Month: December 2024

Unlike Sara Duterte, Carlito Dimailig issued no threats and just did it.

Imelda hacked

Fifty-two years ago this month, with martial law eleven weeks in effect, at around five in the afternoon of Dec. 7, 1972, Carlito Dimailig lunged at then First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos with a 12-inch bolo.

Conspicuous in a dark suit, Carlito went up the stage where Imelda was awarding the winners of the 1971-72 contest of the National Beautification and Cleanliness Council at the Nayong Pilipino in Pasay City. Carlito went with the South Cotabato delegation that won the first prize as a model province. He was the last in line. When he was just about three feet from Imelda, Carlito pulled the bolo from his left sleeve and stabbed her.

Imelda parried Carlito’s attack until she fell on the stage. Carlito kept on hacking at Imelda as other people on the stage tried to subdue him while others were shielding Imelda and they tried to pick her up from where she fell and get her off the stage.

In that melee, Technical Sergeant Clemente Tadena of the Philippine Army shot Carlito first. He shot him in the cheek. The shot did not stop Carlito. Technical Sergeant Julio Jaymalin of the Philippine Marines tried to kick and tackle him. Jaymalin missed and landed on his back near Carlito. As Carlito was hacking at people surrounding him, Jaymalin shot him twice in the body. Carlito, 5 feet in height and of slight build, weakened by his wounds, was finally wrestled to the ground, facing down even as he was still holding his bolo. Several men pinned Carlito on the stage floor as he still struggled to let loose. Petty Officer 2 Bagnos Magno of the Philippine Navy drew his firearm, leaned on Carlito, and shot him in the head. In about twenty seconds, the assassination attempt was over. Carlito was dead.

It terrified the audience at Nayong Filipino and it was all caught on live television via the Kanlaon Broadcasting System, Channel 9. It was replayed so often in the succeeding hours.

It was also through television that Marcos, then playing golf at the Malacañang grounds, learned of the attack on his wife. “Fortuna [Marcos’s sister] and her children came running out of the Pangarap crying out in sobs that ‘Imelda has been stabbed in Nayon Pilipino’,” Marcos wrote in his diary on that fateful day.

A helicopter rushed Imelda to the Makati Medical Center.

As Marcos hurried to the hospital, he ordered that Nayong Filipino be put on lock down “and to apprehend all the participants (in the attack).” Imelda was already at the operating room when Marcos reached her after a ten-minute drive from Malacañang.

“She was on the operating table with ugly lacerations in both arms still oozing blood and her right hand cut on the second joint of the fingers so deep that I could see the bone and the cartilage of the middle finger severed. The tendon of the right forearm was obviously cut. It was a white protrusion in the bloody muscles that were being cleaned.”

Associated Press reported that “a team of surgeons took more than three hours to repair deep wounds in both hands and a one-and-one-half inch cut in her right arm which severed tendons. She also suffered several broken fingers shen she fell to the stage.” She had 50 to 75 stitches.

Shortly before 7:00 in the evening, Information Secretary Francisco “Kit” Tatad, in a press conference, announced that Imelda was out of danger according to her doctors. Tatad was with Dr. Constantino Manahan, the director of the Makati Medical Center. Dr. Manahan said that though Imelda lost a lot of blood, she was not in shock. Her wounds in her arms and hands were not serious but she would have to remain in the hospital.

Tatad also mentioned that two other people were wounded in the attack. Jose Aspiras, then congressman and eventually Marcos’s tourism minister, was hacked in the head, and Linda Amor Robles, secretary of the National Beautification and Cleanliness Council, was stabbed in the left side of her back, near her rib cage. Both were attended to by the doctors at the Makati Medical Center. They survived their injuries.

On Dec. 9, 1972, Dr. Robert A. Chase of Stanford University School of Medicine came to check on Imelda. When US President Richard Nixon called on Marcos and offered his commiseration right after the attack, he also told Marcos that he will be sending over Dr. Chase. He gave Imelda a neurology exam to see if her arms and hands were working after the surgery. Imelda passed the test. Dr. Chase admired the work done by Imelda’s physicians. He left the same day he arrived.

Imelda was released from hospital on the night of Dec. 10, 1972. She returned to Malacañang to recuperate.

Who Was Carlito Dimailig?

They never seem to get his name right—or simply did not bother to. Press reports right after the attack, once his name was released to the media, identified him as Carlito Dimaali, Carlito Dimmali, and Carlito Dimahilig. In Katherine Ellison’s Imelda: Steel Butterfly of the Philippines (1988), he was not even identified. Beatriz Romualdez Francia, in Imelda: A Story of the Philippines (1988), merely copied the name given to him by Remedios F. Ramos, E. Arsenio Manuel, Florentino H. Hornedo, and Norma G. Tiangco in Si Malakas at si Maganda (1980): Carlito Limailig.

James Hamilton-Paterson in America’s Boy (1998) is another example of these authors who do not let a name get in the way of their story. “His name was later given variously as Carlito Dimaali or Limaili, believed to be either a Moslem from the south with a grievance or a resident of Batangas with no personal motivation.”

But Marcos knew exactly who Carlito Dimailig was in less than 24 hours after his attempt on Imelda’s life.

When Marcos wrote in his diary about the assassination attempt on Imelda, he made a marginal note on the upper-left hand corner of his diary that he was writing the Dec. 7, 1972, entry “at 5:30 PM Dec. 8, 1972 at the Makati Medical Center, Room 904 where Imelda stays and where I slept.”

“While the assailant—a Carlitos [sic] Dimailig geodetic engineer of Calaca, Batangas, working in Davao may have been alone in the attack I believe he was only an instrument of vengeance or assassination.”

Marcos’s knowledge of Carlito could have come from Brig. Gen. Fabian C. Ver, the commanding general of the Presidential Security Command.

Among the digitized files of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) are Ver’s notes on Carlito written on the Presidential Security Command’s notepad.

Carlito’s sister, Dr. Thelma Dimailig, was a psychiatrist at the Veteran’s Memorial Hospital. She saw on television what Carlito did. Ver reported that she “rushed to Nayon Pilipino to identify the body” since “her brother had been under her care.” The Dimailigs were from Brgy. Puting Bato, Calaca, Batangas.

From Nayong Pilipino, Carlito’s body was brought to the NBI morgue. Found on him, according to Ver’s notes, were PHP 26.45, a St. Jude novena book, a 6 by 1 inches red ribbon bearing the marking “D’Originals-1971,” and some white pills (that Ver identified as “buenamin”).

In the PCGG files, next to Ver’s notes are two sheets of paper. The first one is a stationery marked “Office of the President of the Philippines.” It has these jottings: 1965 Mandaluyong—,

Hosp patient—, Geodetic Eng—, Godofredo Limbo—, Metrica, Sampaloc—. The second one is a torn slip of paper with the following notes: [possibly a four-digit number, a year, and a first name now unreadable for this was where the paper was torn] Dimailig, Carlito Dimahilig [the “h” scratched out], Calaca, Batangas—, Sister – a doctor working in Vet Memorial Hosp, schizophrenic. Written at the lower portion of the slip were possibly telephone numbers. These were scratched out. Both are in Marcos’s handwriting.

With Ver’s and Marcos’s notes are other reports on Carlito’s profile.

A licensed geodetic engineer

Carlito was indeed a licensed geodetic engineer. A graduate of the Manuel Luis Quezon School of Engineering.

On March 21, 1969, he was hired as head surveyor at the Masara Project of Samar Mining Co. On September 1, 1969, a work supervisor reported Carlito to the main office of Elizalde & Co., Inc. as he was “acting very queer and it seems that he is mentally and emotionally disturbed” suggesting that “he be recalled to take a rest for about a month.” The supervisor feared that “he might hurt himself or others.” The following day, the supervisor noted in his report that Carlito had “returned to normal senses” and with a colleague was going back to Manila. Another supervisor attributed his “disturbance” to his “excessive drinking.” While in Manila by the end of September 1969, he promised “not to drink anymore . . . on his word of honor” and wanted to go back to work. Elizalde’s company refused. From then until that tragic day on Dec. 7, 1972, he was employed at Limbo Surveying at Metrica, Sampaloc, Manila.

Ver noted that Godofredo Limbo, his immediate employer, described Carlito as “a silent man, diligent, and weak-hearted.”

On Dec. 9, 1972, the Marcos-controlled press reported that authorities identified the assailant, but his identity was not to be mentioned in news reports yet. The foreign press was not as keen to follow this restriction. The next day’s Sunday Express almost bragged about a scoop as if it mattered in the censored press. “The Express learned from unimpeachable sources in the military the identity of the slain assailant and his other personal circumstances just a few hours after the attempt on the life of the First Lady was made.”

But just like the journalists and historians who wrote about the attempt on Imelda’s life, Marcos and his men proceeded to craft a more devious tale that made Carlito Dimailig’s identity irrelevant on who the Marcoses must punish and why.

Turning a threat into a tortured tale of conspiracies

Malacañang’s initial statement right after the attack on Imelda was matter-of-factly. In twelve sparse sentences it reported what happened, that “the president was shocked beyond words at the news.” It did not speculate on anything since “an investigation is in progress. The identity and motive of the assailant will be made known after the proper investigation has been made.”

In the morning of Dec. 8, 1972, after a thanksgiving mass at the Makati Medical Center, Marcos gave a few remarks to the press. He said he wished that he was with Imelda when the attack happened. That he should have been able to defend her.

“All I can say is that we are more determined than ever to remove all causes of criminality and disorder in our society.”

“I am all the more resolved, she and I, to proceed with the program to eradicate and eliminate all the threats against the stability of our society and to push through the reformation program.”

“When we undertook this experiment, we knew we would pay a price but I cannot forgive myself that it had to be her to pay such a price.”

 But a few hours later, Marcos would be writing in his diary that the attempted assassination on Imelda was, in fact, all about him.

“Carlito Dimaila [Dimailig] of Calaca, Batangas, the assassin, was reported to have asked his sister, ‘How is it to kill the President.’ So he must have been after me.”

Kit Tatad, his public information secretary, mirrored Marcos’s mental calisthenics.

In his press briefing on the night of Dec. 7, 1972, notwithstanding Malacañang’s official statement, Tatad started peddling the story that the assassin’s real target was Marcos and not Imelda.

“Tatad said telephone callers had asked the Presidential Palace if Marcos was to be at the ceremony, perhaps indicating that he might have been the intended target,” the United Press International wrote in its Dec. 8, 1972 dispatch. The Times Journal of the same date continued Tatad’s tale on why anonymous persons were calling Malacañang and were keen to know the Marcos’s itinerary for the day. Because “up to the hour of departure for the Nayong Pilipino yesterday, it was not known to Malacañang aides whether the President would attend the affair.”

In an interview given an hour later to that of Tatad, Lorenzo J. Cruz, assistant secretary of public information, rung again the telephone tale. “It can be said now that since 3:30 this afternoon the study room of Malacanang has been receiving inquiries as to whether the president was going to Nayong Pilipino, although it was clearly announced that only the First Lady was going there in connection with the award ceremony for the beautification project.” It must be mentioned also that a printed program and a brochure for the awarding ceremony were made bearing only Imelda’s name.

With the media sicced on its way, it was only a matter of time before they dug up stories that suspiciously resembled what Marcos wrote in his diary.

From the Reuter-United Press International, Dec. 8, 1972: “Government investigators said the assailant apparently attacked Mrs. Marcos as a substitute for the president. Authorities identified him as Carlito Dimaali and said he lived about 60 miles from Manila. Capt. Ricardo Villanueva, heading the investigation into the attack, said Dimaali’s two sisters and a man tentatively identified as a brother were arrested and being questioned. Dimaali made statements to his sisters before the attack, investigators said, which indicated that he wanted to kill President Marcos. Investigators said Dimaali apparently thought Marcos was going to hand out prizes at an outdoor ceremony near Manila. His wife went to the ceremony instead.”

In the martial law-era crony press, there was no mention of Marcos enjoying a game of golf in the palace grounds while his wife was getting stabbed. What it reported was more of what Tatad told them to. Bulletin Today, Dec. 8, 1972: “What appeared very clear, according to Tatad, was that the assailant was able to go up the stage. He said that for the assassin to reach close to the First Lady required ‘some sort of cover.’ This would indicate, according to Tatad, that the assailant was not alone.”

The facile conclusion was: if the assassin was not alone, then it’s a conspiracy. Or even better: conspiracies.

 In the same Dec. 7, 1972 evening press briefing, the Agence France-Presse reported that the government, through Tatad, “blamed a rightist conspiracy” for the failed assassination attempt. He “told newsmen this was borne out by confessions made by persons under martial law detention.” According to Tatad, these persons were “previously linked to an alleged plot to kill Mr Marcos ultimately leading to a rightist coup d’etat . . . the inclusion of Mrs Marcos as an object of assassination was not previously divulged . . . in order not to duly alarm the people.” The supposed confessions notwithstanding, “the plot continues, it is still active, and elements connected with this plot are still in Manila, Mr Tatad added.”

The next day, Dec. 8, 1972, Tatad delivered a speech at the opening of the conference on “Business Prospects” at the Plaza Restaurant in Makati. Here he laid out what the story must be. This mainly fed into the reports of the international press.

An assassin’s attempt on the life of Mrs. Marcos, the First Lady, put our nation on notice that we have not entirely subdued the political passion, the bitterness, and the violence that have long sought to claim the life of our President, in the hands of his enemies.

“The undertaking we began on September 21 will continue to mobilize the enemies. They will persist in the belief that their goals can be achieved by putting an end to the lives of our leaders. They will persist in the belief that their control of government can only be founded on the death of the President.”

“So until the conspiracy against the leadership—the conspiracy that began in December 1969—is fully liquidated, it can only be expected to continue. For we can dispossess all men of their weapons, but we can never completely purge all men of their hate. Seven times the

conspirators made an attempt on the life of President Marcos from early 1970 to this date; the plot not having succeeded and not having been fully terminated, continues.”

“Why then this attack on the First Lady at this time? . . . They perhaps believed that having been hurt where the essence of a man’s life lies, he would now be deranged as a leader, and would blindly loose an anger that would destroy everything in its path; that would ultimately make his life and office meaningless to the very people who have given him support. None of these will come to pass.”

Media lapped up conspiracy angle feed

In Marcos’s diary entry for Dec. 9, 1972, there is a sentence fragment: “And the story of the confessions on the rightist coup d’etat.” Marcos did not become deranged with anger, he was back to his old calculating self, spinning tales that will enhance his dictatorial powers.

Tatad worked both the crony and the foreign press on the conspiracy angle.

The Associated Press posted on Dec. 9, 1972: “A joint military operation was also reported to have rounded up 85 persons in the greater Manila area in connection with the attempt on Mrs. Marcos, Tatad announced. No details about Dimaali were released and it was not reported if he was connected with the alleged conspirators, whose arrest was announced today. Tatad identified the conspirators as Eduardo Figuerras, Antonio Arevalo and Manuel Crisologo. Other than describing Crisologo as an ‘explosive expert,’ Tatad did not give any more details. Tatad said: ‘Because of incriminating evidence’ linking them to the conspiracy, the following were also detained by the military: Sergio Osmeña, III, oldest son of former Sen. and incumbent Cebu Mayor Sergio Osmeña Jr. The young Osmeña is a grandson of Philippine Commonwealth President Sergio Osmeña. Jesus Cabarrus Jr., executive vice president of the Marinduque Mining and Industrial Corp., who is married to the young Osmeña’s oldest sister. Eugenio Lopez Jr., publisher of the Manila Chronicle and president of its radio and television network. He is also a vice president of Meralco, the power company whose management is controlled by his family. He is nephew of incumbent Vice President Fernando Lopez.”

Not to be outdone, the blaring headline of the Dec. 10, 1972 issue of the Sunday Express said it all: “Osmeña, Cabarrus, Lopez scions held on slay-FM plot; Eddie Figueras, two others confess.”

In three days, Marcos and Tatad managed to shift the narrative away from Imelda and now almost solely on Marcos and those conspiring against him.

Marcos had been talking about threats to his life. On Dec. 27, 1969, a month after he won reelection to the presidency, United Press International quoted him as saying that death threats were “standard hazards of the presidency.” Yet after declaring martial law, Marcos’s propaganda harped on the attempts on Marcos’s life and how all these have failed. The important point being conveyed was the naming of enemies that the dictatorship must go after having threatened the president’s life. On Oct. 18, 1972, the Associated Press reported that “four attempts to kill President Ferdinand E. Marcos this year failed and a fifth was frustrated by alert security men.”

“I am amazed at the plot to assassinate me and its intricacies,” Marcos wrote in his diary on December 2, 1972. “They were even going to use a grenade inside a mike (microphone) I was going to speak through in public and a model plane loaded with liquid explosives to be bumped against me or my helicopter or plane. I attached copies of the sworn statements of Eugenio Lopez Jr., Sergio Osmeña III.”

No such verifiable statement was ever written and sworn to by either Lopez and Osmeña. Without a warrant and any charge, Marcos had the two of them arrested on November 27, 1972. Two years later, on November 18, 1974, they staged a hunger strike. On its ninth day, they were verbally informed by their jailers that in August 1973, charges were drawn against them for conspiring to assassinate Marcos. How could Lopez and Osmeña confess in writing about anything on December 2, 1972 when it was not until two years later were they informed on why they were taken into military custody?

The jailing of Lopez and Osmeña was a squeeze play by Marcos designed not only to do away with his political opponents, but more so to extract from them their wealth and give them away as bonanza to his cronies. This is particularly true in the case of the Lopezes.

But the attempt on Imelda’s life was not only made an excuse to go after the oligarch that he hated, Marcos also used it to implicate the communist insurgents. Marcos had a conspiracy on the right, a conspiracy on the left, and everyone in between was also fair game.

Ver, in his notes, mentioned that on “080825 Dec, Sgt Balmoha of the San Juan detachment received a tel call which was taped—‘Papatayin namin sila lahat.’ A similar call was received by Sgt Sta Cruz at Calixto Dyco detachment.” Ver recommended “that all members of the First Family and immediate relatives be cautioned to undertake precautionary measures and avoid unnecessary public exposure until the situation has stabilized.”

A Dec. 11, 1972, United Press International report had Tatad saying: “The conspiracy included a plan to kidnap Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to force the release of political prisoners and the resignation of President Marcos.”

In the “Eleventh Progress Report re Attempt Against the Life of the First Lady” by the CIS [Criminal Investigation Service] on Dec. 16, 1972, there was already an insinuation that there were people, if not a group, behind Carlito.

On 16 Dec 72, Mr Francisco Dimailig, with her two daughters, Dra Thelma Dimailig and Mrs Sonia de Ala, gave to the CIS an opened letter postmarked ‘Manila 12 Dec 72’ addressed to Mrs Josefa Dimailig in Calaca, Batangas, which they received by mail in Calaca on [15] Dec 72, the contents of which is a poem in Tagalog and Carlito Dimailig is the subject. Efforts will be exerted by the CIS, in coordination with ISAFP, to trace and arrest the author and sender of said letter.

The six-stanza poem tells Carlito’s mother to be proud of what her son did. “Huwag kang malungkot, pahirin ang luha / Itaas ang noo, huwag mahihiya / Ang iyong Carlito’y magiging dakila / Sa kasaysayan ng ating inang bansa.” The poem talks about killing not only Imelda, but also Marcos. “Si Imelda’t Marcos, ugat ng hilahil / Masakit man sa loob, dapat na putulin.” The poem concludes that with Carlito’s sacrifice, “Ang pakikibaka ay muling lalawak.” In between stanzas are crude rendering of the hammer and sickle. Opposite the name of the poem’s author “Commander Ruel Necy” is a raised arm holding an upturned rifle.

Assassination attempt story morphed into revolution in the making

On Dec.14, 1972, a United Press International report citing “official government sources” disclosed that the attempt on Imelda’s life “was part of a Communist urban guerilla plot to attack the presidential palace and other strategic installations. Sources said the plot fizzled out when the knife-wielding attacker failed to kill Imelda R. Marcos . . . Evidence gathered by government investigators, the sources said, indicated that Mrs. Marcos’ assassination was to have been the signal for simultaneous Communist attacks on Malacanang Palace, military installations and vital public utilities. They said the raids were mapped out to take advantage of the ensuing confusion after her killing.”

On Dec. 15, 1972, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, carrying another United Press International report, had it headlined: “Philippine revolution plot foiled.” “Sources said government evidence on the plot was bolstered by the discovery of a cache of more than 300 high-powered firearms, several rocket launchers, more than 65,000 rounds of ammunition, nine drums of fragmentation grenades and voluminous Communist propaganda materials. The arms, buried in strategic places in metropolitan Manila, were to be used by Communist urban guerillas ‘at a given signal from their leaders’.”

Four years later, on March 29, 1977, Marcos decreed it a crime punishable by death to “attempt on, or [conspire] against the life of the chief executive of the Republic of the Philippines, any member of his cabinet or their families.” Which he further expanded on Nov.11, 1980 to include members of “the Interim Batasang Pambansa, the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Commissions, general officers of major services and commands of the Armed Forces of the Philippines or any member of their families, or who uses any firearms or deadly weapons against the person of any of the government officials enumerated herein, or any member of his family.” Cory Aquino repealed these Marcos edicts saying that the “crime of Lese Majeste has no place in a democratic society.”

It was never proven that Carlito Dimailig was part of any conspiracy.

Originally published by Vera Files on November 19, 2024

There is something oddly appropriate about relatives of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.—namely his cousin, Philippine ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez and his sister, Sen. Imee Marcos—expressing concern about their undocumented countrymen being deported from the US under another Trump presidency, given that the American government once wanted a US-based Bongbong to return to his homeland following, of all things, a traffic violation.

In his congratulatory message to US president-elect Donald Trump, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. said he had “personally met President Trump as a young man, so [he knows] that his robust leadership will result in a better future for all of us.” When that meeting happened is unclear, but Bongbong was definitely based in the US twice between his 20s and early 30s. He was there, in exile, with most of the members of his family after the EDSA Revolution; he met his wife-to-be Liza Araneta in New York City, where she worked as a lawyer, while his mother, Imelda Marcos, was on trial there for bank fraud and racketeering. He was in the courtroom when Imelda was acquitted.

Even earlier, between late 1979 and the early 1980s, Bongbong was also based in the US, being a student at Trump’s alma mater, the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania. While in the US at that time, he lived in a house in Cherry Hill, Camden County, New Jersey—about a 20-25-minute drive from Wharton—purchased, with international banker and former American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines head Tristan Beplat as ostensible owner, and maintained using the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth.

When his mother was in town—on official business, or for her state-funded shopping sprees—she preferred staying at the Waldorf Towers in New York City. As Bongbong relayed during his first visit to the US as president on September 19, 2022, he would travel through the New Jersey Turnpike when he visited New York from Cherry Hill at that time.

Bongbong’s statement calls to mind these overseas dealings of the Marcoses a few years before the ouster of Ferdinand Sr. It also makes one think about how little Bongbong has publicly said about that time in his life. His profile in his official website simply says that after his time in Oxford University (1975-1978), he “subsequently enrolled at the Wharton School of Business for a Master of Business Administration. It says his stay in Wharton was eventually cut short after he was elected in 1980 as Vice Governor of his home province, Ilocos Norte”—a factual error, as records and news accounts show he was apparently in the US for most of 1980 until about early 1982.

So, what exactly did young Bongbong do in the US during that time (most of 1980 until about early 1982)?

Forty-two years ago, a well-syndicated story from the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service brought to light an incident that is intriguing, to say the least—criminal, to be more accurate—involving a twentysomething US-based Bongbong. Looking back at the incident and the circumstances connected to it highlights how little Bongbong has publicly disclosed about his activities during his father’s dictatorship.

The story was first published by the Los Angeles Times under the title “Accused Korean Diplomat Gives Protocol a Workout” on November 15, 1982. Written by Doyle McManus, the article focused on Nam Chol Oh, a member of the North Korean observer group at the United Nations, who had been accused of attempting to rape an American woman at a park in New York State. Though a warrant for Oh’s arrest had been issued, diplomatic immunity shielded him from American authorities as long as he holed up inside the apartment where the North Korean mission maintained their offices and residences. The delegation refused to surrender Oh to the police. McManus gave a few other instances of foreigners abusing diplomatic immunity, including “the son of the president of the Philippines.”

Guns found in Bongbong’s car

According to McManus, in 1981,

“Ferdinand Marcos Jr….was stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike for driving well over the speed limit. The state trooper who pulled over young Marcos, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, was startled to see a semiautomatic rifle on the back seat and a revolver strapped to the leg of the young woman in the passenger seat.

“Marcos showed a diplomatic passport and the trooper waved him on. ‘Standard procedure,’ said the spokesman for the New Jersey State Police.

“Except, the State Department says, that young Marcos was not registered as a diplomatic agent of his country. He did not really have diplomatic immunity — just a foolproof way to beat a speeding ticket.”

Engagement with Belgian model

The identity of the “young woman” has not been disclosed. Earlier that year, in April, the Agence France-Presse, in articles published in newspapers such as the South China Morning Post and the Straits Times, reported that Bongbong was engaged to marry a Belgian model named Dominique Misson-Peltzer, as announced by her family. The South China Morning Post version of the story said that she was the daughter of a retired lieutenant-colonel, and that she and Bongbong met 18 months prior, or around November 1979, a few months after Bongbong started attending Wharton.

In a May 1981 issue of Asiaweek, Ferdinand Sr. said that the engagement was untrue. Quoting his son, he told Asiaweek that Bongbong “has no plans to marry anybody right now,” but confirmed that Ferdinand Jr. “dated the girl.” But a July 1982 communication from Saudi Arabian businessman Khalid A. Alireza to Bongbong—among the digitized files of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG)—mentions Marcos Jr.’s “fiancée, Dominique,” and a trip to Lake Tahoe they apparently all took together.

At least five other newspapers in the US carried McManus’s article. The Marcos crony-controlled press in the Philippines likely did not say anything about the revelation that Bongbong had a brush with the law in the US. However, readers of the opposition-aligned We Forum, specifically the newspaper’s November 26-28 issue, were treated to the entire section on Bongbong in McManus’s article through a column by publisher Jose Burgos.

In his article, titled “An Interesting Item on ‘Bongbong’ Marcos,” Burgos explained that that tidbit about Bongbong came from an LA Times clipping that he received two weeks after it was published. Burgos did not make any further comment on Bongbong’s New Jersey incident; if he had intended to do a follow up investigation, he would not have had an outlet to publish his findings, as We Forum was shut down on December 7, 1982 for publishing articles that supposedly discredited, insulted, or ridiculed the president “to such an extent that it would inspire his assassination.” Chief among these were the serialized version of a story on Ferdinand Sr.’s fake wartime heroism and medals, which was written by Bonifacio Gillego. We Forum resumed publication only in January 1985.

Even if news about Bongbong being pulled over in the US reached Philippine shores, it seems that nobody here thought to make much of it. It was probably not surprising to anyone in the Philippines that the extremely privileged son of the dictator violated traffic laws abroad with impunity. Perhaps indicative of the opinion on Bongbong at the time is this excerpt from a declassified airgram from the United States Consulate in Cebu, subject “Students in Cebu: Non-Revolutionary Critics of the New Society,” dated June 27, 1979:

“Perhaps the sharpest criticism is aimed at Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. (Bongbong), who is widely seen by Cebuano students as being groomed by the President to be his successor. It is common to hear comments among students in Cebu about the ‘Marcos Dynasty’. Bongbong’s recent brief tour of duty with the Philippine Army, his immediate designation as a second lieutenant, the special award bestowed on him by the Philippine Military Academy, his earlier appointment as a ‘Special Assistant’ to his father, and his receiving a ‘special diploma’ from Oxford — suggesting incomplete studies — all provide opportunities for sharp criticism and sarcastic comments.”

Though he received a “Special Diploma in Social Studies” from Oxford University, he was able to enter the Master of Business Administration program at Wharton. As explained in a VERA Files article published in 2021, it was through the intervention of Filipino diplomats and business connections that Bongbong started studying at Wharton in August 1979. He was expected to finish his studies between 1980-1981, even after he was elected vice governor of Ilocos Norte in January 1980.

Being a (non-functional) local elected official would not have automatically conferred upon him diplomatic immunity. Being an attaché to the Philippine Mission to the United Nations—which was from 1979-1980—did. It is possible that Bongbong flashed an expired diplomatic passport, acquired from the time he was purportedly a “military adviser” to the Philippine UN Mission, in front of the officer that pulled him over in 1981.

When, exactly, did the incident happen? The exact date can be found in a declassified US Department of State cable, with the subject “Weekly Status Report – Philippines,” dated August 19, 1981. Item number one in the cable is the arrival of first lady Imelda Marcos in the US on August 14. The cable noted that she was apparently seeking appointments with Vice President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, but at that time, “she and her entourage are still essentially on their own vacation in New York and have done very little except in a social way since arrival.” The second item is titled “Marcos’ Son to the West Indies.” The item is reproduced here in full:

“Ferdinand (“Bong Bong”) Marcos, Jr. left New York August 18 for a visit of unknown duration to the island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies. Bong Bong has had discussions with his father and, presumably, with his mother since her arrival in New York in the wake of the August 12 New Jersey Turnpike episode” (emphasis added).

This information was attributed to James Nach of the US Embassy in Manila’s political section. The cable, sent by US state department Country Director for Philippine Affairs Frazier Meade, was addressed to John Holdridge, Assistant Secretary of State of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. At the time, the US did not have an ambassador to the Philippines; days before the turnpike incident, on August 5, 1981, Ambassador Richard Murphy bade goodbye to Ferdinand Sr. at Malacañang.

The son ‘was a problem’

The next US ambassador, Michael Armacost, started his tenure in March 1982. According to a 1999 interview with him by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training,

“My initial contacts with him [Ferdinand Sr.] as ambassador were a little rocky. The first instruction—or one of my earliest—was to go to see Marcos to tell him that his son was a problem. He had been arrested for speeding on one of the interstates in the East while working in the United States. The police also found contraband—drugs or guns—in the car. The officials in the States (United States) were obviously not interested in publicizing this event; on the other hand, they could not let the matter go unnoticed. So, I had to go see the father to ask that he bring his son home. That was not a pleasant task under any circumstances; it was particularly unhelpful as a new ambassador’s first act.”

If his recollection was correct, then Bongbong was still based in the US seven months after the turnpike incident, and he was apparently “a problem” not only because of a speeding violation.

What was Bongbong still doing in the US at that time? His Wharton transcript indicates that he last enrolled at the school during the fall term (around August-December) of 1981, though he did not earn any course credits. That meant that he was not a student anymore in 1982. Jose Burgos, in his column for We Forum’s November 29-30, 1982 issue, noted that Bongbong became acting governor of Ilocos Norte that month, after the incumbent governor, his aunt Elizabeth Marcos-Keon, went on “indefinite sick leave”; Bongbong would succeed his aunt as governor about four months later. What he was preoccupied with between December 1981 and November 1982 remains unclear.

US investigates flow of guns through diplomatic channels

Another news item, an exclusive of Camden, New Jersey’s Courier-Post, both provides a possible explanation for the guns he was found with when he was pulled over in August 1981 and what he may have been involved in before he became primarily based in the Philippines again in late 1982. Written by the Courier-Post‘s Bob Collins, the August 2, 1982 article noted that the US was investigating “the flow of American-made weapons out of the country through diplomatic channels,” which involved at least two residents in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

“The Cherry Hill men are bodyguards to Ferdinand ‘Bong Bong’ Marcos, son of the president of the Philippines,” Collins wrote. “Marcos has lived in Cherry Hill since he became a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 1979, although he no longer attends the school,” he continued.

The two bodyguards were identified as Carlos Paredes and John Velasco. A John Francis Velasco is included in the US Department of State’s Diplomatic List from 1984 to 1986, identified as an attaché of the Embassy of the Philippines in Washington, D.C. An article in the November 12, 1986 issue of National Midweek, written by Bonifacio Gillego, says that Velasco was actually a military intelligence officer, with AFP serial number 0-5867, listed as an attaché since 1980, and that he “commuted between Washington, D.C. and New York, with New York as his area of intelligence jurisdiction.”

Gillego added: “When Bongbong Marcos was studying at Wharton, Velasco and Charlie Paredes, another army man, provided him with security, drawing personnel from the Philippine Embassy in Washington. It seems that these enlisted men-bodyguards were amply rewarded for their canine servitude to the dictator’s son. Most of them [as of November 1986] are still in Washington, D.C. and New York.”

The Americans knew all about these intelligence-gathering “diplomats.” Among the files in the Digital National Security Archive is a document labele” [FBI Lists Philippine Intelligence Officers in the United States along with Their Diplomatic “Covers”].” It is a confidential cable from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, dated August 17, 1981. Several persons are described therein as falling “under headings of ‘Area of Operation: PH [Philadelphia, where Wharton is] and New Jersey,’” including “Capt. Johnny Velasco” described as a “P.S.C. Officer,” and “son of former Gen. Segundo Velasco,” whose “cover is an attaché (at the A.F.A.O., Phil. Embassy in Washington).” The list does not include a Charles or Charlie Paredes, but does include a “Major Arsenio Paredes, also described as a “P.S.C. Officer” whose “cover is a civilian employee in the Consulate-Chicago.”

The FBI cable also mentions “Major Julian Antolin (National Intelligence and Security Officer, N.I.S.A. [National Intelligence and Security Authority, then headed by General Fabian Ver]” whose cover was “an attaché to the United Nations.” Antolin is listed with Bongbong In the December 1979 edition of the Permanent Missions to the United States: Officers Entitled to Diplomatic Privileges and Immunities. Another Cherry Hill house—in Capshire Drive, a short walk from the Pendleton Drive one—where Bongbong’s bodyguards stayed was purchased in Antolin’s name, before it was transferred to Irwin Ver, Fabian’s son. Both houses have since been sold.

Besides guarding Bongbong, the main mission of Velasco and Paredes, among others, was to gather information about and disrupt the anti-Marcos opposition in the United States. Gillego, a former military man himself, described how these men operated in his Midweek article: “In the language of their clandestine trade, these military personnel masquerading as diplomatic or consular officials were case or project officers. Each developed his own network of agents and informants recruited from among the members of various anti-Marcos organizations in the United States.” The penetration agents were “assigned to obtain critical information; to sow discord and promote intrigues; to sabotage operations of these organizations and compromise them with US authorities,” Gillego wrote.

Collins, in his Courier-Post article, described another suspected activity of Velasco and Paredes in this manner: “one federal investigator said it involves ‘a sort of sophisticated form of gun-running’ in which foreign nationals take advantage of legitimate loopholes in federal and state firearms laws….[the investigation] is believed to center on the purchase of an estimated 75-80 handguns over a two-year period. Federal government agents believe the Filipinos may have been black-marketing the guns in their homeland, using profits from the sales to finance frequent trips to the Philippines.”

According to Collins, Paredes and Velasco in particular were “believed to have made a series of gun purchases” in a store in Pennsylvania, about 16 kilometers from where Bongbong studied, “each time relying on a letter from the Philippine consul general’s office as the authority needed to obtain the weapons.” They preferred buying in Pennsylvania because the gun laws there were more lax than in New Jersey and New York. The deputy consul at the Philippine consul general’s office in New York explained that they were only permitted to “take up to four weapons out of the United States at one time.”

Collins further noted that from available information, “several of the guns acquired by Marcos’ men are the type specifically preferred by police, particularly undercover agents who require weapons that can be easily concealed.” Collins tried to reach Paredes, Velasco, and Bongbong for comment, but these efforts were “unsuccessful.” According to Collins, no charges were filed “because of the immunity granted by the United States to visiting foreign dignitaries” and “the long history of friendly relations between the United States and the Philippines.”

It seems likely that the story did not gain more traction, partly because of the state visit of Ferdinand Sr. to the United States in September 1982. Bongbong, along with his sister Irene, apparently also a student at the University of Pennsylvania at the time, accompanied their parents during the state visit. As reported by the Associated Press, on the last day of their US tour, Imelda headed to Philadelphia to visit the University of Pennsylvania where two of her children “attend the Wharton School of Finance.”

Could 2nd Lieutenant Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Presidential Security Command, AFP serial number 0-113885, have also been a “case or project officer” who engaged in gunrunning on the side? Although Bongbong infamously failed to file his income tax returns back when he was vice governor and governor of Ilocos Norte in the 1980s, among the digitized files of the PCGG is an ITR filed in 1981 for salaries and allowances that he had received as an AFP officer in 1980. He received over PHP 4,550.00—over PHP 120,000.00 today. Was he “on duty” then while ostensibly an attaché and a graduate student?

At the very least, it seems unlikely that he did not know about the activities of his fellow “attachés.” He knew about the people they were monitoring. Businessman and opposition leader Steve Psinakis, in his book Two Terrorists Meet, recounted a brief encounter with Bongbong during his infamous December 19, 1980 meeting with Imelda at the Waldorf in New York. After Psinakis had discoursed with Imelda for almost two hours, Bongbong entered the lavish suite where the meeting was taking place. Psinakis made light of rumors that Bongbong was being targeted by the anti-Marcos opposition in the US, which he denied. Psinakis later learned that, while Bongbong was still outside the suite, upon learning that Psinakis was talking to his mother, the young Marcos said, “Oh! This is the fellow who is going to kill me. I want to see him.”

Bongbong has repeatedly distanced himself from abuses and atrocities committed during his father’s time. But has he really explained what he did for his father during the dictatorship?

Originally published by Vera Files on November 11, 2024

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. was spinning a tale when he talked about his father’s Bicol River Basin Development Project during a situation briefing on Oct. 26 in Naga City on the massive floods unleashed by severe tropical storm Kristine.

“Itong mga lugar, mga Batangas, mga Cavite, nawala kaagad ang tubig. Dito, hindi nawawala ang tubig. But that’s the proverbial problem of the Bicol River Basin,” he said. “So, we have to find the long-term solution.” (In Batangas, Cavite, the water was gone quickly. But here, the flood has remained)

Marcos said he is studying the problem and found that in 1973, during his father’s presidency, there was the Bicol River Basin Development Project (BRBDP) funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, and Japan’s then Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency, with the European Union included in the planning.

He said he read a study by someone from the University of the Philippines which found that despite some challenges, the project helped a lot. “Iyon lamang hindi natapos. In 1986, when the government changed, nawala na iyong project, so basta’t natigil. So, we have to revisit it now,” he added. (But it was not completed. In 1986, when the government changed, the project disappeared, it just stopped.)

Bongbong repeated his line concerning the BRBDP’s demise in a media interview after the briefing, saying the project helped in flood control, but that it was abandoned after the change in government in 1986.

In response to Bongbong waxing nostalgic about the BRBDP during his father’s time, Manuel Bonoan, secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways, noted during the briefing that the Philippine-Korean Project Facilitation project -the  Bicol River Basin Flood Control Project- was updated only this July 2024 including the feasibility study for the flood control program. “So, by early next year, we will be doing the detailed engineering design,” he said.

Bonoan’s response may have been intended to assure the president that there were still big-ticket Bicol River Basin projects today, just like the time of Marcos’ father. Still, it did not exactly refute Bongbong’s claim that the BRBDP was abruptly stopped after the 1986 People Power Revolution. Nobody during the briefing challenged the president’s assertion.

Flowing with the President’s fiction

So far, neither has any mainstream news outlet. The Philippine Daily Inquirer published an article titled “Marcos Draws Focus to Bicol River, Recalls Father’s Halted Project,” on October 27. It noted the exchange between Marcos and Bonoan but did not counter the claim that the program was discontinued after Marcos Sr. was deposed. Philstar.com uncritically quoted Bongbong’s claims regarding the BRBDP verbatim. An article published in GMA News Online went a step further: it fully supported Marcos’s claim, citing an interview with Bonoan. According to the article, “Launched in the 1970s under the administration of late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the BRBDP was a geography-based development initiative for the Bicol Region. However, it was halted in 1986 when the Corazon Aquino administration took over.”

The closest to a counterclaim by someone from the media came from investigative journalist Raissa Robles, who tweeted, “Kung natigil man ang BRBDP, hindi dajil sa Cory govt, which is what MJr is implying. Blame the Villafuertes who have been in power there.” (Had the BRBDP been stopped, it was not because of the Cory government)

Decentralization and reorganization

Factually, Cory Aquino’s Executive Order no. 374 on Oct. 30, 1989 shut down the BRBDP Office along with integrated area development (IAD) offices in Bohol, Cagayan, and Mindoro. But not simply because it was a Marcos project; Aquino’s order stated that the closure of these offices was due to the reorganization of regional development councils (RDCs) and the strengthening of local governments in line with the 1987 Constitution. “[S]pecific elements of decentralization now render feasible the shift in the institutional arrangements for the IADs, where the RDCs and LGUs concerned may now assume active responsibility and authority over the same,” said one of the order’s “whereas” clauses.

The order creating the BRBDP, Executive Order no. 412, dated May 7, 1973, established a national-level Bicol River Basin Council that was under NEDA; Presidential Decree no. 926, dated April 28, 1976, turned over the program to an office under the Cabinet Coordinating Committee on Integrated Rural Development Projects, still under NEDA. Cory’s order turned over the tasks of that national office to the RDC of the Bicol Region and the governors of Camarines Sur and Albay.

In fact, Aquino’s order hewed closely to a principle stated in Marcos Sr.’s presidential decree: “the success of the program requires that the management and planning of the basin area be comprehensive, decentralized, and framed within regional and national plans.”
Decentralization was a governance buzzword at the time the decree was issued. In a book chapter they wrote, scholars G. Shabbir Cheema and Dennis Rondinelli noted that in the 1970s and the 1980s, “globalization forced some governments to recognize the limitations and constraints of central economic planning and management.” This led to what Cheema and Rondinelli called the “first wave of post-World War II thinking on decentralization,” which “focused on deconcentrating hierarchical government structures and bureaucracies.” The Marcos Sr. administration apparently tried to latch onto this trend—in the same way that it tried to adopt other buzzwords such as “human settlements”—but, being a dictatorship, did not fully commit to decentralizing power.

A May 1985 USAID paper, “Integrated Rural Development Projects: A Summary of the Impact Evaluations,” written by Cynthia Clapp-Wincek, explained the BRBDP command structure: “Individual ministries took the lead in implementing activities in their scope of responsibility but coordinated with other ministries where appropriate. There was an advisory committee for private sector involvement, a coordinating committee for provincial governors and regional directors of line agencies. At the local level, there were Area Development Teams with mayors, representatives of the line agency staffs, city legislative councils and BRBDP staff.”

This complex top-down structure resulted in what Clapp-Wincek referred to as impeded momentum: “High political commitment got [the program] moving early on—but momentum was slowed by the elaborate institutional arrangements.” Lost in this bureaucratic quagmire was the voice of the program’s supposed beneficiaries. Clapp-Wincek said that “mayors did not seem to have an intimate understanding of their constituents’ concerns. . . . [there was] little correlation between the ‘issues raised in the minutes of Area Development Team meetings with the issues raised by farmers in their conversations [with USAID’s Bicol IAD evaluation team].’”

Victoria Bautista, in a 1986 Philippine Journal of Public Administration article titled “People Power as a Form of Citizen Participation,” mentioned a 1981 survey that found “only 41 per cent of the respondents [e.g., farmer beneficiaries] acknowledged having participated in deciding the main components included” in the BRBDP; “most physical infrastructure projects chosen for inclusion in the feasibility analysis were taken from inventories of capital projects submitted by the local government for national funding.”

Such were the administrative assessments of the BRBDP Office before it was dissolved. During the Naga City briefing, Bongbong did not specify whose BRBDP study he cited (while speaking about the study, he was holding a few stapled sheets that were separated from a pile of documents by Anton Lagdameo, Special Assistant to the President). If he was referring to Jeanne Frances Illo’s “Models of Area-Based Convergence: Lessons from the Bicol River Basin Development Program (BRBDP) and Other Programs,” published between 2012-13, it’s indeed a paper that has some—not entirely—positive things to say about the program.

Illo noted that the BRBDP was “an early experiment in geography based planning, one that was independent of political administrative boundaries [as planning] and programming were focused in a ‘river basin,’ or a hydrologic area.” Illo affirms that the BRBDP was funded by foreign agencies—tens of millions from USAID and European Economic Community grants and ADB loans. A 1982 article published in Horizons, a USAID publication, said that by that time, the aid agency had “made two grants and five loans totaling $30.4 million to the Philippine government which, itself, has invested about $75 million.”  Bruce Koppel, in a 1987 article titled “Does Integrated Area Development Work? Insights from the Bicol River Basin Development Program,” noted that “The total direct costs of the Program approximate $100 million, but the complete costs are certainly higher.”

Loans dry up, costs balloon but still no flood control

Illo wrote that the “USAID funding for the BRBDP ran for a decade (1973-1983), but the Program itself, or at least some of its components, went on for at least another decade.” Providing another context for Cory Aquino’s closure order, Illo continued: “When the grants and loans dried up, the Program Office was closed”; “[completed] infrastructure projects, however, were maintained and, later, rehabilitated or repaired by technical agencies [the National Irrigation Authority or NIA and DPWH] while the agrarian reform projects were subsumed under the succeeding Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.” So, “basta’t natigil” is patently false.

If Bongbong insists that he is right, perhaps he can continue his studies, reading in particular a report on the Formulation of Integrated River Basin Management and Development Master Plan for Apayao-Abulug River Basin, produced by Woodfields Consultants, Inc. for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in October 2014. The report’s executive summary states,

“From 1973-87, the [Bicol River] basin had been the subject of initiatives for management and development [BRBDP]. Then, from 1989-94, a Bicol River Basin Flood Control and Irrigation Development Program was implemented. A grant from the World Bank (WB) to undertake a master plan was conducted in 2002-03 which led to the creation of a Project Management Office (PMO). The PMO did not survive after the WB support had ceased. The national government, through the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), had re-activated and has repackaged the program and in 2007, the approved program has received national government funding for DPWH and DENR projects. The proposed river basin management council has not seen fruition.”

Funding is a perennial challenge. Writing in 2004 about the Macapagal-Arroyo era efforts, specifically the World Bank-funded Bicol River Basin Watershed Management Project, Juan Escandor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer noted that the Marcos Sr.-era BRBDP “failed to achieve its major output: a huge reservoir in the middle of the Bicol river basin area”; “The national government was forced to abandon the project in 1989 because of the ballooning costs of the infrastructure component estimated in 1992 at $274 million,” Escandor added.

Not that that “major output” was anywhere close to completion before 1986; a 1977 JICA report on the establishment of flood forecasting systems in the Agno, Bicol, and Cagayan River Basins, noted that at that time, “[the] only project under construction is ‘Cut-off No. 3’ which is intended to alter meandering in the vicinity of Naga City.” The “future programs” JICA mentioned, such as “drastic projects such as the dyke system in the lower course, direct drainage from Lake Bato to Ragay Gulf through diversion channels dams in the upper Sipocot river,” were pipe dreams. And they remained so come 1979: the “Bicol Biennial Evaluation” of the Government of the Philippines and BRBDP-USAID, released in August of that year, noted that “projects packaged and funded so far are capital construction infrastructure development, principally roads and irrigation with some institutional development”—not flood control. Concerning the existing efforts, USAID noted that “the overall picture of the Bicol Program test case in Integrated Area Development is mixed.”

Poor engineering design, other project woes

 Moreover, Illo notes that “[poor] engineering design had reportedly plagued the Libmanan IAD Project,” a major USAID-funded BRBDP project that “involved the construction of a 4,000 hectare irrigation and drainage system plus flood control, salt water intrusion protection facilities, and farm access roads in an economically depressed area in the lower Basin that was considered to have high growth potentials.” Other issues that hampered that particular project include “inadequate coordination between the NIA and the BRBDP, environmental damage, and poor institutional development.” Thus, Illo said that “by the end of USAID funding in the mid-1980s, the constructed system was serving only half of the irrigable area.”

Illo also noted that for another BRBDP initiative, the Bicol IAD II project, “NIA installed an electric pump irrigation system in the area, neglecting to consider the cost of electric power that has been consistently much higher than in Metro Manila. The [farmer’s] cooperative ran huge electric bills, and decided to return the pumps to NIA and buy its own crude-oil-powered pumps.” Clearly, the BRBDP was hardly a flat-out success even before “the government changed” in February 1986.

Other sources affirm this. Koppel, in his 1987 article, and Doracie B. Zoleta, in another 1987 article titled “From the Mountains to the Lakebed: Resource Problems and Prospects in Buhi Watershed, Camarines Sur, Philippines,” noted a concerning incident in a project involving the BRBDP called the Buhi-Lalo Upland Development Pilot Project. It initially started well, with farmers undergoing University of the Philippines-led training and participating in local reforestation efforts. However, due to the mishandling of funds, payments to rural workers involved in building the project’s training facilities were delayed by eighteen months. The wage-deprived workers engaged in arson, culminating in the burning down of one of the major facilities in April 1985.

Zoleta’s article, and another source, “Lessons from EIA for Bicol River Development in Philippines,” written by Ramon Abracosa and Leonard Ortolano, also took note of the adverse environmental effects of the BRBDP Lake Buhi water control structure project. Citing a 1983 USAID Report, Abracosa and Ortolano stated that the project resulted in “increasing the frequency of sulphur upwelling and the continuing denudation of the lake’s watershed.” Zoleta noted that this “killed fish, especially those trapped in fish corrals and cages.”

Investigative journalists have also noted how the USAID grants for the BRBDP can in certain instances be considered a form of “tied aid.” According to a 1991 article titled “US Grants: How Free are They?” by Marie Avenir, Lucia Palpal-Iatoc, and Ma. Lourdes M. Reyes of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, USAID provided a grant/soft loan in 1979 to the BRBDP to train “400 barangay health aides in Camarines Sur and Albay to help improve health and nutrition among residents, maintain population growth at a desirable level, and achieve local governments’ self-reliance in health services.” But the financial assistance was not driven entirely by altruistic motives. The journalists noted that the project “virtually became a market for US goods through stipulations that vehicles be bought from the US and drugs and health kits procured for the program be subject to approval of USAID.”

C.P. Filio, in an article published in Manila Standard on Sept. 7,1987, wrote that the BRBDP caught the interest of Americans “because of their desire to showcase their highly successful experience in the Tennessee Valley Authority” in the 1930s. Filio noted the USAID’s 1983 assessment of the program’s agricultural contributions was favorable (and self-serving), but the farmer beneficiaries thought otherwise; Filio claimed that 1985 regional indicators showed that poverty incidence—“73.2 percent of families living below the poverty line”—was highest in the Bicol region, “no thanks to the Bicol River Basin Development Program.”

According to a declassified US State Department cable from 1982, titled “Ambassador’s Visit to the Bicol Region, November 15-16,” officials of the Philippine government—including the BRBDP director and the governors of Albay and Camarines Sur—“were especially receptive to [US Ambassador Michael Armacost’s] proposal that the scope for possible U.S. agribusiness investment in the Bicol provinces be explored.” But this possible penetration of the Philippine agricultural market was seen to be hampered by the “peace and order situation” in Bicol, i.e., the communist insurgency. Another cable, dated Sept. 17, 1982, implied that the insurgency was less present in the “lowland area between Naga and Legaspi” that was covered by the BRBDP, but the “Quezon-Bicol Triangle” between Lucena City and Naga, including the entirety of Camarines Norte, was a hotbed of insurgency and criminality. In short, the US’ focus on the “Bicol River Basin experiment” contributed to uneven development in the region, possibly exacerbating the insurgency in underserved areas right beside the priority areas.

BRBDP did not fold up simply because Marcos Sr. was deposed

Again, even if there were numerous reasons to discontinue the BRBDP after the program’s main sources of funding dried up, or at least to reevaluate it, it definitely did not fold up simply because Marcos Sr. was deposed. In fact, the continuation of the BRBDP after the EDSA revolt was crucial to the political career of Jesse Robredo, husband of former Vice President Leni Robredo, twice a political rival of Bongbong.

According to Takeshi Kawanaka, in his article “The Robredo Style: Philippine Local Politics in Transition,” Jesse Robredo was appointed as Program Director of the BRBDP after the EDSA Revolution. Kawanaka noted how being in the BRBDP helped Robredo gain political capital, with the development planning of Naga City as his last project as director. Robredo rose to become Naga City mayor in 1988.

PIA plagiarizes Jeanne Frances I. Illo 

Again, did Bongbong really have to lie about the BRBDP? It is interesting to note that on the same day as the Naga City briefing, the Philippine Information Agency published an article titled “PBBM’s Bicol Visit Injects Fresh Ideas into Old Dev’t Project.” Without citing any sources, it described the BRBDP as a “$46.8-million [foreign-funded] package” that was criticized because of “its heavy focus on physical infrastructure,” but resulted in “notable development of rural organizations and institutions.” Benefits were supposedly noticed during the “mid-1980s,” specifically because of BRBDP road projects, “as manifested in greater mobility, travel time savings, improved access to markets as well as to medical, educational, and recreational facilities, and trade.” The article noted that despite these long-term benefits, “certain problems linked to the program and the natural geography of the river basin still persist.” It then listed three IAD projects in Camarines Sur—without detailing their current status—closing with a call for better project design, transparency, and people’s participation in decentralization. PIA asserted that BRBDP needs to discard its “centralized, top-down approach, which limits local input and ownership, affecting sustainability.”

All of these are traceable to Illo’s article. The “greater mobility, travel time” line is lifted almost word-for-word from Illo. PIA’s article plagiarizes Illo’s work, down to the recommendations. As can be gleaned from the title of the article, PIA even lies about when these recommendations came about. “The discussion on the BRBDP has drawn out some reflections, ideas, and recommendations from Cabinet Secretaries present during the Camarines Sur briefing,” the government information agency stated. Absolutely not—these were Illo’s “reflections, ideas, and recommendations,” written over a decade ago, citing sources as far back as the 1970s.

Thus, while the PIA article does not reiterate the claim that the BRBDP ended in 1986, it still supports it, first by copying the claims of a credible source without attribution, making sure to exclude content from that source that refutes the president; then by making it appear that Marcos Jr.’s statements were the only reason for stirring up the program’s “revival.”

Since Bongbong took office, government propagandists have a track record of amplifying his and his family’s line that all went downhill after 1986, so it is necessary for a Marcos to course-correct the country. For instance, they publish articles claiming that Marcos Sr. pushed for genuine land reform, and that Bongbong will fulfill that dream; or that Marcos Sr. himself conceptualized a subway for Metro Manila in the early 1970s, and that Bongbong is now, finally, turning that plan into a reality. It is as if the time between 1986 and 2022 was a dark age, best forgotten, when absolutely no developments related to these programs and projects happened—contrary to fact.

Distorting history, cherry-picking and plagiarizing sources to support a false claim—why do they have to lie? This is how Marcos myths are formed and sustained. Falsities are, with a straight face, presented as facts, affirming the Marcosian Grand Narrative—all was well, golden even, until the Edsa “power grab.” A government propaganda agency supports the claim, while mainstream media uncritically reiterates it.

The lie can be uttered in various settings, such as political rallies or post-disaster briefings. Perhaps the lies are even particularly effective during tragic situations: should we not rejoice, actual competency and commitment to fact-based decision-making aside, that a Marcos is in Malacañang during trying times?