DU30: GET ANOTHER MARCOS TO END CORRUPTION

SANGLEY POINT, CAVITE— “Just look for another Marcos,” President Duterte suggested on Monday, as he confessed that he could not end corruption “no matter what.”

Speaking at the Philippine Navy’s 121st anniversary in Sangley Point, he remarked: “(W)ith this law, (the) Constitution, even if you give me 20 years, I cannot do it. Just look for another Marcos.”

The President has been very vocal in his admiration of former President Ferdinand Marcos, who declared martial law in 1972 and was ousted in the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution. Despite widespread protests, he allowed Marcos’ burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani in 2016.

Recto Bank incident

In the Senate, Sen. Risa Hontiveros described Mr. Duterte’s statement on Marcos as “an unwelcome distraction at a time when the public needs strong leadership in asserting our sovereignty and in taking the side of our countrymen and women.”

In a statement, Hontiveros said Mr. Duterte’s remarks praising Marcos could draw attention away from the Recto Bank incident, which has angered Filipinos.

On June 9, a Philippine fishing boat anchored near Recto Bank in the West Philippine Sea was rammed and sunk by a a Chinese vessel, which quickly fled the scene and left the 22 fishermen to fend for themselves in the waters. The men were eventually rescued by a Vietnamese boat.

Hontiveros also found the President’s remarks on Marcos absurd: “Another Marcos to solve corruption? Marcos was the paragon of corruption!”

According to the Presidential Commission on Good Government—an agency created to look for ill-gotten wealth—the Marcos family had amassed an “estimated $5 billion to $10 billion (during the Marcos term), the bulk of which is deposited and hidden abroad.”