By Attorney Ruben CarranzaSenior expert, International Center for Transitional JusticeFormer commissioner, Presidential Commission on Good GovernmentConclusionTHE MARCOS RECORDBut what about Filipino Rotarians? Did they challenge Marcos? Here’s what I found: When the Rotary Club of the Philippines celebrated its Diamond Anniversary at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in March 1979, Marcos was their guest speaker. The Rotary Club emphasizes “ideals of service” and “high ethical standards.” Looking at Ferdinand Marcos’ record in 1979 and just a few years before that, he would not have qualified to be a Filipino Rotarian at all.In 1978, the US State Department reported “credible reports of torture as well as of the involvement of military units in abductions and murders of dissidents as an alternative to their arrest and imprisonment.” While Marcos was speaking at the Rotary Club anniversary at the PICC in 1979, Sen. Benigno Aquino and many other detainees were in their seventh year as political prisoners. In 1985, while I was a UP Cebu Student Council chairman, someone I always considered a friend and counted on to speak at the public events and protests was disappeared by the military in Labangon district. Until today, Fr. Rudy Romano has not been found.In July 1978, Imelda Marcos spent $1.4 million at the Bulgari jewelry store in New York. The Philippine National Bank branch in New York paid for her shopping and travel, as if the government-owned bank was her private ATM. The Bulgari receipt shows that it was Imelda’s assistant, a woman named Vilma Bautista, who paid for the jewelry. In 2013, the New York District Attorney asked me for help in prosecuting a Fil-Am woman they charged with tax fraud and racketeering. The woman had sold for $32 million a Monet painting stolen from a Philippine government-owned property in New York. She claimed that the painting was “given” to her by Imelda Marcos. That woman was Vilma Bautista. She was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.From 1975 to 1978, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was at Oxford University, spending the Filipino people’s money for a three-year degree course that he never finished. Why was he studying abroad, in one of the most expensive educational systems in the world, instead of studying like most of us in Filipino public schools in the country ruled by his own father? According to a 1987 Los Angeles Times report:“Twenty years ago (or just before Martial Law), the Philippines ranked as the second-best-educated nation in Asia. After nearly two decades of governmental neglect and corruption [at the end of the Marcos dictatorship] only 40 percent of all pupils who enter the first grade finish high school. More than one-third drop out before they enter the sixth grade, and only eight in every 100 pupils who enter primary school ever get to college.”Marcos Jr. was not one of these poor Filipino dropouts. He was an Oxford dropout. A year later, in 1979, he also managed to become a Wharton Business School University of Pennsylvania dropout. He spent millions of Filipino people’s money to do so. Together with his sister Imee who also did not graduate from Princeton University, they spent millions to buy two separate mansions in New Jersey plus two separate houses each for their bodyguards. Marcos Jr. and Imee each received a monthly allowance of $10,000.THE CEBUANO RESISTANCESo, what did Rotarians do during the dictatorship? Did some of them, like Thomas Mann, oppose the dictatorship? I’m sure that some brave Filipino Rotarians did. I’m sure that some of them were Cebuano Rotarians. And I’m sure that many of the Cebuanos were among those who made it possible for Cebu to emerge as a bastion of those brave enough to challenge Marcos. In 1978, the year Marcos told Filipinos to unite or else, Cebuanos (and our neighbors in Bohol and Negros) defied him by electing 13 Pusyon Bisaya candidates to his rubber-stamp parliament in 1978. One of them became my lawyer when I was arrested and charged with sedition in 1985: Hilario Davide Jr.In 2016, Cebuanos did it again. By giving Vice President Leni Robredo a significant margin of votes to defeat Marcos Jr., Cebu showed that it has not forgotten and will never again let a Marcos win.NO UNITY WITHOUT TRUTH AND JUSTICEAnd so today, when we hear Marcos Jr. speak about “unity,” shouldn’t we ask who he wants to unite with and why? Does he want to unite with those impoverished Filipino families whose children never finished school while Marcos Jr. wasted their money in England and in the United States? Does he want to unite with the family of Daniel Cabrera? In 2015, when Daniel was nine years old, a photo of him studying under the light of a McDonald’s in Mandaue became viral. Why was he there? Because that was where he begged for food. Why was he studying at night on the sidewalk under the light of the fast-food store? Because his family lived in a shanty with no electricity. That same year, Marcos Jr. was sending his sons to a different high school: Worth School, a boarding school in Sussex England where tuition is at least $43,000 a year.Where does his money come from? From the ill-gotten wealth of his family. Marcos Jr. has not had an actual job his entire life other than being a politician. Whatever his wife’s practice of law brings as income, it could not have paid for Marcos Jr.’s life of luxury then and now. His money is ill-gotten wealth.ILL-GOTTEN WEALTHWhat is ill-gotten wealth? According to the Philippines 1954 law on the forfeiture of ill-gotten wealth of public officials, any amount above the lawful income of that official is presumed ill-gotten UNLESS that official proves the legitimacy of its source. In 2003, in a case that I helped litigate as Presidential Commission on Good Government commissioner, the Supreme Court applied that forfeiture law on the assets of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and concluded that the total amount of legal income of the Marcoses is ONLY $304,000. That meant that the $680 million in frozen Swiss bank accounts deposited in the names of Marcos-created “foundations” was all ill-gotten. Does ill-gotten mean stolen and obtained from corruption? Of course. But Marcos Jr.’s propagandists are now busy spreading the lie that the Supreme Court in 2003 never said they were stolen from the “kaban ng bayan” or public coffers. That is a big lie: the Court said, and I quote “the (Swiss) foundations were established precisely to hide the money stolen by the Marcos spouses from the Republic.” For the lawyers here: that’s in 416 SCRA 233 at page 217.Anything else above $304,000 that the Marcoses claim is theirs is all ill-gotten.For as long as Marcos Jr. and his entire family do not acknowledge this fact as the truth, there cannot be an honest discussion about “unity.” For as long as Marcos Jr. does not acknowledge the corruption and human rights violations committed by his family and from which he continues to benefit, there will be no justice. Without justice, there can be no real peace. There can be no real peace because those who continue to suffer as a result of the injustices committed by the Marcoses and who still bear the consequences of the corruption that gave them their ill-gotten wealth will never forget. This is why it is important for Cebuanos to remember the role they played in fighting the Marcoses during the dictatorship and in defeating Marcos Jr. in 2016.I grew up in this city and proudly joined that fight when I was younger. Thank you again for the honor of being here to remind you that we fought and defeated the Marcoses in the past and that we can win against a Marcos again.(Speech delivered at the 21st General Membership Meeting, Rotary Club Cebu Fuente, Feb. 28, 2022)