|
THE camp of former First Lady Imelda Marcos is
seeking to nullify Executive Order 1 issued by then President
Corazon Aquino, as they are set to file a complaint before the
Manila Regional Trial Court Tuesday.
Lawyers Artemio Lachica and
Oliver Lozano, counsels of Mrs. Marcos, directed their 18-page
complaint against Mrs. Aquino’s then Executive Secretary and now
Sen. Joker Arroyo, who crafted EO 1.
The lawyers said that assuming EO
1 is valid, the summary sequestration on Marcos assets is still void
under the Constitution, in relation to the 1986 Provisional
Constitution and pertinent Supreme Court decisions, which state that
no property shall be taken without due process of law.
But the Presidential Commission
on Good Government (PCGG), which became the “child” of EO 1,
simply laughed at the complaint
of Mrs. Marcos.
PCGG Commissioner for Legal
Affairs Narciso Nario said that being lawyers, Lachica and Lozano
should know that there is a specific period during which a case may
be filed against EO 1.
He said that period may have
already lapsed since it has been 22 years since the agency was
created.
The PCGG was created to recover
the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their cronies, and
has made life miserable for them with the cases being filed both
here and abroad.
“If they are indeed filing a
case to question EO 1, then I guess it’s too late the hero for
them,” Nario, a former justice at the Sandiganbayan, said.
Lozano said that since there was
no prima facie evidence in the sequestration of the Marcos wealth,
members of the government have become “bandits” because of their
“illegal, unjust and oppressive sequestrations.”
--Francis Earl A. Cueto
|
