Author: diktaduraadmin

Originally published by Vera Files on July 2, 2016.

First of three parts

The U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C. is home to the Philippine Archives Collection, a treasure trove of 1,401 files of the Guerrilla Unit Recognition series documenting anti-Japanese resistance in World War II.

Within that collection is File No. 60, which documents Ferdinand E. Marcos’s claim of being a guerilla leader and founder of a guerilla unit called “Ang Manga Maharlika” with thousands of men in its roster from 1942 to 1945 in Northern Luzon. Marcos himself later changed it to “Ang Mga Maharlika.”

Included in the file’s more than 400 pages are the findings made by the U.S. Army which, after repeated investigations, repudiated Marcos’ claim and called it a lie.

Capt. Elbert R. Curtis, who handled Marcos’s claim for recognition for the most part of July 1947 to March 1948, came to two conclusions.

One, that “Ang Mga Maharlika Unit under the alleged command of Ferdinand Marcos is fraudulent.” Two, that “inserting his name on a roster other than the United States Armed Forces in the Philippines, Northern Luzon (USAFIP, NL) roster was a malicious criminal act.”

“It is also known that Marcos has enough political prestige to bring pressure to bear where it is needed for his own personal benefit,” Curtis said.

Curtis Documents by VERA Files

Before the Second World War, Marcos was known for two things—his acquittal for the murder of his father’s political rival Julio Nalundasan, and topping the 1939 bar exam while in jail for the crime.

In an interview with writer Gregorio Brillantes in 1968, Marcos claimed that after becoming a lawyer, he had wanted to embark on a “teaching career,” dreaming to be a professor at his alma mater, the University of the Philippines College of Law, “lecturing on some complex point of law.” Whatever his post-graduation plans really were, the war altered them.

Marcos’s exploits in the World War II, real or imagined, became part of the narrative of his political career. In November 1941 he joined the army as a third lieutenant. He was with the Filipino forces in Bataan until their surrender in April 1942. With other prisoners of war, he was interred at Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.

On August 4 the same year, he was released. There was a claim that it was due to failing health. But in his own commissioned biography, For Every Tear a Victory by Hartzell Spence, Marcos claimed that his mother Josefa “bribed the authorities to hasten her son’s freedom.”

Not much is known of Marcos’ activities from August 4, 1942 until December 12, 1944, when he joined the 14th Infantry, USAFIP, NL. If there was any indication of what he was up to, the records in File No. 60 point to one activity: taking advantage of the war times to line his pocket.

“Ferdinand Marcos was in San Quintin, Pangasinan, two or three months prior to the landing of the American forces, soliciting funds and guerilla help to construct a landing field in the vicinity,” the report said.

“The purpose of the landing field was to allow a plane to come in and evacuate General [Manuel] Roxas. Capt. Ray C. Hunt, commanding officer of PMD, LGAF placed Marcos under arrest for collecting money under false pretense. Gen. Roxas intervened on Marcos’ behalf and had him released to his custody,” it said.

The American forces reconquered Pangasinan in January 1945. Even before Marcos started his supposed activities in Pangasinan, on July 26, 1944 he sent a request to the returning American forces “for P100,000.00 Philippine currency and P500,000.00 Japanese war notes be sent his unit for maintenance.”

Marcos claimed to have 8,300 Ang Mga Maharlika members in North Luzon, Baguio, Zambales, and Manila. The investigator curtly noted that “this is entirely theoretical as no such unit ever existed.”

When Marcos ended his active service in 1946 he claimed to have gained the rank of major. Charles C. McDougald, in his book The Marcos File contested this claim, saying “The only promotion that Marcos could actually prove by official orders was his promotion to first lieutenant. All others, in addition to being contradictory and confusing, appear spurious.”

File No. 60 started with Marcos’s August 18, 1945 letter to the adjutant general of the Philippine Army requesting “that the complete roster of ‘Ang Manga Maharlika’ be approved and this organization be given recognition.”

The roster had 1,939 purported guerillas in active duty since December 1943. Guerillas recognized by the US Army received back pay for their efforts. The longer the period of their recognized participation in the war effort, the bigger their compensation.

On December 18, 1945, Marcos followed up on his original request for recognition. He also took the opportunity to provide additional materials to buttress his claim.

With this submission, listed as item number 6 in File No. 60, is the “Ang Mga Maharlika – Its History in Brief.” It was a history that not only chronicled the past and foretold the future but invented both points in time as well.

On June 7, 1947, a four-man military team told Marcos that based on the result of an initial investigation, his request for recognition was denied. The record of service he was claiming “was not substantiated by acceptable evidence.” The leadership, structure, effectiveness, and extent of the supposed guerilla unit were sketchy.

As for Marcos’s claim to leadership, the team said, “Performance of the unit did not indicate adequate control by its leaders because of the desertion of its commanding officer [i.e. Marcos] to join another unit.”

On July 16, 1947, Marcos, then in Washington, D.C. as member of the Philippine Veterans Commission, fired off a telegram to “strongly protest denial of recognition” and promised that he would file a formal petition.

It took him almost half a year to do this. The petition was filed on December 2, 1947. He tried to rebut the findings of the investigators point by point. His arguments ran for nine pages of single-spaced typescript with sixteen appendices. Ten of these were sworn and notarized affidavits of prominent and high-ranking military men in the newly established republic, a number of whom were also former leaders of well-known guerilla units during the war.

Listed as affiants supporting Marcos’s request for reconsideration were Brig. Gen. Macario Peralta Jr., commanding officer of the Panay guerillas; Maj. Gen. Rafael Jalandoni, chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines; Col. Vicente Umali and Col. Primitivo San Agustin Jr. of the President Quezon’s Own Guerilla; Maj. Leopoldo Guillermo, signal officer of the East Central Luzon Guerilla Area; Maj. Salvador Abcede of the Negros Guerillas; Consul-General Modesto Farolan of the Philippine Consulate at Hawaii; Col. Margarito Torralba, Armed Forces of the Philippines; and Narciso Ramos, minister-counselor of the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC.

Originally published by Vera Files on November 19, 2016.

In the rules of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, AFP Regulations G 161-375 to be exact, only two conditions disqualify deceased personnel from being buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The first is dishonorable discharge from the service; the second is conviction by final judgment “for an offense involving moral turpitude.”

The second may yet apply to former president Ferdinand Marcos whose burial at the Libingan, 27 years after his death, was upheld by the Supreme Court in a decision on Nov. 8, to the anger of people who say he doesn’t deserve a hero’s burial.

Seventy-six years ago on October 22, 1940, the Supreme Court itself convicted Marcos for an offense that may be judged as involving moral turpitude. He and three of his relatives were found guilty of contempt of court for filing eight separate complaints against the principal witness of the prosecution in the murder of Julio Nalundasan, even before the conclusion of the trial.

Nalundasan was the rival of Ferdinand’s father, congressman Mariano Marcos. The story goes that Nalundasan was killed by a sniper’s bullet on the night of September 20, 1935, while he was brushing his teeth by the window of his home in Batac, Ilocos Norte. This was just a few days after he defeated Mariano in the congressional elections, and was declared the duly elected representative of Ilocos Norte’s second district.

Charged with murder were Mariano, his brother Pio, their brother-in-law Quirino Lizardo, and Ferdinand, then an 18-year-old University of the Philippines student and, by various accounts, a sharpshooter.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which recounts in G.R. No. L-47388, People of the Philippines v. Mariano Marcos et al., that the four filed eight separate complaints against Calixto Aguinaldo, the prosecution’s principal witness. They accused him of making false testimony against them during the preliminary investigation on Dec. 7, 1938, and during their trial.

But it turns out that they filed those eight complaints when only Lizardo’s trial had commenced. The trial of the three Marcoses had then not even begun. The rules of court require a judgment to be rendered before a charge of false testimony can be filed against a witness.

Ilocos Norte’s Court of First Instance found Quirino Lizardo, Mariano Marcos, Pio Marcos and Ferdinand Marcos guilty of contempt of court.

The Supreme Court said, “It is evident that the charges for false testimony filed by the four accused above mentioned could not be decided until the main case for murder was disposed of, since no penalty could be meted out to Calixto Aguinaldo for his alleged false testimony without first knowing the extent of the sentence to be imposed against Lizardo and the Marcoses (Revised Penal Code, art. 180).”

“The latter should therefore have waited for the termination of the principal case in the lower court before filing the charges for false testimony against Calixto Aguinaldo. Facts considered, we are of the opinion that the action of the Marcoses and Lizardo was calculated, or at least tended, directly or indirectly to obstruct the administration of justice and that, therefore, the trial court properly found them guilty of contempt,” the High Court said.

The Court of First Instance of Ilocos Norte had convicted Ferdinand Marcos and Lizardo of murder and contempt. Ferdinand, then a law student, brought the case to the Supreme Court and asked that it overturn his and Lizardo’s conviction. Mariano and Pio, meanwhile, appealed their conviction for contempt.

Justice Jose Laurel penned the decision acquitting Marcos and Lizardo of the murder charge. But it sustained the Ilocos Norte Court of First Instance’s decision that all three Marcoses and Lizardo were guilty of desacato (contempt). The Court of First Instance ordered them to pay a fine of P200 or, in case of insolvency or non-payment, the corresponding jail time. Laurel’s decision for the Supreme Court lowered the fine to P50. But the conviction stayed.

Hence, the first element in the AFP provision for disqualification is met. For the contempt of court offense, after Marcos was afforded due process by the Court of First Instance and heard on appeal by the Supreme Court, a final judgment was reached. He was guilty.

But does a guilty for contempt of court verdict necessarily mean having committed an act involving moral turpitude? What is moral turpitude in the first place?

Until 1940, the Supreme Court made only two rulings involving moral turpitude. In the first case, a lawyer was convicted of abduction with consent, and the petitioner asked that he be suspended or disbarred. The Supreme Court issued a one-year suspension to be served after he was released from prison.

In his decision on that case, In Re: Basa (December 7, 1920), in what is considered the first decision involving the issue, Justice George A. Malcolm used Bouvier’s Law Dictionary to define it.

“Moral turpitude, it has been said, includes everything which is done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty, or good morals,” Malcolm said.

“The inherent nature of the act is such that it is against good morals and the accepted rule of right conduct,” Malcolm continued.

Another pre-1940 case In Re: Isada (November 16, 1934), also penned by Malcolm, maintained that the crime of concubinage involves moral turpitude. The respondent, also a lawyer, after serving his conviction for the main crime, was suspended also for a year.

Succeeding Supreme Court rulings have either adhered to the law dictionary definition of moral turpitude as established in In Re: Basa (though they have moved on from Bouvier’s to Black’s) or have done particular refinements on how to determine if moral turpitude is concomitant with certain offenses.

The court now holds that “not every criminal act, however, involves moral turpitude”  (dela Torre v. Comelec, G.R. 121592, July 5, 1996). What evolved in practice is “the way for a case-to-case approach in determining whether a crime involves moral turpitude” (Brion concurring in Teves v. Comelec, G.R. No. 180363, April 28, 2009), and “as to what crime involves moral turpitude is for the Supreme Court to determine” (A.M. 1162, A.C. 1163, A.M. 1164, August 29, 1975).

In recent cases involving moral turpitude, the Supreme Court employs three approaches in making its determination (Brion concurring in Teves v. Comelec, G.R. No. 180363, April 28, 2009).

First, to determine whether “the act itself must be inherently immoral”; second, “to look at the act committed through its elements as a crime”; and the third, “essentially takes the offender and his acts into account in light of the attendant circumstances of the crime: was he motivated by ill will indicating depravity?”

In deciding Garcia v. De Vera (A.C. No. 6052. December 11, 2003), the Supreme Court had occasion to rule on whether or not indirect contempt of court can be an offense involving moral turpitude. But following the Supreme Court’s own prescription for determining involvement of moral turpitude in a case, that decision does not automatically preclude all contempt of court cases—both direct and indirect—as free of moral turpitude.

In that case, the respondent had been previously found guilty of indirect contempt by the Supreme Court itself for having made a statement in public that in the court’s appreciation, was “clearly made to mobilize public opinion and bring pressure on the Court.”

For that very specific act alone, the Court said, “the act for which he was found guilty of indirect contempt” does not involve moral turpitude because “it cannot be said that the act of expressing one’s opinion on a public interest issue can be considered as an act of baseness, vileness or depravity.”

In the Philippines, contempt can be considered criminal or civil. According to the Supreme Court in People vs. Godoy (G.R. Nos. 115908-09, March 29, 1995), “the real character of the proceedings is to be determined by the relief sought, or the dominant purpose, and the proceedings are to be regarded as criminal when the purpose is primarily punishment, and civil when the purpose is primarily compensatory or remedial.”

In Lorenzo Shipping Corporation, et al. v. Distribution Management Association of the Philippines, et al. (G.R. No. 155849, August 31, 2011), the Supreme Court stated that “proceedings for contempt are sui generis, in nature criminal.”

The Court said that a criminal contempt “consists in conduct that is directed against the authority and dignity of a court or of a judge acting judicially, as in unlawfully assailing or discrediting the authority and dignity of the court or judge, or in doing a duly forbidden act.”

Meanwhile, it stated that a civil contempt “consists in the failure to do something ordered to be done by a court or judge in a civil case for the benefit of the opposing party therein.”

The Court continued: “Where the dominant purpose is to enforce compliance with an order of a court for the benefit of a party in whose favor the order runs, the contempt is civil; where the dominant purpose is to vindicate the dignity and authority of the court, and to protect the interests of the general public, the contempt is criminal.”

In the final decision on the Nalundasan case, Laurel said, “The inherent power to punish for contempt should be exercised on the preservative and not on the vindictive principle (Villavicencio vs. Lukban 39 Phil., 778), and on the corrective and not on the retaliatory idea of punishment.” Based only on this statement, it would appear that the contempt committed by the Marcoses was construed by the High Court as being indirect and civil in nature.

However, in the same decision, the Supreme Court described the action of the Marcoses and Lizardo as “directly or indirectly [obstructing] the administration of justice,” which could mean they committed “a duly forbidden act.”

While there is currently no jurisprudence in the Philippines that states that obstruction of justice involves moral turpitude, what Marcos and his relatives did was to harass the main witness in their murder trial with legal action. They filed eight separate complaints alleging that the principal witness for the prosecution, Calixto Aguinaldo, committed false testimony while the Nalundasan murder trial was still ongoing.

At the very least, this demonstrates a lack of faith on the judge trying the case, insinuating he is incapable of discerning the veracity of the testimony of witnesses before his court.

In American jurisprudence (see Padilla v. Gonzales, 397 F.3d 1016), obstruction of justice is considered a crime involving moral turpitude.

Since the possible sentence for Marcos and his kin for the murder of Nalundasan ranged from 12 to 20 years imprisonment to death, the Revised Penal Code provides that had they been convicted and Aguinaldo proven to have committed false testimony, then Aguinaldo would be in jail from six to 20 years. The cost of defending himself against eight lawsuits would have also been prohibitive.

Marcos and his relatives may not have committed an act that is evil in itself, but there is no doubt malice, the ill will that was inherent in their action to corrupt legal avenues for redress for their own self-serving ends.