27, 1987.
Something was amiss. Inasmuch as Congress had not yet convened, how could Guingona’s chairmanship of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee have come into play?
How could President Aquino have reached the conclusion that the PBRC would merely duplicate the functions of Guingona’s committee? Under the doctrine of separation of power, the Senate committee could undertake investigations solely “in aid of
legislation.”
As Laurel pointed out, the filing of complaints in court for the recovery of “ill-gotten wealth” would be beyond the mandate of the Senate. If Cory the housewife could not draw this distinction, the lawyer Joker Arroyo, as her executive secretary, should have dutifully enlightened her.
Ultimately, it was not even the Guingona Committee that took over the PBRC’s mission. Laurel turned over the PBRC’s records to the new PCGG Chairman Ramon Diaz. And what happened on the cronies and their behest loans? Laurel hinted that some accommodation was reached between the old and the new oligarchs.
Added Laurel:
“Significantly, the issue of behest loans would surface again in the early part of the Ramos administration as many members of the pre-Marcos oligarchy would be increasingly assimilated into the new political configuration.
“Questions that implicated ethical, political and economic problems ultimately cropped up. It was a development which Cory herself allowed to firm up, with full consent.”
To be continued
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.