Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - A lawmaker in the Philippines wants to get rid of a commission that is trying to get back billions of dol...
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| Image: Reuters |
Since 1986, the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has gotten about $5 billion back from the family of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., but about $2.4 billion is still in court.
The PCGG was set up a few days after the elder Marcos fled a popular uprising against his two decades of corrupt leadership of what many historians consider to be one of Asia's most famous kleptocracies.
Marcos Sr died in Hawaii, where he was living in exile, in 1989. His family then went back to the Philippines to start a comeback, which led to his son's landslide election win in May.
The bill's author, Congressman Bienvenido Abante, said that the commission had done all it could do.
"Even if we give them another hundred years, they won't be able to figure out if the seized assets were stolen or not and who owns them," he said.
During the election campaign, the Marcos family said that its huge wealth was earned legally and that the commission was just a "anti-Marcos agency."
Part of the billions that were found were used to pay thousands of people who were hurt by the government during the 1970s martial law rule of the late Marcos.
In 2018, the previous president blocked a bill to get rid of the commission, but Marcos has a super-majority in the legislature, so it's unlikely that this new bill will be stopped.
His cousin is the speaker of the lower house, his son is a congressman, and his sister is a senator. This shows how powerful and influential the Marcos family is even after their humiliating fall from power decades ago.
When asked about the bill, the president's press secretary didn't answer right away.
The opposition Akbayan partylist promised to stop it, calling it "an attempt to get rid of the country's sense of justice and history."
