It’s not just about giving money to Marcos victims’

VIENTIANE, Laos—The compensation bill for victims of human rights abuses during the martial law regime is not just about money but also acknowledges lapses in protecting Filipinos, President Benigno Aquino III told reporters after a meeting on Monday with Swiss President Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf.

Part of the compensation will come from $540 million in Swiss deposits of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, which have been transferred to the Philippine government.

Mr. Aquino told reporters in a press briefing that he assured the Swiss president he would fast-track the passage of the bill and would talk to leaders of Congress, particularly Sen. Francis Escudero, chair of the Senate justice committee.

The two leaders met on Monday on the sidelines of the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit, which is ending on Wednesday.

The House of Representatives passed the bill earlier this year, but the measure has yet to gain traction in the Senate.

Under the bill, compensation for victims of martial law abuses would come from the illegally acquired assets previously deposited by the Marcoses in Swiss banks.

But legislation has to be passed before the money could be released to the martial law victims.

“This is personal not in the sense of the monetary aspect. We need to be clear in our history books that we had a period like that, when the government put up by the people was used to curtail their rights,” Mr. Aquino said.

“There must be a formality for future generations that we had an aberrant period, that there was a nightmare that happened to the Filipino nation, without a doubt, and clearly so that we can be sure that this would not happen again in the future,” he said.

But Mr. Aquino also noted that the Marcoses remained in government. There are certain quarters, he said, who would fight the bill and insist that no human rights abuses had taken place during the Marcos regime.

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Aquino vows to compensate victims of Marcos atrocities

Manila: Philippine President Benigno Aquino vowed to push for the passage of a law that will allow the Philippine government to fully compensate 10,000 rights victims from the $680 million (Dh2.49 billion) that the Swiss government had turned over to former President Corazon Aquino as ill-gotten wealth of the former Philippines strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1997.

“The President said the [Philippine] government will do what is needed in getting the compensation bill approved [by Congress] and [so that the amount would be] paid out to its beneficiaries [who were victims of the Martial Law rule],” Secretary Herminio Coloma of the Presidential Communications and Operations Office (PCOO) told reporters in Laos, the transcript of which reached PCOO’s Manila office.

Aquino gave this assurance when he met Swiss President Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf at the sidelines of the 9th Asia Europe Meeting in Laos, said Coloma.

The Marcos funds from Switzerland were held in escrow at the Philippine National Bank (PNB) after the Swiss government turned it over to the government.

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Aquino “promised to do what’s needed to complete the compensation process and compensation to the [martial law] victims by clearing the administrative and procedural hurdles [that have prevented the compensation of Martial Law victims who won a $ 2.2 billion in damages from a US Federal Court in 1995],” Coloma explained.

Aquino identifies with the martial law victims and members of their families because his own father, former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr, a political rival of Marcos, was arrested and imprisoned for several years when the martial law rule was enforced in 1972, said Coloma.

The older Aquino’s assassination, by paramilitary escorts, in 1983 resulted in a strong anti-Marcos sentiment that was capped by a people-backed military mutiny which paved the way for the exit of the strongman, and the ascendance of Mrs Corazon Aquino to the presidency in 1986.

When the Swiss Federal Supreme Court turned over the money to the government in 1997, it demanded that the Philippine government must comply with two conditions — a final and executory decision of the Supreme Court declaring the said funds as ill-gotten; that the martial law victims must be given their share — in a law passed by Congress — to implement a class suit they won in Honolulu Court against the Marcos estate.

In 2003, the Philippine Supreme Court declared that the recovered Swiss funds were Marcos ill-gotten wealth.

Since then, however, the Human Rights Compensations Bill, has remained pending at the two houses of Congress.

The bill calls for the amendment of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law which was passed in 1987, which has called that recovered wealth of the Marcoses must go to the funding of the government’s agrarian reform programme.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), a government-run agency established in 1987, earlier said the Marcoses stashed an estimated $35 billion, excluding $5 billion worth of gold bullions, that were amassed while in power from 1965 to 1986.

Marcos died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1989, three years after his overthrow in 1986.

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