Imelda Marcos, wife of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, has been found guilty of seven counts of violation of an anti-corruption law in which she illegally funnelled $200 million to Swiss Foundations in 1970. Additionally, the Marcos family, during their US-backed dictatorship, may have amassed as much as $5-10 billion in hidden wealth. Ferdinand Marcos, who was overthrown, exiled by an army backed revolt in 1986, and found guilty of $2 billion worth of human rights violations (such as torture, imprisonment, extrajudicial killings, and disappearances), is long deceased, the Marcos family has managed to maintain power in the Philippines, with many family members holding political office. The family is currently allies with\/have backed the Presidency of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has often praised Ferdinand Marcos, is helping Imelda Marcos run for Senate (she is also registered to replace her own daughter as the governor of the Northern Ilocos Norte province), and allowed Ferdinand Marcos’s body to be buried in the country’s heroes cemetery. Although the Court has disqualified Marcos from holding public office, she will likely appeal in order to avoid her jail sentence (6-11 years for each of her seven violations) and to continue to hold her seat in Congress.<\/p>\n
The fact that Imelda Marcos has committed so many cases of corruption in the last 40 years (and has come off clean until now) is very shocking to me, as well as the fact that the US backed her husband’s dictatorship with the full knowledge of his human rights violations. I find it surprising that the people have continued to vote for the members of the Marcos family given their past with corruption and human rights violations and alarming that Duterte has such a strong alliance with the family and considers Ferdinand Marcos a “hero”. This relates to what we are currently learning about in the sense that the United States needs to back the Philippines from a geopolitical standpoint, regardless of their actions, in order to keep the Philippines from aligning with China. That being said, I think that it’s “about time” that Marcos has been brought to justice in order to decrease the family’s power, to keep Marcos from winning a seat in Senate\/as governor, and to avoid future corruption charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imelda Marcos, wife of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, has been found guilty of seven counts of violation of an anti-corruption law in which she illegally funnelled $200 million to Swiss Foundations in 1970. Additionally, the Marcos family, during their US-backed dictatorship, may have amassed as much as $5-10 billion in hidden wealth. Ferdinand Marcos, who was overthrown, exiled by… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2400,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2398\/revisions\/2400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}