Opposition coalition 1Sambayan on Tuesday, Oct. 5, called out former Senator Bongbong Marcos, the son of the late President Ferdinand Marcos and who announced his presidential bid, to stop distorting the truth about the dark days of his family’s Martial Law era.
Marcos announced his candidacy for president in the 2022 polls, 35 years after his family left the country in the throes of a people-backed military revolt that ended his father’s almost 21 years in power.
“Stop the lies and stop the historical distortions, Bongbong! Your father is not a hero, and his term as the country’s strongman is not, as your paid trolls continue to parrot over and over again, the ‘Golden Era’ of the Philippines. It is, by all means, the exact opposite,” 1Sambayan said in a statement.
According the 1Sambayan, the Marcos family plundered the nation’s coffers, with at least two landmark cases won by the Republic against them “ that put on record the unconscionable amounts of money stolen from the people.”
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1Sambayan mentioned the $658 million or P32.9 billion in Swiss bank accounts in the 2003 case of Republic v. Sandiganbayan against the Marcos family and the 2012 consolidated cases of Marcos Jr. v. Republic and Imelda Marcos v. Republic that amounted to $3.36 million or P168 million in the account of Arelma, Inc., the company used by the late dictator to hide his ill-gotten wealth.
Last week, the Sandiganbayan Second Division ordered Royal Traders Holding Co. Inc to pay the Philippine government almost P1.6 billion, the amount representing the bank certificates issued by Royal Traders to the Marcos family. The bank certificates were among the family’s loot taken to Hawaii when they left after the people power revolt.
1Sambayan averred that Marcos’ attempt to revise the historical accounts “through the use of paid internet trolls and the exploitation of the flaws of social media” is “yet another heinous crime.”
“We call on the youth of today, or those who were either too young to remember or weren’t even born yet, to resist this attempt to rewrite the pages of our storied past, especially the one where we fought hard to regain our democracy,” the group said.
“Do not be deceived by paid internet trolls who peddle lies after lies, so that what happened during the Marcos era will not repeat itself at your time,” it added.
READ: Sandiganbayan orders Royal Traders Holding to pay gov’t P365-M in Marcoses’ bank deposits
While plundering the nation’s coffers is an atrocity to the people, 1Sambayan said that it was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“The rest of the atrocities of Marcos during the dark days of Martial Law have been documented and recorded. #NeverForget those who perished during this period, and don’t allow the trolls to erase the memories, painful as they are, of the people’s struggle under Marcos’s rule,” the coalition said.
Amnesty International said that the Martial Law years tortured more than 34,000 people and illegally arrested more than 70,000 people while the military and police and killed 3,240. More than 107,000 people were primary victims of human rights violations during the 21-year regime.
1Sambayan also appealed to the Department of Education “to form a committee that will study and craft guidelines for the inclusion of the Marcos era in our children’s prescribed history books, to be studied by generations after generations, so no trolls posting on Facebook or YouTube can influence the #Truth.”