MOVES to rehabilitate the Marcoses took another giant leap forward with the approval on second reading House Bill 7376. Under the guise of “strengthening” the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), the bill will abolish the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) and transfer its mandate of recovering the Marcos ill-gotten wealth to the OSG.
The bill, principally authored by the House Speaker himself, strips away from the OSG the quasi-judicial powers granted by law to the PCGG to make it more effective in recovering the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their host of cronies, such as the power to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, freeze and sequestration orders, hold departure orders, and cite in contempt. In short, government will be made toothless in its hunt for ill-gotten wealth.
Is it coincidence that the recovery of the Marcos ill-gotten wealth is being transferred to the OSG that is currently headed by Solicitor General Calida?
Calida is a known Marcos loyalist, one of the leaders of the Alyansang Duterte-Bongbong, who personally campaigned for the failed run for vice president of Sen. Bongbong Marcos. How can recovery efforts prosper when the OSG is led by a professed supporter of a Marcos?
The public should be ever more discerning and vigilant. Three decades after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship, an estimated US$5 billion of plundered wealth remains stashed away somewhere. Not content with giving a hero’s burial to the dictator Marcos and propping up the political fortunes of the Marcos family, the current government is moving to fatally undermine efforts to run after the Marcos ill-gotten wealth.
In the words of ACT Teachers party-list’s Rep. Antonio Tinio: “Inabswelto ang mga drug lords. Kinakanlong ang pork barrel queen. Ngayon naman, gustong palusutin ang pinakamasahol na pandarambong sa kabang-yaman ng bayan sa kasaysayan ng Republika. Huwag tayo pumayag.”
