FIFTY-THREE years after the declaration of Martial Law, the shadow of the Marcos dictatorship continues to loom over the nation with the scars of human rights abuses but also in the billions of pesos in ill-gotten wealth that remain unrecovered.
Former Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) commissioner Ruben Carranza said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., has shown no indication of remorse for all atrocities committed by his parents.
“Not only has he justified that in the past, his hypocrisy and silence today speaks volumes about whether he actually accepts accountability, accepts responsibility. So it won’t end and in many ways that might be a good thing,” he said.
The PCGG, created in 1986 by President Corazon Aquino three days after the Marcoses fled the country for Hawaii, was tasked to recover the Marcos ill-gotten wealth.
The PCGG has recovered an estimated ₱280 billion in ill-gotten wealth as of year-end 2023, including ₱180 billion in cash and ₱100 billion in assets.
“So all the property they have, all their cars, jewelry, apartments, land, bank accounts in the Philippines or outside are ill-gotten,” Carranza said.
In 2003, the Supreme Court declared more than ₱25 billion in Marcos assets ill-gotten, ending nearly two decades of litigation over funds stashed in Swiss banks.
“The PCGG is not applicable to any other group of people other than the family of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and their cronies, and the PCGG also does not really have prosecutorial power,” Carranza said.
Since assuming the presidency in 2022, Marcos Jr. and his father’s cronies have won 11 cases relating to their ill-gotten wealth before the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court.
In a Feb. 18, 2025 resolution, the Sandiganbayan Second Division said the PCGG failed to pursue a case by not holding former first lady Imelda Marcos accountable after she ignored a court order to answer civil charges.
Carranza pointed to an obvious conflict of interest with another Marcos as president: “If you have a commission created to go after the family of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and then you have the family of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in power—it won’t work.”
Corruption
In his 2025 State of the Nation Address, Marcos Jr. spoke out against corruption in government infrastructure projects, even declaring he would join the public in protests.
But Carranza dismissed these statements as hollow rhetoric.
“If Marcos Jr. were really sincere about going after corruption, then he should go after all corrupt officials, including his own family,” he said.
Carranza said Marcos Jr. should feel the deepest shame among politicians, given the scale of corruption during the dictatorship from which his family continues to benefit.
Carranza warned that the danger lies not only in the family’s continued hold on power, but in the normalization of impunity.
“There’s no lack of institutions in the Philippines and in the constitution to provide for accountability,” he said. “The problem is, of course, that the same people who are supposed to be held accountable have tremendous power to simply defeat these provisions.”
Despite decades of stalled cases, Carranza stressed that the fight to recover the Marcos wealth is not bound by time. The Constitution provides that actions to reclaim ill-gotten wealth “do not prescribe,” meaning future administrations can continue chasing after the Marcos family and their cronies.
“You can have all these laws, but the Philippines’s justice system is still so flawed that enforcement and decision-making are controlled by the same people who committed these crimes,” Carranza said.
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International estimates that more than 50,000 individuals were victims of abuses during the Marcos dictatorship.
“I think it’s important to stress that the Constitution and laws can only do so much. In the end, they’re just words. Actual power does not lie in words,” Carranza said. Alexandra S. Demaisip and Luis Angelo N. Palma
