Over the weekend I attended one of the infrequent reunions of my comrades in the “Ipil group.” No, we’re not aficionados of that well-known local softwood tree, nor are we former residents of that well-known UP Diliman dorm for well-off graduate students.
Ipil was the name of the minimum-security detention center inside Fort Bonifacio during martial law, where the authorities confined either less-dangerous activists or, as in my case, long-term detainees already being processed for release.
There were still barbed-wire fences and curfew hours, but the compound was mostly sprawling open ground, and our quarters were dorm-style barracks and not individual cells. The compound was split into male and female quarters (separated by barbed wire), which was good for husband-and-wife detainees, and the authorities were fairly generous about conjugal visits, which was very good for our overactive hormones.
***
The buzz at our weekend reunion was mostly about Duterte’s bombshell announcement that he’d been approached by the Marcos family with an offer to return “some” of their wealth, including “a few” gold bars.
Most of us had filed for reparations under the government’s martial law victims compensation program and/or the class action suit filed in Hawaii, so there was naturally a lot of excitement about the prospect of maybe receiving some of that returned wealth.
Our mayor-president, ever practical, has said he really doesn’t care whether the Marcos explanation of their wealth is true or not (their version is that they conserved it for the nation’s patrimony). If Congress allows him to do so, he just wants to settle the issue once and for all, and plans to appoint a high-level team, perhaps led by a former chief justice, to negotiate a final settlement.
Of course all sorts of rumors immediately started. One story pegged the Marcoses’ total gold bars at 7,000, which would certainly put the entire U.S. government to shame since the total bars inside Fort Knox number only 4,582.
The leftist groups predictably objected on their usual grounds that the Marcoses are irredeemably evil and shouldn’t be touched with a 10-foot pole. The yellows chimed in against what they clearly saw as the latest opportunity for Duterte to do something meaningful that would further burnish his image and boost his already improbably high ratings.
But history is on the people’s side at this particular moment.
With Bongbong Marcos’ electoral protest entering the homestretch before a probably sympathetic Supreme Court, it behooves his family to ease his delayed entry into the vice presidential office by making nice with everyone within shouting distance. Now of all times is when a deal looks likeliest.
***
Bombshells continue to be dropped by my friend lawyer Larry Gadon, who’s now very busy making the rounds of radio-TV shows to talk up his impeachment complaint against Chief Justice Sereno.
During an interview by CNN’s Pinky Webb, Larry let on that there were already two male justices ready to testify against their chief. Under badgering by Pinky, Larry added that they “might” be joined by a third one, a lady, whom he later revealed to be Justice Teresita de Castro, an open critic of the CJ.
Larry also disclosed that he might have had as many as 42 endorsements, not just the 25 congressmen who did sign up to his complaint. The problem was that he arrived late at Congress, after some of them waiting for him had already left. There’s a good lesson in there about the folly of following Filipino time.
Nonetheless, if those early homegoers are still on board, Larry is almost halfway to the magic number of 90+. That’s the number of endorsements he needs in order for his complaint to be automatically adopted by the House as their impeachment articles for transmittal to the Senate.
***
A third bombshell was exploded by North Korea when it tested, for the very first time, a thermonuclear device, more popularly known as a hydrogen bomb. A 6.3-magnitude earthquake was set off by the device, which South Korea estimated at a yield of over 50 kilotons (by comparison, the Hiroshima blast in 1945 measured at 15 kilotons).
The irresponsibility of the aptly-named “hermit state” plumbs no depths. Previously they had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach much of the US mainland. And just last week they fired a missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean, a direct provocation in any language, not just to the Japanese but to every Asian state.
At what point will the patience of US President Trump finally break down? His is a relatively volatile, impulsive personality that does not take well to threats. We can only wait to see if the bombshells from North Korea are just bombast, or if Trump finally sees no other course of action but to dispatch his bombardiers.
Readers can write me at [email protected].
