TEODORO L. LOCSIN, JR. | Catching up with Israel, 33 A.D.

By: Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.
August 4, 2012 7:01 PM

InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

In a foretaste of the sort of Supreme Court that will increasingly replace the current diminishing one - whose GMA-appointed members proceeded consistently according to the letter not to say the spirit of the laws, not least in striking down GMA's actions: people’s initiative, executive privilege, traitorous MOA soon to be revived by Noynoy - the up and coming Supreme Court just ruled that the unproved crimes of the father shall be visited upon the children and for whatever he is liable. And they shall be made to pay out of their own pockets. Yet the decision was in English and not Hebrew.

The only thing the decision did not mandate was the stoning of the Marcos children. But then the Court is mindful of suggesting stoning because it is made of thin glass papered over with waivers of tightly summarized SALNs and bank secrecy waivers with the text facing inward so all we see from the outside are blank sheets of paper and the glue with which they are pasted on glass walls.

The Court affirmed with finality its February ruling reinstating the Marcos children as defendants in the government's P200 billion ill-gotten wealth case against their father, the late dictator and two-time duly elected president (because the second time he ran against a notorious Japanese collaborator whereas he was a war hero.) The earlier case failed to prove the Marcos children had criminally conspired with their father. (Possibly because they were schoolchildren at the time.)

Nonetheless the Court held they were Marecos' heirs. If not to his money, certainly to his guilt. No proof was presented that the Marcos children have inherited financially from their father, let alone some or all of the P200 billion which is an entirely speculative amount snatched out of thin air by the PCGG, still the most corrupt agency in town. In fact no proof was ever presented that the Marcos estate has been settled and its financial proceeds distributed accordingly.

The father allegedly accumulated this enormous sum by allowing TV channels 13, 2, and 9 to show him in action in a flattering light and for free; pretty much like all TV stations today are only too happy if not falling over themselves to repeatedly air President Noynoy's inaction for free.

The father was not accused of grabbing these stations, whose dubious acquisition by a crony was condoned and legitimized by the PCGG when it signed a final settlement with Roberto Benedicto. The settlement was completely one-sided in his favor and entirely against the interests of the government, in violation of the anti-graft and corrupt practices act. But no case will ever be filed against it.

The puerile conspiracy encompassed using a garment factory for dollar salting and the forced sale to the Marcoses of a bus company - although the same court, indeed almost the same justices, had ruled that the forced sale of the Philippines Free Press to Marcos was okay even if the owner was in jail at the time of the sale. Proof of vindictiveness was presented, and it was suggested by a Palace official at the time - Munding Reyes - to the owner's son that he might inherit from his father early because plans were afoot to shoot his dad along with fellow detainees and even General Ileto on an island in Manila Bay.

The decision was contained in all of one single piece of paper, giving brevity a whole new meaning. It held that the prosecution suspiciously failed to establish the criminal conspiracy of the Marcos children when they were kids and strongly suggested the prosecution of the prosecution for that reason.

Nonetheless, the decision retained the Marcos children, sadly no longer as criminal accused but as civil defendants, because they presumably (though not evidently) still hold all the money never proved to exist somewhere safe.

The court ruled implicitly (not explicitly as the constitution demands) that the children of Marcos could not have either married rich or earned well despite sterling educations nor successfully worked for a good living - unlike, say, some top public officials today who never did a lick of work in their lives perhaps because they are unfit to be employed.

Therefore, the court ruled that whatever the Marcos children earned and possess must answer for all of the P200 billion that the father is alleged but never proved to have stolen at a time when P200 billion was two times the national budget. Even EDSA-appointed COA chief Guingona admitted, in my presence, in Malacanang, that nothing in the COA records he examined showed Marcos to have touched the national treasury illegally or improperly. We made a formal decision to just let it pass in the sure and certain hope that our race would forget the wild charges we made in that regard during the Snap Election campaign, like the illegal fake war medals which turned out to be true. Forcing the children to pay out of their own pockets for someone else's offense partakes of a bill of attainder contrary to the constitution.

There you go, a giant step but backwards to the trial of Jesus where blood guilt for a wrong decision by a mob was transferred to their children but only because the mob asked for it and not a court well after the fact. The dead dictator had many talents but speaking in Aramaic to that generationally prospective effect was not one of them. But to some mentally challenged people Ilocano might sound like Aramaic. So finally we are catching up with Middle Eastern superpower Israel, but Anno Domini 33.