Thread by @brianbelen

One of the more bizarre talking points I’ve come across in the pro-Marcos echo chamber is that the family never stole a centavo of public money. If so, where’s the conviction? they ask.

I find this really strange for a number of reasons. 1/x

To begin with, aren’t you scraping the bottom of the barrel if the best argument you can offer is “Yes, but has s/he ever been convicted?” #justsaying 2/x

So much of the Marcos wealth has been ruled as ill-gotten and returned to the Philippine government. (There are some who will split hairs that ill-gotten is not the same as stolen, but for all intents and purposes the two are one and the same to the man on the street.) 3/x

Here’s a site from 2017 detailing the issue of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth; doesn’t look like the site’s been updated in a while (and there are some typos) but I presume journalism from the Philippine Star is acceptable to most quarters. newslab.philstar.com/31-years-of-am… 4/x

There’s also this Bloomberg article about all the money the Marcoses stole: bloomberg.com/news/features/… 5/x

Likewise, this 2016 article from the Guardian on the Marcos’ family thievery is also very informative: theguardian.com/world/2016/may… 6/x

In the ruling that returned almost $600M to the Philippine gov’t, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court stated (page 13) that “it is established that the distrained assets [i.e., the funds] are considered the product of or proceeds from a criminal act.” scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/1012… 7/x

And then of course, there are multiple rulings from the Sandiganbayan, which is the Philippines’ graft and corruption court. Among these include the guilty verdict handed down to Imelda Marcos, for which inexplicably has not been arrested. ombudsman.gov.ph/docs/05%20SB%2… 8/x

Now, it’s also been argued that there’s no criminal conviction against the Marcoses, specifically against Marcos Sr. I think this has already been expertly addressed by @hannahbarrantes but to summarize: You can’t convict a person of a crime after their death. 9/x

Anyway, this has gone on long enough.

tl;dr: Yes, it has been proven that the Marcoses stole from government coffers. That’s the entire reason moneys and assets have been recovered by and returned to the Philippine government! 10/x

But I will also say: intuitively, the absence of a conviction doesn’t mean something didn’t happen. There was a kid in kindergarten who punched me in the eye, and even if I never told on him and even if it didn’t go on record, I can tell you for a fact that THAT DID HAPPEN. 11/x

So it is with the Marcos wealth. As a taxpayer, I think I’m entitled to ask the reasonable question: if their only source of income is public office, how are they so wealthy?

https://twitter.com/brianbelen/status/1473070231975510017?s=21

12/x

Final thought (for this thread at least): conviction pertains to accountability under the law. There are of course other ways to hold people accountable, such as not voting them into public office. 13/end

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