A few days ago, an item appeared in one of this country’s leading newspapers that, for reasons best known to the newspaper’s news editor, failed to get the prominent space that it clearly deserved. The item dealt with presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos—a.k.a. BBM—and the claims that he had been making about his knowledge of and role in the concealment and disposition of the wealth illegally amassed by his parents President Ferdinand E. Marcos and Imelda Romualdez-Marcos.
The news item consisted almost entirely of the rebuttals of one-time Presidential Commission on Good Government commissioner Ruben Carranza to the I-didn’t-know and I-wasn’t-aware claims of the dictator’s son and namesake. To make sure that the readers of the Manila Standard and other leading newspapers get to read what was said by Mr. Carranza, a first-rate attorney now associated with the US-based International Center for Transnational Justice, I am reproducing here the claims-versus-facts exchange between BBM and Carranza.
Claim No. 1 of the dictator’s son is that he had “no role” in his family’s ill-gotten wealth. His second claim is that he should not be made to answer for his father’s crimes. Claim No. 3 is that he was not old enough to know about the deposits that his parents were making abroad during his father’s dictatorial regime. BBM’s fourth claim is that he was not old enough in 1998 when the PCGG learned about the deposits made by his parents with the Panamanian...
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