Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still considered for a national burial.

Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics. They supported the winning presidential and congressional candidates with their considerable resources and reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election that returned President Joseph Estrada. General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s commander-in-chief who had been in charge of security when Aquino was assassinated, had fled the Philippines with Marcos in 1986. When he died in Bangkok, the Estrada administration gave the general military honors at his burial. One Filipino newspaper, Today, wrote on 22 November 1998, “Ver, Marcos and the rest of the official family plunged the country into two decades of lies, tortures, and plunder. Over the next decade, Marcos’s cronies and immediate family would tiptoe back into the country, one by one – always to the public revulsion and disgust, though they showed that there was nothing that hidden money and thick hides could not withstand.”

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