Tag: lies-featured

Originally published by Vera Files on June 10, 2024

When journalists first heard about the Bongbong rockets in March 1972, they thought it was just another government scam. As retold by the journalist Lee Lescaze, then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s press secretary Francisco “Kit” Tatad made this announcement to the Malacañang press corps:

We have launched successfully our first rocket.”

“What is it this time?” a newsman asked. “We have had many rackets before.”

“It is not a racket but a rocket.” Tatad said.

Fifty-two years later, a new racket on the rocket is on the rise again.

Continuing territorial tensions with China have spurred the re-circulation of claims about the rocket development program under Marcos Sr. Encountering material on the Bongbong rockets is not that difficult. Besides the usual pro-Marcos YouTube videos (including this, uploaded on May 30, 2024, with over 23,000 views as of this writing), Marcos supporter tweets, and videos sharing Senator Imee Marcos’s half-truths about her father’s Self-Reliance Defense Posture (SRDP) program (such as this, uploaded in June 3, and shared over 560 times), one can find a recently opened permanent exhibit extolling the Bongbong rocket program, which is much more accessible than the rocket on display at the Philippine Navy Museum in Cavite.

On January 30, 2024, the 4th Marine “Makusug” Brigade inaugurated the Military Park in Camp Cape Bojeador in Burgos, Ilocos Norte. A Daily Tribune article noted that by March 7, 2024, the “military tourism” park had already received over 21,000 visitors. A May 6, 2024 ABS-CBN Facebook post showed that the attraction continued to be well-patronized. Located near the national highway, one can pass by the Military Park on the way up to visit other popular tourist destinations: the Cape Bojeador Lighthouse, the Burgos and Bangui Windmills, and the Patapat Viaduct. It is already in the itineraries of several Ilocos Norte tour organizers.

Pictures of the Inauguration of the Military Park in Camp Cape Bojeador, Burgos Ilocos Norte, from the Facebook page of the 4th Marine Brigade.

Based on the Facebook posts of some of the park visitors, one of the exhibits there is a replica of a Bongbong rocket launch vehicle. Part of the exhibit description reads:

This exhibit showcases a replica of a rocket integral to the Philippine military’s venture into developing its ballistic missiles. The initiative unfolded through the collaborative efforts of Filipino and German engineers and scientists, in partnership with the Philippine Navy under Project Santa Barbara of the Self-Reliance Defense Posture (SRDP) program in the 1970s. The rocket earned its moniker, “Bongbong Rocket” in honor of the then President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr, the 17th President of the Republic of the Philippines . . . Despite the promising advancements, the project was discontinued totally in 1986. Nevertheless, the innovative spirit that fueled this endeavor lives on. And the project’s enduring legacy stands as a testament to its positive impact on the Philippine military’s capability for technological advancements and scientific explorations.

Why project was named Sta. Barbara

The text calls the first launch “successful” and “triumphant.” SRDP proponents like Imee and Senator Bato de la Rosa say pretty much the same thing. Many have already attempted to explain—briefly, in fact-check format—how the country’s homegrown missile program was hardly the first within the region or was a resounding success. Most online articles state that the missile program was codenamed “Project Sta. Barbara”—patron saint of artillerymen.

Launch tests were conducted in the 1970s; and the program, for unclear reasons, was discontinued. Some writers simply state that the discontinuance was a mystery or that the project’s details remain classified. Sources partial to the Marcoses claim or allude, like the Burgos exhibit text, that the project only ended after the fall of the Marcos regime in February 1986.

Bob Couttie, a historian, wrote a detailed description of the project, using declassified US Department of State cables among his primary sources. His blog post “Marcos’s Roman Candle Superweapons,” a version of which also appears as a chapter in his last book Fool’s Gold, largely tackles the entirely false claim that the Marcos regime successfully developed “anti-typhoon” rockets, before detailing why Project Sta. Barbara never produced what could be legitimately referred to as “ballistic missiles”: lack of funding, as well as the absence of support from the country’s eternal ally, the United States. But Couttie was unable to fill in a number of blanks regarding the rocket program using his sources: Who were the scientists involved? How many tests have extant documentation? How far in terms of technological advancement did the program reach? Did it really end because of Cory Aquino?

Most of these can now be better answered using recently accessible primary sources, some of which were marked “classified” or “secret” decades ago.

The president’s rocket men

If his February 13, 1971 diary entry were to be believed, Marcos Sr. was not even keen on having a missile system. The Israelis were hawking their Gabriel weapons system then. Marcos Sr. was thinking of something else.

“Saw the Israeli film on the demonstration of their Gabriel weapons system . . . what we really need is not a missile system for the Navy but airfields for our jet fighters in Zamboanga, Davao, Cagayan de Oro and Laoag and Legaspi in Luzon. Our fighters are now armed with missiles,” Bongbong’s father said.

Nine months later, he changed his mind. Marcos-supported rocket research appears to have started on November 21, 1971. On that date, Marcos met with a foreign physicist, Dr. Max Goldberger, to discuss the latter’s proposal for “catalytic research.” Also in attendance were National Science Development Board (NSDB) chairman Florencio A. Medina, a retired brigadier general of the Philippine Army. According to a confidential report written by Medina, transmitted to Marcos on December 4, 1971, further discussions with Goldberger were held with other government officials, including other persons from the NSDB and Executive Secretary Alejandro Melchor. It was Melchor, a US Naval Academy graduate, who suggested that a “production laboratory” for the implementation of Dr. Goldberger’s proposal could be set up in “one of the vacant hangars at Sangley Point,” while the “machine shops of the Philippine Navy at Cavite City” could be one of the “supporting facilities for tooling.” Goldberger found these facilities to be adequate.

Florencio Medina’s Report on Dr. Max Goldberger’s Proposal for Catalytic Research by Verafiles Newsroom on Scribd

By the time Goldberger first met Marcos, he was listed as an inventor in a number of patents or patent applications assigned to Pioneer Research, Inc.” A news article in the February 1970 issue of the Manchester [Connecticut] Evening Herald describes Goldberger as the director of research and company vice president of Pioneer, which had developed a 100-watt commercial model of a hydrazine fuel cell. Goldberger also made the news in the 1960s for his propulsion experiments. One news article, from the Associated Press, talks about a November 1965 attempt by Goldberger to launch a rocket in Long Island, Connecticut. Goldberger and his team initially thought there was an “ignition failure,” but as they were packing up, “someone accidentally tripped the faulty ignition and the rocket shot 500 feet up,” which made Goldberger say that the “rocket’s performance…was a ‘ballistic success.’”

In the cover letter of his December 1971 report, Medina recommended pushing through with Goldberger’s proposal, committing the NSDB to collaborate closely with the foreign scientist. Medina said that the proposed program “is a laudible [sic] undertaking as it will introduce into the country at very minimal cost the basic techniques of rocket propulsion and of fuel cells which have paramount impact in both their civilian and military applications.” He stated that the initial expenditure may be USD 10-20 thousand, or PHP 66-132 thousand, or slightly more than 1-2 years of the president’s salary. Medina also emphasized that Goldberger offered his services “free of charge.” Marcos immediately approved the proposal.

Before publicizing their rocket research, the Marcos government first informed the United States of their missile plans. On December 13, 1971, Gen.Manuel Yan, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, gave a presentation on “The Attainment of a Self-Reliant Defense Posture” during the 71-12 Mutual Defense Board Meeting at Camp Aguinaldo. Among those in attendance were Marcos, US Ambassador Henry Byroade, foreign affairs secretary Carlos P. Romulo, and US Admiral John S. McCain Jr. In his speech, which gave a “detailed presentation of our plan to attain [a self-reliant defense] posture with the assistance from our allies, particularly the United States,” Yan said,

The importance of an indigenous capability to produce explosives and propellants may not readily be apparent . . . But the other important objective is the development of rockets and missiles . . . In essence, mastery in the production of explosives and propellants is the key to the attainment of a strategic power of deterrence.

In his diary entry for December 14, 1971, Marcos Sr. wrote that he “ordered the rocket research and experiments of Dr. Max Goldberger to be started.” Marcos Sr., also said that he will “fund [the research] with the Intelligence Funds at [his] disposal.” Unverifiable claims would later be made that the rockets were funded with money from the Marcos Foundation, where he falsely claimed to have deposited all of his wealth.

Marcos Sr., in his diary entry for December 28, 1971, mentioned that he had dinner with Goldberger, congressman Antonio Raquiza, and an Alex Rothchild. He noted that Goldberger was “married to an Ilocana niece” of Raquiza, a close Marcos ally, which may account for Goldberger’s initial access to Marcos.

Bongbong rocket lift-offs—and letdowns

The first known rocket launch took place on March 12, 1972. The Burgos exhibit text echoes some of the reportage on that launch, including Melchor’s claim that the Bongbong rocket was built in only twenty-one days. If that is factual, then construction of the rocket would have started in late February 1972, or more than two months after Marcos approved the Medina-endorsed Goldberger proposal. Based on his diaries, Marcos met with Goldberger on February 12, 1972, “for our experiments and research on guided missiles and chemically powered batteries.”

What was launched in March 1972 was called “Bongbong II”; it is unclear what happened to Bongbong I, if there was one. Reports about the launch that were released soon after it took place include one from UPI, which stated that, based on Malacanang sources, “the Philippines has successfully launched its first home-made rocket secretly.” It also stated that Marcos had shown his cabinet “a 30-minute film of the launching from Caballo Island near Corregidor Island at the mouth of Manila Bay and the rocket being retrieved by the Armed Forces in the South China Sea.”

The article by Lee Lescaze on the launch, which quoted Tatad’s exchanges with the press, was well syndicated in US newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times. It was published between August-September 1972—several months after Bongbong II lifted off. The article included numerous details about the launch and Bongbong II itself—purportedly, it cost “only” USD 3,250.00 (about PHP 22,000.00), was eight feet long and six inches in diameter, and was hand-fed into a launcher made from “a piece of pipe found in a junkyard in Manila’s Chinatown.”

Marcos supposedly flew to Caballo to witness the launch, even after he was told that the chance of success was only 60 percent. It did seem that the launch was going to fail; reminiscent of Goldberger’s 1965 test in Connecticut, Lescaze said, “The range officer began his countdown, but at zero, Bong-Bong II remained on the pad. Flustered, he began counting and at ‘two,’ the rocket took off.”

Lescaze’s article quotes Melchor several times; the executive secretary was referred to as the “father of the Philippine rocket program.” Goldberger is not mentioned in the article at all. Interestingly—and not entirely in agreement with accessible primary sources—the article claimed that the project was “the result of a secret crash program by a group of Filipino scientists who had set out to design a windmill and then realized they had a rocket within their grasp.” Toward its conclusion, the article noted that “the missile budget has been cut in half as part of government austerity efforts following July’s disastrous flooding of central Luzon. Tests are continuing at Caballo, however.”

On November 18, 1972, Melchor asked for clearance to launch another liquid-propellant rocket, Bongbong III, on December 2 that year. Besides “maintaining the momentum” of the rocket project, Melchor also hoped that the test would help them explore the “possible rain-making application of the rockets,” i.e., sending up a “vehicle which will carry a payload of silver iodide to a desired altitude,” and to “acquire experience in the use of hydrazine,” “the ultimate in rocket fuel,” and to “get a feel of firing a more sophisticated and bigger rocket.” Melchor noted that “With the present control of government over media”—this was, after all, almost two months after the start of the Marcos dictatorship—”the test can be conducted with the least of fanfare, treating it just like any routine scientific and technological test.”

Epic fail

The launch failed spectacularly. Marcos wrote in his diary on December 3, 1972, “Bongbong III (the 180 mm hydrazine fueled rocket) exploded on take off at the test site in Caballo.” The report attached to the diary entry noted that “The explosion scattered the various missile components in the launching pad and buckled and broke open the seams of the heavy steel gate separating the launching pad from mission control.” The report was signed by Commodore Alfredo C. Protacio of the Philippine Navy and E.M. Terrado (“Head, Chemical Grp.”), both of Project Sta. Barbara. Throughout the rest of its existence, Project Sta. Barbara was directly under the Office of the President.

A June 1, 2024 Facebook post of the Naval Research and Technology Development Center states that their institution was established “in pursuit of fortifying the country’s Self-Reliant Defense Posture (SRDP) Program, specifically the Project Sta. Barbara” in 1973. An article co-authored by Terrado in the June 1974 issue of the Philippine Journal of Science discusses fuel cell research being done at the Sta. Barbara laboratories. It is thus safe to say that part of Sta. Barbara’s funds, which were not exclusively for rockets, came from the Philippine Navy.

A more successful launch was conducted on December 30, 1972, the hundredth day since the official date of Marcos’s martial law declaration.The day before, Melchor sent a message informing Marcos that he and Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile would be at Caballo for a missile test. After the test, Melchor sent a dispatch to Marcos’s presidential yacht to say that the launch of the “Bongbong 7” was successful, and that he would like the yacht to pass by Caballo so that they can salute the president. Unfortunately, the message was not received on time—the yacht was already at Sangley Point—so no post-launch salute “on the occasion of the one hundredth day anniversary of the New Society and [Marcos’s] seventh year as president” took place.

Dispatches on the Launch of Bongbong 7 by Verafiles Newsroom on Scribd

Further tests were conducted in 1973.Marcos’s May 13, 1973 diary entry states that “Our missile tests have been successful and we have a launcher on a dump truck that can be pivoted on a 360 degree and elevated up to vertical.” Several pictures of the tests conducted the day before were attached. The pictures show the launcher, called “Bukang Liwayway,” which was further labeled “SP [solid propellant] Missile Launcher” and “Missile Defense Command.”

Marcos claimed in his diary entry that the missiles showed up in the radar scopes of the helicopter and planes at the US Air Force base in Clark, Pampanga. A photo in the set shows Marcos with Melchor and Goldberger. It is unclear how many rockets were tested, but the launcher had six barrels.

Photos of the May 1973 rocket tests, from the digitized PCGG files.

Neither the December 1972 nor the May 1973 launches are known to have been covered by the international media.What appeared to be the Bukang Liwayway launcher, carrying six Bongbong rockets, was rolled out in the 1973 Independence Day Parade in Luneta, about a month after the May 1973 tests. Instead of Bukang Liwayway, however, the label on the launcher said “WX Modification & Research”—a reference to the program’s weather manipulation aims (WX has been an abbreviation for weather since the morse code/teletype era). Couttie explained that by the early 1970s, researchers in the US—where silver iodide weather modification experiments started in the 1940s—were already very skeptical of the efficacy of dropping or launching chemicals into clouds to weaken hurricanes.

U.S. assessment of Bongbong rocket project: overly expensive, wasteful

A declassified confidential cable from the US Department of State, dated February 6, 1974 concerns an aide memoire from Melchor about a standing request for assistance in the Philippine rocket research program, first made in October 1973. Melchor stated that the program would be a “heavy burden” on the “finances of the [Philippine] economy,” and rocket development thus far had “been met with early technical reverses primarily due to the absence of the much needed logistics support base”; he emphasized that “The critical lack of experience and a working model proved very costly and has drained heavily the meager resources appropriated for [the] endeavor.” Melchor noted that what they wanted to build was a multipurpose rocket, both for defense and for sparing the Philippines from “yearly destructions caused by the extremes of weather.”

The US ambassador, William Sullivan, recommended “modest assistance in technical package with training and advice as well as models,” but no accessible records show that any such assistance was given. US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger believed such assistance would be going down a slippery slope: “We saw no particular problems in giving Melchor ‘exces’ Nikes [Nike-Hercules missile ‘cadavers’] as tinker toys,” but “Our feeling is that any meaningful assistance to the Philippine missile program would be overly expensive, wasteful of Philippine resources and unhelpful to the Philippines or to the USA.” In a July 3, 1974 cable, Sullivan tried to argue to give Melchor his missile cadavers, to no avail.

The next launches that made the news abroad were done in September 1975. Government issuances on the tests were, expectedly, brimming with praise. According to the September 5-11, 1975 “Official Week in Review,” on September 7, Marcos “announced that the Philippines is engaged in an experiment in the local production of ballistic missiles in pursuance to its Self-Reliance Defense Program”; “The defense of the Philippines cannot be left to alliances with other countries,” the President said as he witnessed the successful test-firing of locally produced missiles at the northern coast of Luzon….Dubbed the ‘Bongbong’ rockets, the missiles were fired some 10 to 12 kilometers into the sea from launchers mounted on a military vehicle parked along the shoreline.” A declassified US cable states that, as per Manila (government-controlled) press accounts, the rockets “went ‘roaring two kilometers into the sky.’”

An Associated Press article published in US newspapers, relying solely on Philippine government sources, said that four rockets were launched, and that the tests were witnessed by Ferdinand, Imelda Marcos, and “the couple’s two children”—possibly Irene and Bongbong, who had yet to start his failed pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in Oxford.

Americans, or at least Ambassador Sullivan, were not impressed. In a confidential cable dated September 18, 1975, the man who had overseen a secret massive bombing campaign in Laos said, “This latest launch event suggests that the local state of the art is still not much beyond the Roman candle stage (photos show no evidence of any associated guidance or other electronic gear), and that ‘our own ballistic missile’ is still on the drawing pad.”

Yet even as Marcos and his gang tried to inveigle American aid for a key component of his SRDP, in secret, he appeared to be wasting the country’s scarce foreign reserves—one of the very resources that SRDP was trying not to waste—to indulge his desire for sniper rifles.

Manuel Collantes, then acting secretary of foreign affairs, sent a memo to Marcos on October 17, 1973, that they can by then purchase from West Germany “Mauser-66 .308 sniper rifle with telescopic sight.” Marcos ordered “fifty (50) pieces of said rifle with 12, 500 rounds of ammunition . . . at the proffered cost of Deutschemarks 3,150 apiece.” With that bundle came “one piece of an especially offered auxiliary infrared mounted instruments at the cost of Deutschemarks 12, 470.” A piece fit for a despot or a king.

Bye Bye Sta. Barbara

Andrew L. Ross, in a chapter of the 1984 book Arms Production in Developing Countries, noted that “the Philippines has not developed or produced guided missiles,” but, based on the September 1975 tests, the country “has reportedly designed an artillery rocket.” “Subsequent developments” after the 1975 launches “have not been revealed,” Ross continued. In a footnote, he further added, “AFP Officers were not eager to discuss the Bongbong rocket and little is publicly known about the project.”

Indeed, there were no further reported developments on the rocket program after 1975.

Incidentally, Melchor was replaced as executive secretary in November 1974, and the office of the executive secretary was replaced by various presidential assistants beginning in December 1975. Bongbong (the person) would himself be appointed “Special Assistant to the President” in 1978. In his memoir Endless Journey, Jose T. Almonte claimed that Imelda Marcos distrusted Melchor, alleging that he was “involved in a plot to overthrow” Marcos. Melchor continued to have Marcos’s ear, however, being appointed a board member of the Development Bank of the Philippines and becoming a director of the Asian Development Bank. He had a brief stint as ambassador to Russia under Cory Aquino. He died in 2002.

As for Goldberger, no document has been found showing his continued involvement in the rocket program beyond the mid-1970s. A US Department of State cable, dated October 18, 1974 states that he was the chairman of the board and president of a Metro Manila-based firm called Advanced Technological Products, Inc., which specialized in building and fabricating “amphibian cars” and the distribution, importation, and installation of generators. The cable lists his address as Los Angeles, California. Goldberger later permanently relocated to Hawaii, where he became involved in local alternative energy development projects from the late 1980s onward. He died in 2012.

Numerous declassified United States Department of State cables show attempts by the Philippines to acquire complete missile systems from the US after 1975.According to a July 1976 cable, Enrile sent a letter to Marcos regarding a five-year AFP modernization program, which includes a wish list of defense materiel, including US-manufactured Nike Hercules and Chaparral missile systems, both with “support equipment, follow-on spares, tooling and training package.”

A January 1978 cable shows that the US did not want to give the Philippines access to weapons like the Harpoon ship-to-ship missile “on policy grounds.” In October 1979, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke took a meeting with Enrile and Marcos, discussing the Harpoon. Holbrooke and Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael Armacoast tried to dissuade them from pursuing the system, explaining how prohibitively expensive it was (a later cable stated that the system cost USD 50 million). Marcos noted that their neighbors—Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan—had their own missile systems; the US diplomats insisted that the Philippines did not need one. Marcos and Enrile stated that they were also interested in the Israeli-made Gabriel system (the same one that Marcos was not so keen on in 1971), possibly buying it from Singapore, effectively saying they were bent on acquiring a missile system even without US assistance—not that the Philippines could afford one.

All these exchanges indicate that the Philippines did not have a functional missile system in the late 1970s, and that they tried—and failed—to acquire missile systems from abroad.

An Associated Press photograph published in the December 23, 1981 issue of the South China Morning Post is captioned “Marcos checks Bongbong…”;the full description states that the photo showed Marcos inspecting “models of Philippine-made 180-mm rockets named after his son” during Armed Forces Day, December 21. Thus, it appears that facsimiles of the rockets were trotted out during parades even in the 1980s, even if there were no more publicized tests or launches—or likely, any form of rocket research.

Project Sta. Barbara shifts from rocket to alcogas

In fact, by then, Project Sta. Barbara had shifted (back) to focusing on alternative energy sources. Between 1978 and 1982, multiple patents were granted to Commodore Protacio and other Sta. Barbara members—such as future Department of Information and Communications Technology undersecretary Eliseo Rio—related to alternative energy development, including one for a solar drier and a handful for alcogas-related methods and devices. In his 1979 State of the Nation Address, Marcos mentioned Sta. Barbara’s “alco-tipid” fuel research. An article written by Protacio, published in a 1981 issue of the Philippine Engineering Journal, states that Sta. Barbara’s alko-tipid research started in April 1979. The March 23-March 28, 1981 “Official Week in Review” mentions a charcoal-fed “hydro-gas” jeepney developed by Commodore Protacio, which was never mass produced. Sta. Barbara was also involved in a USAID-funded windmill dispersal program from 1980 to 1983.

None of the known Project Sta. Barbara patents are directly related to rocket or missile development or any other kind of weaponry. None involved fuel cells or hydrazine either.

A coda on Marcosian superweapon development: several months before the last publicized Bongbong tests, on May 24, 1975, MGen. Fabian Ver, then head of the Presidential Security Command, sent a short memorandum to Marcos. He said that a Lt. Col. Certeza (likely Rene Certeza, also of the PSC) introduced him to a certain Seitoko Tamaki, who “offered to deliver to us for use of the AFP a DEATH RAY machine using LASER beams that can kill, burn and destroy any object including tanks, trucks etc in its path to a range of 20 kms.” Marcos attached the memorandum to his May 27, 1975 diary entry, where he said, “I have ordered the matter [the “laser-beam weapon”] to be seriously considered.” Between weather control rockets and death rays, and later on deep-sea deuterium deposits, one wonders whether Marcos Sr. was basing his plans for Philippine development partly on science fiction.

The exact date that Project Sta. Barbara was shut down remains unknown. It is safe to say however that government-funded rocket or missile research did not die because of the 1986 EDSA Revolution or because Cory Aquino either abandoned it or shut it down. It died well before that. Marcos does not mention the need to revive the rocket program in his known post-presidency writings.

The Manila Standard reported in July 1990 that thirty-five 500-liter drums of anhydrous hydrazine were hidden “in an underground bunker at Sangley Point airbase in Cavite,” which had “deteriorated to the point that they are in danger of exploding.” The report noted that they were used in “the late President Marcos’ unsuccessful attempt in the 1970s to develop home-grown battlefield rocket capability.” If Sta. Barbara stopped experimenting with hydrazine in the late 1970s, then the drums in Cavite had been lying idle for over a decade at that time.

The dream for the Bongbong rockets ended neither with a whimper or a bang. That’s what the Philippine Marines today call “successful” and “triumphant.”

Originally published by Vera Files on January 26, 2024

Why is a potentially massive public event in support of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s brand of governance seemingly shrouded in secrecy and deception?

On Sunday, Jan. 28,  a kick-off rally for the Bagong Pilipinas campaign will be held at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park, Manila. A Jan. 22 news release by the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), announced that  “government officials, celebrities and other personalities,” as well as the president himself, are expected to attend the rally, which “the Filipino public” can attend.

Bagong Pilipinas, based on a memorandum circular issued by the Office of the President in June 2023, is the “[Bongbong Marcos] Administration’s brand of governance and leadership,” which is “characterized by a principled, accountable and dependable government reinforced by unified institutions of society, whose common objective is to realize the goals and aspirations of every Filipino.” The memorandum circular also mandated the use of the Bagong Pilipinas logo by all national government agencies.

Not only is it carried by government websites and stamped on official letterheads, it’s also on trains and in train stations.

Also well-publicized are the Bagong Pilipinas creative competitions for college students. The deadline for these contests—in songwriting, essay writing, mural painting, and spoken word poetry—as well as a short film competition with the theme “Ano ang Bagong Pilipinas (What is a new Philippines)?” was on November 20, 2023, 5 p.m. The work of the winners, yet to be announced, are expected to show “the Filipino youth’s aspirations for a Bagong Pilipinas or the inspirational Filipino excellence and unbreakable spirit that will enable this call-to-action realization.” The total value of the prizes for the competitions is substantial; the national level prizes alone total almost P2.2 million.

Interestingly, a curious alteration was made by the PCO to their October 7, 2023 Facebook posts about the contests. The guidelines for each of the contests can be viewed in pictures attached to the posts. Without any accessible explanation online, however, the picture-guidelines now state that the deadline for the competitions was on January 12, 2024, 5 p.m. The guidelines on PCO’s Instagram account remain unaltered. What is even more curious is the date when the pictures were replaced, which one can confirm by looking at the edit history of the posts: January 16, 2024. How then would prospective entrants have known that the deadline for entries was extended by twenty-four days, when the surreptitious “announcement” of the extension was made four days after the new deadline?

“Late submissions will not be accepted,” state both the old and the new guidelines. Was the alteration made to better link the competitions with the seemingly sudden kick-off rally?

In any case, given the ubiquity of Bagong Pilipinas, as well as the various Bagong Pilipinas Serbisyo Fair caravans held throughout the country last year, it is a puzzle why a kick-off rally is still necessary. Among those who have wondered aloud about the rally is the president’s elder sister, Senator Imee Marcos.

In a Jan. 20  radio interview, Imee talked about obtaining a copy of a letter, issued by an undersecretary of a government agency, which purportedly ordered government employees to attend the kick-off. Sen. Marcos called the event a “BBM [Bongbong Marcos] loyalty rally.” Allegedly, state employees in attendance would do so on official time, and be provided with food and transportation. “Kaninong pera nanaman ito? Bakit maghahakot?” she asked; “Hindi ba mas dinidiin na insecure sila o tagilid, may destab? Hindi ko maiintindihan ang pakay nito,” she added, alluding to rumored destabilization plots against her brother’s administration. A day before her interview, Politiko also published a “Politiskoop” about a communication very similar to the one Sen. Marcos described, stating that it ordered “regional directors to identify 250 employees who will attend [the rally].” T-shirts and entitlement to compensatory time off were also supposedly among the “perks” of attending the event.

It is notable that the primary Facebook pages of several national government agencies all posted about the event sometime between 6 and 7 p.m. on Jan. 22, several hours after the only news about the event, besides those on the “hakot” memoranda, focused on road closures and traffic rerouting because of the rally.

The text of their posts were standardized (“Halina at maging parte ng pagbabago para sa ating sarili, komunidad, at bayan!” they all state), with an accompanying poster, featuring what appears to be a composite of photographs of the well-attended “Uniteam” rallies during the 2022 election campaign (without highlighting the other half of the Uniteam, Vice President Sara Duterte), that each department/office modified with their logo.

Along with Philippine National Police posts about a Jan. 19 initial coordination meeting for the rally, and a Jan. 18 ocular visit to Quirino Grandstand by the National Secretariat of the Bagong Pilipinas Serbisyo Fair, it seems that the planning and coordination for what is projected to be an event attended by thousands is only being done less than two weeks before it is scheduled.

Which is highly unlikely. Indeed, when one searches for more information about the kick-off rally online, one will find various documents and posts from 2023 referring to a Bagong Pilipinas Kick-Off rally at the Quirino Grandstand scheduled on December 10, 2023. Among these are Department of Interior and Local Government memorandum circular, dated November 28, 2023, asking Local Government Units to “Support the launch and kick-off ceremony of the Bagong Pilipinas campaign through the attendance of the Local Chief Executive, other local officials, and representatives from various sectors in the LGU, on December 10, 2023, at the Quirino Grandstand, Rizal Park, City of Manila”; a Request for Quotation, dated November 14, 2023 from the Bids and Awards Committee of the PCO for “Printed Collaterals for Bagong Pilipinas Kick-off Rally Luzon” with an approved budget for the contract (ABC) amounting to P275,000.00 and specifying the delivery date to be December 8, 2023 at the Quirino Grandstand; a Facebook post, dated November 5, 2023 from the Angono [Rizal] Public Information Office supporting the December 10 kick-off ceremony; and information about one of the rally’s performers posted on Instagram on December 1, 2023.

DILG Memorandum Circular No. 2023-187, Stating That the Date of the Kick-Off Ceremony of the Bagong Pilipin… by VERA Files on Scribd

There are also documents without a date, but are clearly concerned with the Dec. 10 rally. There is a PCO Invitation to Bid, dated October 31,2023, for the procurement of tokens and collaterals for the “Bagong Pilipinas Launch.” These tokens/collaterals are aprons, ballers, caps, car stickers, hoodie jackets, tote bags, t-shirts, and tumblers, all with an ABC of nearly P1 million each, totaling over P7.5 million.

Such documents give Sen. Marcos the answer to her question, “Kaninong pera nanaman ito?”

There is a Department of Public Works and Highways department memorandum, dated November 23, 2023, concerning Memorandum Circular no. 39, signed by Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin, “Directing all national government agencies and instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations, government financial institutions, and state universities and colleges, and encouraging all local government units, to attend, participate and provide full support to the [undated] Bagong Pilipinas Official Campaign Kick-off Rally.” The MC, dated November 9, 2023, directs the PCO “to lead and organize the conduct of the Bagong Pilipinas Official Campaign Kick-Off Rally.”

DPWH DMC 81, s. 2023, With Memorandum Circular No. 39, s. 2023 From the Office of the President by VERA Files on Scribd

PCO Invitation to Bid for Tokens and Collaterals for the Bagong Pilipinas Launch by VERA Files on Scribd

Interestingly, there is no copy of Memorandum Circular no. 39, s. 2023 downloadable from the online Official Gazette, or anywhere else—including the PCO website and Facebook page—besides the DPWH website as of this writing. After MC no. 38, issued on October 27, 2023, is MC no. 40, released on November 14. Even trying to open a possibly hidden page on the MC based on the format of the URLs or addresses for the other circulars (i.e., https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/2023/11/09/memorandum-circular-no-39-s-2023/) leads to a “page not found” page.

Of course, there was no Bagong Pilipinas kick-off rally at Rizal Park in December last year. One explanation for the event’s cancellation is the Facebook announcement by the PCO on December 5, 2023, at exactly 12 midnight, that the president contracted COVID-19 for the third time, and that he was advised to isolate for five days, or until December 10. The lack of an official notice of cancellation, however, led to odd posts from unofficial sources that simultaneously stated that the December 10 rally was cancelled but the event was also “fake news.” Online remnants, however, clearly indicate otherwise.

Extended bidding may have also been a factor in the cancellation. An Invitation to Bid (second round) for the “Rental of Technical Equipment for the Bagong Pilipinas Kick-off Rally in Luzon for the Presidential Communications Office” was issued on December 7, 2023. The ABC for each lot totaled P16.4 million. The first Invitation to Bid was issued on Nov. 6. As per the bid documents, the equipment to be rented include various speakers, confetti machines, a thousand steel barricades, thirty-nine mist fans, and seventy portalets. It is unclear when the PCO made the decision to procure one lot each of customized lanyards (ABC, P200,000.00) and customized t-shirts (P300,000.00) “for Bagong Pilipinas Launch” and arm sleeves (P300,000.00) “for Bagong Pilipinas Communication Kit,” but the Request for Quotation for these lots that can be downloaded from PCO website was issued on December 15, 2023.

There is clearly a lack of transparency from Bongbong’s communications team regarding these projects. To reiterate what has been detailed elsewhere, those charged with presidential communications claim to be against disinformation, but they have, several times since Bongbong’s term started, reproduced lies about the president, stated by the president himself or his allies. Are they now also lying or keeping secrets about themselves, ironically regarding projects worth well over P20 million for promoting “a principled, accountable and dependable government”?

Incidentally, the upcoming rally will not be the first event at the Quirino Grandstand featuring “Bagong Pilipinas” in connection with a Philippine president in recent memory. “Bagong Pilipinas” was the title of the “inaugural song” of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, whose inauguration was held at the Grandstand on June 30, 2010. Written by Ogie Alcasid and Noel Cabangon, the lyrics of the song repeatedly invoke unity (the first lines are “Anuman ang iyong kulay/Ang Pilipinas ay nagtagumpay”).

The newer Bagong Pilipinas campaign can easily adopt the song for itself, happy though Bongbong seems to be with recycling the Bagong Lipunan/New Society anthems of his father’s dictatorship.

Originally published by Vera Files on May 27, 2019.

A day after the May 13 elections, the “Marcos Centennial” and “Kabataang Barangay Worldwide” accounts in Facebook became inaccessible. Prior to their decommissioning, the two Facebook pages had actively campaigned for Imee Marcos. Despite being the unapologetic eldest daughter of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and racked by controversy surrounding, among others, her false academic credentials, she garnered almost 16 million votes in a successful run for a Senate seat.

Imee’s 2019 campaign explicitly called for a Marcos Restoration: Vote for her, and she would revive the programs of the deposed dictatorship. One of her campaign ads online merely repeated words like “BLISS,” “Kadiwa,” and “nutribun,” as if to conjure a treasured past.

In contrast, the 2010 and 2016 national campaigns of Bongbong, Imee’s brother, were more focused on his claimed achievements as governor of Ilocos Norte and as senator of the republic. He had previously run for the Upper Chamber in 1995, only nine years after the People Power Revolution that ousted his father from Malacañang; then, he failed in his bid, placing 16^th in the race.

Under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, whose accommodating stance towards the Marcoses was highlighted by the burial of Ferdinand in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, Imee and her campaign handlers believed that reinforcing her ties to the Marcos regime was a winning strategy. She was the public face of the Marcos-era Kabataang Barangay, as well as head of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines and representative of the second district of Ilocos Norte in the regular Batasang Pambansa, among other appointments and designations. Instead of downplaying her links to her father’s administration, she owned up to them. She wound up receiving the eighth-highest number of votes.

Senator-elect Imee Marcos is joined by her family including her mother, former First Lady Imelda Marcos, during her proclamation by the Comelec.

Interestingly, another online site related to the Marcoses became inaccessible late in the 2019 campaign season. The website of the Human Rights Victims Claims Board (HRVCB) (http://hrvclaimsboard.gov.ph), which contains the only complete government-recognized list of victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime, 11,103 names in total, is currently offline. The site says: “This Account has been suspended. Contact your hosting provider for more information.”

Inquiries via email and Facebook messenger regarding the status of the site have not yet yielded any response. The HRVCB has ceased to function as mandated by Republic Act No. 10368 or the “Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013.” Enacted in February 2013, the law states that “The Board shall complete its work within two (2) years from the effectivity of the IRR promulgated by it. After such period, it shall become functus officio (of no further authority).” RA 10766 extended RA 10368’s effectivity from May 12, 2014 to May 12, 2018, while Joint Resolution No. 4, approved by President Duterte on February 22 this year, extended the availability and release of funds to the victims recognized by the HRVCB to Dec. 31, 2019. With the HRVCB closing shop, the Commission on Human Rights assumed the responsibility of distributing checks to the victims.

Even if the HRVCB has fulfilled its mandate, RA 10368 states that a roll of victims—who include those who were tortured, killed, involuntarily disappeared, or detained for exercising their civil or political rights, had their property or businesses unjustly or illegally taken over by enforcers of the estate, or were victims of such seizures “caused by” the Marcoses themselves—should have been produced by the Board, and a “compendium of (these victims’) sacrifices” should be “prepared and may be readily viewed and accessed in the internet.” The list uploaded to the site was the best approximation of an online roll of victims.

U.P. PRESIDENT DOES BALANCING ACT

RA 10368 also created the Human Rights Violations Victims’ Memorial
Commission (HRVVMC). Its Board of Trustees is made up of heads of the
Commission on Human Rights, the National Historical Commission, the
Commission on Higher Education, the National Commission on Culture and
the Arts, the Department of Education, and the University of the
Philippines-Diliman Main Library. The CHR chairperson is the HRVVMC
chairperson.

From the U.P website

According to RA 10368, the Commission’s main responsibility is the “establishment, restoration, preservation and conservation of the Memorial/Museum/Library/Compendium in honor of the (victims of human rights violations) during the Marcos regime.” The Commission agreed to establish a Freedom Memorial Museum, which was launched on April 28, 2016, just before the presidential elections of that year. At the time, the proposed site for the museum was the grounds of the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Nature Center. President Noynoy Aquino led the launch.

Little was heard of from the HRVVMC after President Duterte’s election. On Sept. 21, 2018, the 46th anniversary of Marcos’ declaration of martial law, members of the HRVVMC gathered at the steps of the University of the Philippines’ Palma Hall in Diliman to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state university for the establishment of the memorial museum and/or library. A new location for the museum had been determined — a vacant lot in UP Diliman, where the experimental Automated Guideway Transit railway track once stood.

Critics consider the MoU signing to be an offshoot of the condemnation received by UP President Danilo Concepcion when he attended a Kabataang Barangay reunion with Imee Marcos at UP Diliman’s Bahay ng Alumni on August 25, 2018. Concepcion was a high-ranking member of the Kabataang Barangay and Batasan assemblyman during the Marcos regime.

Also as reported in the Philippine Collegian on June 21, 1983, Concepcion was that year’s chairman of the recognition day committee for the graduating class of the UP College of Law. He appealed to then UP President Edgardo Angara to hold recognition rites specifically for students who completed all subjects in the law school curriculum, but were not necessarily qualified to graduate with a Bachelor of Laws degree. Imee attended that ceremony despite lacking an undergraduate degree, which barred her from getting her law degree.

Photos from the Concepcion-initiated academic pageantry were circulated by Imee’s camp during the 2019 campaign period as incontrovertible proof of her earning a degree from the UP College of Law. UP had to issue a statement—twice—to say that she did not graduate from UP.

Despite Concepcion’s ties to the Marcoses, the construction of the Freedom Memorial Museum in UP Diliman is proceeding as scheduled under his watch. The museum has a website (https://www.thefreedommemorial.ph/) that details the mechanics of the Freedom Memorial Museum Design Competition. Entries were accepted from April 5, 2019, until May 15, 2019. A winner is scheduled to be announced this June.

Once constructed, the Freedom Memorial Museum will share common space with numerous structures and locations bearing names closely associated with the Marcos regime. Most prominent of these is the Cesar E.A. Virata School of Business, named after the former prime minister and Marcos’ chief technocrat. The school, formerly the College of Business Administration, was renamed in April 2013. The College of Law also houses the UP Law Class of 1987-Juan Ponce Enrile Reading Room, which bears the name of the defense minister and architect of martial law. The room was formally turned over to UP in June 2013. UP President Concepcion was then dean of the College of Law.

THE OLD NETWORK IS ACTIVE AND DELIVERING

Then there’s the money for the arts. Irene Marcos-Araneta was a known patron of Dulaang UP. But her largesse is dwarfed by that of a Marcos associate. Currently under construction is the Ignacio B. Gimenez Foundation–Kolehiyo ng Arte at Literatura Theater. The groundbreaking ceremony for the theater was held on June 13, 2013, and a cornerstone-laying ceremony was held on Dec. 14, 2016. Gimenez was in attendance during both ceremonies. At least two theaters are already named after him: the Ateneo Areté Ignacio B. Gimenez Amphitheater and the CCP Black Box Theater, formally known as the Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, inaugurated in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

An alumnus of UP, Gimenez, husband of Fe Roa Gimenez, former social secretary of Imelda Marcos, has served as the chairman of the Sogo Group of Hotels. He represented Sogo during its turnover of outdoor exercise equipment donated to UP Diliman in January 2015. These can currently be found at the College of Science Complex and the Department of Military Science and Tactics Complex. There is also an Ignacio B. Gimenez Award for UP Student Organization Social Innovation Projects. Gimenez was also among the first UP Gawad Oblation awardees. He was bestowed the award with 13 others—including businessman Magdaleno Albarracin, who, as recorded in the minutes of the 1288th meeting of the UP Board of Regents on June 20, 2013, “made a commitment to donate “₱40 Million as a condition to the renaming of the College of Business Administration into the Cesar E.A. Virata School of Business, after the finality of the Board’s approval on the said renaming.”

Besides setting up at least one dummy firm for the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth, according to a 2008 Supreme Court minute resolution, Gimenez was also tangentially connected to at least one other UP-related project. On June 27, 1984, Gimenez, as president of the Transnational Construction Corporation (TNCC), signed an agreement to sublease a lot in Pasay City owned by the Light Rail Transit Authority (LRTA). The principal lessee of the LRTA property was the Philippine General Hospital Foundation, Inc. (PGHFI). At the time, both LRTA and PGHFI were chaired by then First Lady Imelda Marcos.

LRTA agreed to lease its Pasay property to PGHFI for P102,760 a month. Gimenez’s TNCC agreed to sublease the property for P734,000 a month. The significant difference was supposed to go to UP PGH. After the EDSA Revolution, the state attempted to convict Imelda for this and related deals for violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. She was convicted in 1993 but was acquitted in 1998 due to technicalities. In his dissent to the 1998 decision, Justice Artemio Panganiban noted that “(other) than her out-of-court utterances, petitioner has submitted no evidence whatsoever to indicate that the money gained by PGHFI from TNCC (and lost by the LRTA) was actually spent for a hospital or any other charitable purpose.” A director of the PGH interviewed by journalist Raissa Robles in the early 1990s told her that “PGH never got a centavo” from PGHFI.

THE REHABILITATION OF THE MARCOS NAME

Since their return to Philippine politics in 1992, only six years after Ferdinand Marcos was deposed, the Marcoses have been spearheading attempts to rehabilitate their patriarch’s rule. As is now clear, it was borne out of their need for political survival than out of filial duty.

From the Bagong Lipunan Facebook Page

In 1992, Bongbong, as the representative of the second district of Ilocos Norte, filed House Resolution No. 80 calling for the return of Ferdinand’s remains from exile in Hawaii and according his father a state funeral “befitting a former president of the Republic.” Less than half of the House co-authored the resolution, which was consigned to the House archives in 1994. In March 1993, Bongbong filed House Bill No. 8363, which aimed to rename the Mariano Marcos State University in Batac to the Ferdinand E. Marcos State University. The bill died at the Committee on Education and Culture that same year.

Imee, in contrast, left such lionization attempts outside of her legislative agenda. In her 2012 Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth, Imee is listed as the officer-president of the Marcos Presidential Center, Inc. since January 16, 2002. Among the Center’s projects were: a website (www.marcospresidentialcenter.com, launched in 2002, now defunct); the publication of books that highlighted the achievements of Ferdinand, initiated in 2007; the renovation of the Ferdinand E. Marcos Presidential Center in Batac, Ilocos Norte; and the drafting of public relations pieces. The Center provided the text and photos for a press release, used as a basis for articles published in various media outlets, regarding the November 2017 marriage of Michael Marcos Manotoc, Imee’s son, to Carina Manglapus, granddaughter of former senator Raul Manglapus. The piece characterized the marriage as a reconciliation of rival political families from Ilocos.

In one of his papers, film scholar Joel David mentioned an informal interview with then-representative Imee, who “expressed her plan to popularize what she called ‘Marcos studies.’” On Sept. 16, 2002, the Manila Standard printed an article by Imee titled “Revisiting Martial Law.” There, she stated that the “time has come to study intently, intensely, dispassionately, completely, the Marcos era, before, during and following the Martial Law period, applying intellectual rigor over emotion, scholarship, not partisanship.”

Manuel Alba, once Marcos’s budget minister, was interviewed twice by Professors Teresa Encarnacion Tadem, Cayetano Paderanga, and Yutaka Katayama for their oral history project, “Economic Policymaking and the Philippine Development Experience, 1960-1985.” In one of the interviews, held in January 2009, Alba mentioned that Imee had a “Pamana project,” which intended to “document the Marcos’ achievements,” for which he committed to “write on budget and education.” Alba also revealed that Onofre D. Corpuz, one of Marcos’s education ministers and former UP president, was going to write a “framework” for the project. It is unknown if there was any further progress on the project before Corpuz’s death in 2013.

In a lengthy interview by Jojo Silvestre, published on the website of the Philippine Star on Nov. 21, 2010, Imee complimented Alba along with many other members of the Marcos cabinet, calling him brilliant. In the same interview, Silvestre noted that “Cabinet meetings must have been a free-for-all.” Imee revealed intimate knowledge of such meetings, as if she had attended some, though she was not known to have held any Cabinet-level position during her father’s rule. When asked about martial law, Imee told Silvestre, “I don’t see myself as an apologist. Sa haba ng panahon, you have to judge it in context, in its time … (The) other side of the story is very well documented. And even over-documented.”

IMEE MORE FOCUSED IN RESTORING MARCOS NAME IN HISTORY

During the 2019 campaign, Imee seemed unwilling to engage on the issue of her family’s ill-gotten wealth and the abuses committed during the Marcos regime. When asked about the recent Sandiganbayan decision convicting her mother Imelda of seven counts of graft, Imee would cite the sub judice rule barring public disclosure of details of pending court proceedings. The rule does not apply to the cases on the Marcos’s ill-gotten wealth that have been decided with finality, though she denied that any existed when she filed her certificate of candidacy on Oct. 15, 2018.Earlier, during the 2018 anniversary of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, she was quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer as saying “(the) millennials have moved on, and I think people at my age should move on as well.”

Propagating Ferdinand Marcos’ statements. From Imee Marcos Facebook Page.

She made a similar statement almost 20 years ago. On Dec. 12, 1999, the Associated Press quoted her as saying, “Many of the younger people who don’t have so many preconceived notions, actually received a lifetime virtually of propaganda, are beginning to think that it is important to review what actually happened.”

Under current political conditions, Imee may succeed where brother Bongbong failed. The votes that secured for Imee a Senate seat were not just a product of nostalgia for an authoritarian past or merely a reflection of first-time voters’ ignorance of the brutality and excesses of the Marcos regime. They were also, in part, paid for by long-time allies and cronies of the Marcoses who, in the process of buying respectability from academic institutions, also contributed to the cause of burnishing and enthroning the Marcos name in Philippine history and politics.

The increasingly favorable political fortunes of the Marcoses and their cabal may also mean the effective erasure of memories of both human rights violations and compromises with those who obtained their wealth through plunder or abuse of authority, signaling that if the Marcoses could get away with such abuses, so can others. If the record of the human rights victims of the past can disappear, so, too, can the record of the comparable brutalities of the current dispensation. One bloody bejeweled hand washes the other.

Originally published by Vera Files on July 4, 2016.

Last of three parts

For Ferdinand Marcos, failing to gain official recognition for Maharlika and subsequent war claims did not seem to matter. By 1947, he was already an economic advisor to President Manuel Roxas. By 1949, he was representative of the second district of Ilocos Norte.

By 1954, before his second reelection as congressman, he had married the beauty queen Imelda Romualdez. In 1959, he was elected senator, with his cousin Simeon Valdez replacing him as representative of the second district of Ilocos Norte.

Throughout this legislative phase of his political career, Marcos projected himself as an advocate for veterans’ affairs. Conveniently, within 1947-1964, several people who could have either corroborated or contested his claims of heroism during the Second World War had passed away. Roxas died in 1948. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, commander of Allied Forces in the Philippines died in 1953. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), died in 1964.

It was between 1963 and 1965 that the myth of Marcos the war hero was brought to new heights. As pointed out by the late Ret. Col. Bonifacio Gillego, it was in a single ceremony in December 1963 when Marcos received an additional ten medals—all from the Armed Forces of the Philippines—for his alleged guerrilla exploits.

In 1964, Hartzell Spence’s For Every Tear A Victory: The Story of Ferdinand E. Marcos (later published as Marcos of the Philippines: A Biography) was released. Many pages of this tome are dedicated to revealing Marcos’s acts of derring-do, such as supposedly delaying the Fall of Bataan and fighting in the pivotal Battle of Bessang Pass in Cervantes, Ilocos Sur.

In September 1965—mere months before the elections—the film Iginuhit ng Tadhana was released. At the center of that film is an action-packed depiction of Marcos’s guerrilla activities, though it largely excludes his presence in both the Battle of Bataan (it does show him trudging along with other soldiers in the infamous Death March) and the Battle of Bessang Pass. A wordless scene where he is shown being awarded a medal by an American officer punctuates the film’s section on Marcos’s war activities.

Perhaps the people behind Iginuhit decided to tone down Marcos’s heroics because of certain reactions to Spence’s book. Writing in September 1965, Nick Joaquin ironically summarized apologia of For Every Tear saying the book was “mostly hocus-pocus” and “mostly bull.”

According to a 1974 Philippine News article, quoted in Primitivo Mijares’ The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, then congressman Sergio Osmena Jr. told the Philippine Free Press in April 1965, “Those who actually fought at Bessang Pass say that they had never seen Mr. Marcos there or his whereabouts….There are those who attest to the fact that Mr. Marcos was during all that time at Luna, La Union, attending to military cases as a judge advocate.”

In File No. 60, there is a letter from Marcos dated May 1, 1945, with the letterhead of the GHQ of USAFIP, NL in Camp Spencer in Luna, La Union. There, he asks Colonel Russel Volckmann, C.O. of USAFIP, NL, to allow him to “return to Manila…to permit [him] to join [Ang Manga Maharlika],” as “the only reason for [his] being attached to the 14th Infantry [of USAFIP NL] was [his] inability to return to [his] own organization,” and that “[his] presence in [his] organization is indispensable as the secrets, documents and funds of the organization are in [his] possession alone.”

Volckmann, through his Chief of Staff, Lt. Col. Parker Calvert, immediately denied this request. According to Calvert, Marcos could not be transferred to Ang Manga Maharlika as it “is not among the guerilla units recognized by Higher headquarters,” and “it is therefore believed that his trip to Manila…to report to an unrecognized guerrilla organization would be futile.” On record, in the middle of the Battle of Bessang Pass, which lasted from January 8, 1945 to June 14, 1945, Marcos wanted a transfer to Manila.

Mijares also highlighted how Marcos is never mentioned in the writings of generals Carlos P. Romulo, MacArthur, and Wainwright, among others, even if Marcos’s hagiographers claimed that the latter two recommended Marcos for high military honors.

“Immediately after World War II,” says Mijares, “when Filipinos talked about their heroes, the names mentioned were Villamor, Basa, Kangleon, Lim, Adevoso and Balao of the Bessang Pass fame. Marcos was totally unknown.”

Mijares directed readers’ attention to several inconsistencies or impossibilities in Marcos’s biographies, but made no mention of File No. 60. This was because at the time, the records had not been examined by anyone for decades.

The journalists Jeff Gerth and Joel Brinkley reported in 1986 that the records were declassified in 1958 and donated to the U.S. National Archives in 1984.

Writing for the New York Times in 1986, Brinkley quoted a U.S. Army archivist saying in 1984 that File No. 60 remained classified due to the objection of the Philippine government, which during those times meant Marcos himself.

In 1980, a few years after Mijares disappeared, never to be found again, a book by Ret. Col. Uldarico S. Baclagon called Filipino Heroes of World War II was published. Gillego, in a series of articles published in WE Forum from November 3-4, 1982 until November 19-21, 1982, said the book contains an account of Marcos’ “super exploits,” referring to his alleged participation, as a veritable one-man army, in four major battles in March and April 1945.

Gillego noted that Baclagon based his accounts on official AFP documents—that is, the documents that gave Marcos the majority of his medals long after the war had ended. Gillego nevertheless faulted Baclagon for failing to corroborate these documents. Gillego did thorough verification, interviewing the 14th Infantry’s commanding officer Col. Romulo A. Manriquez, and staff and line officer Capt. Vicente Rivera.

Manriquez, Gillego says, was incensed by a claim that he served under Marcos. Furthermore, Manriquez stated that Marcos was placed in charge of civil affairs, given his legal background, and never fired a shot between December 1944—when Marcos first reported for duty in the 14th Infantry—and the time Marcos requested transfer to the headquarters of the United States Armed Forces in the Philippines, Northern Luzon (USAFIP, NL).

In contrast, Gillego describes a passage in Rivera’s memoirs describing Marcos, in March 1945, as having “fired at rustling leaves thinking that Japanese snipers were lurking behind them.” Gillego wrote that Rivera was certain that Marcos was not in the Battle of Bessang Pass since at the time of that engagement, Marcos was “already in the relative safety of USAFIP, NL headquarters in Camp Spencer, Luna, La Union.”

“On the circumstances that led to Marcos joining the 14th Infantry [in December 1944],” Gillego wrote, “Rivera had this to say: They knew of the presence of Marcos in the vicinity of Burgos, Natividad, Pangasinan. With Narciso Ramos [and] Cipriano S. Allas, Marcos organized his Maharlika unit with but a few [members,] not the 8,300 he claimed for back pay purposes. Marcos was on his way to La Union to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the death of his father Mariano Marcos.”

All this, Gillego was able to establish even without the damning evidence in File No. 60. Gillego’s WE Forum series was originally a 35-page monograph. It was the series that led to the jailing of the late Jose Burgos, WE Forum’s editor, and fourteen of his staff members for subversion and rebellion. By then, Marcos had already “lifted” martial law.

Yet there seemed to be no stopping the accounts that question Marcos’s claim to heroism. On December 18, 1983, John Sharkey, assistant foreign editor of the Washington Post, wrote the report “The Marcos Mystery: Did the Philippine Leaders Really Win the U.S. Medals for Valor? He Exploits Honors He May Not Have Earned.”

Sharkey spent 18 months of investigative work on the report and came to the conclusion as clearly as spelled out in the title of his report. He was not able to find “any independent, outside corroboration…to buttress a claim made in the Philippine government brochures that he [i.e. Marcos] was recommended for the U.S. Medal of Honor because of his bravery on Bataan.”

The historian Alfred W. McCoy took note that “when the Washington Post published fresh allegations challenging his medals in December 1983, not a single Manila newspaper dared to publish it.”

Come January 1986, shortly before the snap election in February, many of the contents of File No. 60 were splashed all over the pages of Veritas Magazine for the public to peruse. Accompanying photographs of the documents in the January 25, 1986 issue of Veritas was an article by McCoy, who found the Marcos files in the U.S. National Archives in Washington.

As reported by The New York Times a few days before the Veritas exposé, McCoy “discovered the documents among hundreds of thousands of others several months ago while at the National Archives researching a book on World War II in the Philippines.”

Originally published in the defunct Australian newspaper National Times, McCoy’s article echoed a lot of what had previously been stated by Mijares and Gillego and their sources, but had the advantage of being able to dismantle the Marcos myth as formulated by the man himself. McCoy gave particular emphasis to the document titled “Ang Mga Maharlika – Its History in Brief,” calling it Marcos’s “master text” on Maharlika.

McCoy described this document as being attached to Marcos’s first attempt to have Ang Mga Maharlika recognized in August 1945. However, the “cover sheet” describing File No. 60’s contents only mentions a history as being attached to Marcos’ December 18, 1945 follow-up letter.

In either case, it is curious that the document concludes with a reproduction of Ang Mga Maharlika’s disbandment order, which Marcos dated as being issued on December 31, 1945.

Marcos did seem to have a penchant for describing events as having occurred before they actually happened. McCoy notes that Marcos’s very first blunder was paragraph 3b of the August 1945 submission. In that paragraph, Marcos claimed, “In the first days of December 1944, [he] proceeded to the Mountain Province on an intelligence mission for General Manuel Roxas,” and that he was attached to USAFIP, NL since December 12, 1944 because “the landings in Lingayen, Pangasinan cut off [his] return to [his own organization, Maharlika].” The error was obvious even then; the first landing in Lingayen Gulf happened in January 9, 1945.

Thus, in the first indorsement of Marcos’s August 1945 submission, dated September 16, 1945, a Major Harry McKenzie said: “Par. 3 b. is contradictory in itself….Landings a month later could not have influenced his abandoning his outfit and attaching himself to another guerrilla organization.”

According to McCoy, “While the US Army was discovering that Marcos had not really played a key role in the resistance, the Philippine Army found evidence that his Maharlika combat unit had spent the war selling scrap metal to the Japanese military….In separate investigations between 1945 and 1950, the Philippine Army and US Veterans Administration collected affidavits and documents showing that the Maharlika’s Pangasinan unit had avoided combat and dedicated itself to dominating the black market trade in scrap metal and machinery.”

All these notwithstanding, this is what is written in the Department of National Defense’s profile of Marcos: “During the outbreak of the Second World War, Marcos joined the military, fought in Bataan and later joined the guerilla forces. He was a major when the war ended.”

The very same profile, word for word, can be read at the University of the Philippines ROTC’s website.

“History is an argument without end,” wrote the historian Pieter Geyl. It requires that one’s fidelity to truth and reason equals one’s boundless capacity to reassert the very same.

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.