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THE government and victims of human rights abuses during the reign
of former strongman Ferdinand Marcos clash today before the United
States Supreme Court over the $40-million account stashed at Merrill
Lynch, which is allegedly part of the ill-gotten wealth of the
Marcoses.
Narciso Nario, the legal affairs commissioner of
the Philippine Commission on Good Government (PCGG), said that no
less than Camilo Sabio, PCGG chairman, will be supervising today’s
oral arguments for the government side, having met and discussed
with their American lawyers who will represent them before the US
High Court.
Sabio, according to Nario, “provided
additional substantial evidence and information on the Arelma
case” to the US lawyers. Arelma, said to be a phony Panamanian
company, is the name of the Meryll Lynch account.
Nario expressed confidence the US High Court
will side with the Philippine government.
PCGG lawyers will argue that it is the
government’s mandate to recover the ill-gotten wealth of the
Marcoses, and are expected to emphasize the point that the money
with Meryll Lynch was stolen from government coffers.
Rights victims also confident
But the lawyers for the 10,000-strong human
rights victims also expressed confidence that the US High Court will
side with them.
Lawyer Rod Domingo, the Filipino counsel for the
human rights victims, said in a statement that American lawyer
Robert Swift believes that since the US courts have previously
awarded the money to them, no amount of appeal by the Philippine
government can reverse the decision.
They also claimed that the money does not belong
to the Philippine government and should have been distributed to the
victims in the first place.
In 1995, the victims obtained a $2-billion award
against the Marcos family for suffering torture, summary execution
and involuntary disappearance during the martial law years.
“The Republic never had any evidence that the
Marcos account at Merrill Lynch ever belonged to the Philippine
government. The government’s role in the litigation is spiteful
and disrespectful to the victims of government brutality. Even the
United Nations has sanctioned it for disregarding the rights of the
victims under international law,” Domingo and Swift said in a
statement.
The PCGG and the Office of the Solicitor General
(OSG) have consistently blocked before US courts the release of the
money under the Arelma account to the martial law victims.
The government lawyers claimed that since the
amount was ill-gotten, it should be released to the National
Treasury and utilized for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
The Philippine government even sought to remove
Trial Judge Manuel Real from hearing the case but a November 2006
ruling of the US Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the
Republic’s argument for lack of merit.
The appeals have delayed distribution of the
money to the victims for three and half years now. An initial
distribution to each of the qualified victim of $20,000 awaits a
positive ruling from the US Supreme Court.
At the same time, Swift chided US Solicitor
General Paul Clement and US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie
Kenney for not doing enough to help the Filipino human rights
victims.
Domingo also slammed the Philippine government
for “spending limitless funds of the people to defeat their
claims” saying that the funds “could have been use to feed the
country’s poor”.
-- Francis Earl A. Cueto
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