EDITORIAL - Failure of justice

How much can a Philippine president earn in 20 years? While in office, he is prohibited from engaging in private business. His immediate relatives are supposed to be barred from using their access to power for self-enrichment.

Yet in his two decades in power, the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos managed to accumulate a mind-boggling fortune, with his widow building up a personal jewelry collection valued at P15 billion. This treasure trove is apart from millions of dollars stashed away in foreign banks, with the Philippine government managing to trace over $350 million in Switzerland. That amount, turned over by the Swiss government and still held in escrow, has grown to nearly $700 million. The Philippine government has also managed to recover several pieces of prime real estate property in New York.

With the Philippine president one of the lowest paid heads of government in the world, how did Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos manage to amass all that wealth? The government places the Marcoses’ wealth at around $10 billion. Simply comparing the wealth when Marcos rose to power against the family’s bank deposits, jewelry and other assets 20 years later in 1986 should give the government a strong case to convict at least one of the Marcos heirs for corruption.

Yet neither Imelda nor her children, and not one of the Marcos cronies has been sent to prison for any offense in connection with ill-gotten wealth. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program ended with little of the Marcos wealth going to CARP, as envisioned in the land reform law. Today, 23 years after Marcos was toppled, a comment from Raul Gonzalez shortly before he was replaced as justice secretary has reminded the nation that none of the top personalities during the Marcos dictatorship has been punished for the crimes of the regime. Gonzalez had told the Presidential Commission on Good Government that if there was no legal reason to hold on to P15 billon worth of jewelry being claimed by Imelda Marcos, the collection had to be returned to her.

How hard is it to finalize the nation’s claim over ill-gotten wealth? And how hard is it to find someone guilty of amassing wealth illegally when the verified amount is way beyond the capability of any public official to have earned the wealth through legitimate means? This failure of the justice system guarantees that more public officials will be accumulating wealth beyond their means in the coming years.