🤔 A package of Imelda's diamonds given to Cory Aquino says "discoverer" 🙄
(Updated about 4 years ago, posted under Commentary)
According to London-based newspaper, The Guardian, in the wee hours of February 26, 1986, after President Marcos fled Malacañang,
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(Updated about 4 years ago, posted under Commentary)
According to London-based newspaper, The Guardian, in the wee hours of February 26, 1986, after President Marcos fled Malacañang,
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a "young civil servant named Chito Roque", unlocked a steel safe in Marcos' quarters, the combination of which, Roque said, was pasted on the safe's door, and found inside what would be documents that proved or pointed to the loot Marcos amassed in his 20-year rule.
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Chito Roque, or "Potenciano Roque", wasn't a civil servant but a small businessman, an activist in Agapito "Butz" Aquino's "August 21 Movement (ATOM)".
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It is astonishing that for such a deed - securing documents that would lead to the discovery of millions of dollars in Marcos' and his cronies' hidden loot - Roque had not been hailed and honored as an EDSA hero.
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In March 1986, Cory appointed him as head of her powerful Task Force Anti-Gambling, headquartered in Malacañang itself and assigned the gargantuan task of eradicating jueteng in the country. His appointment to head the Task Force had raised eyebrows:
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Roque wasn't a lawyer, didn't have any background in law enforcement or intelligence gathering and was a small businessman all his working life.
Cory Aquino's then executive secretary, the late senator Joker Arroyo - who was with Roque and
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Cory Aquino's then executive secretary, the late senator Joker Arroyo - who was with Roque and
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Teodoro "Teddyboy" Locsin, Jr. in Malacañang that night — many years later, in 2011, reported that while he did not see Roque opening the safe, he indeed gave him that early morning a black bag containing documents from the safe.
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Arroyo didn't consider the bag of any importance, and turned it over only several days later to Jovito Salonga, chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). Arroyo said in 2011 that after Salonga pored over the documents,
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it turned out to be a breakthrough in terms of unearthing Marcos' hidden wealth. Arroyo practically said that Roque was the discoverer of Marcos' wealth:
"It was a gold mine. That's what it was", Arroyo said.
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"It was a gold mine. That's what it was", Arroyo said.
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In 1990, the US government presented Roque as a witness in its racketeering charge against Imelda Marcos at the New York Federal District Court.
Aside from confirming that it was he who found the incriminating documents against Marcos in 1986,
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Aside from confirming that it was he who found the incriminating documents against Marcos in 1986,
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Roque testified, to everyone's shock, that he gave Cory "a box of Imelda's diamonds", which he said he recovered from Malacañang. He didn't explain, though, why he gave the diamonds to Cory and the documents to Arroyo, the President's most trusted aide at that time.
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There is no report that Cory surrendered such diamonds. If she handed them over to the PCGG, indeed, that would have been big front-page news. She had not commented on Roque's allegation.
Roque's testimony was not reported by the local media at the time.
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Roque's testimony was not reported by the local media at the time.
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The allegation about Imelda's diamonds being turned over to Cory would be raised again only in October 2005. That was when PCGG Chairman Ricardo Abcede reported that he "received a transcript of a racketeering case against Imelda Marcos in a New York court in 1995,
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which quoted a certain Potenciano Roque as saying that he gave Corazon Aquino a box of diamonds, which was recovered from Malacañang."
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"The PCGG never received that box of diamonds", Abcede declared. He said he plans to call Cory to the PCGG to deny or confirm the allegation. Abcede never did. (He died in 2012.)
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Three years later, Roque was out of Malacañang. He came back to public view only in 1995, when Congressman Roilo Golez presented him in Congress as a star witness in an investigation on the proliferation of jueteng.
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Roque disappeared from history, or from the news pages, after that Congress testimony. Golez says he has lost all contact with him since 20 years ago.
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Could Roque have been an agent of a foreign power that assigned him to provide Cory's government with the documents that condemned Marcos, and then to tempt Cory with the diamonds, so it could blackmail her?
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Why former President BS Aquino harbored such deep anger toward President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that he had been consumed by the desire to jail her, at the expense of so much political capital and time spent in its pursuit?
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Could it be that his mother thought that President Arroyo had ordered Abcede to publicize Roque's allegation that he gave Imelda's diamonds to Cory, and thus she and her son became furiously mad at the President that they went all out against her administration?
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But alas, we may never find out the truth. We can only raise questions, especially those that prick at the narratives created by the ruling elite. Our historians have been sleeping on their jobs.
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