00:49.2
confidential funds saga? Particularly, it looks like there's a lot of backlash and there's also
00:55.7
a lot of, I don't know, housecleaning, if I can look at it, or recalibration even by the powers
01:00.4
that be, except it's at the expense of one faction of the ruling elite, rather than the
01:05.9
entire faction of the ruling elite. How are you looking at this entire drama, Atty. Carranza?
01:12.4
Well, let's take up the question of so-called confidential funds first, regardless of who's
01:18.6
claiming it, who's denying it, who wants it and who claims not to want it.
01:23.5
I've always thought of confidential funds as just an excuse for corruption in the Philippines.
01:32.6
Remember, I used to work in government. So, I worked in two government agencies that,
01:38.2
under our conventional understanding of confidential funds, or sometimes they're
01:43.3
called intelligence funds, or all kinds of names, we would have been entitled to them. I was
01:49.8
Assistant Secretary of the Department of National Defense. I was Commissioner in the PCGG.
01:54.5
You could argue that these are kinds of agencies that need those funds. But then there's a counter
02:00.0
argument, which is that these agencies should have funds, regular funds to do their work,
02:07.4
which means they don't have to be confidential. You might have to perhaps argue that they don't
02:14.9
have to follow very strict auditing rules, that they don't have to disclose it to everyone,
02:20.4
but only to the Commission on Audit. But you don't have to make it so that it's absolutely
02:27.0
secret without any kind of transparency whatsoever, and that a post-audit will just
02:31.1
confirm what they spent, which is foolish because then they've already spent it.
02:36.3
So, I've always thought that this is an excuse for corruption. So, when I was in the PCGG,
02:42.0
Chairperson Heidi Ora simply refused to include any type of confidential or intelligence funds
02:47.7
in our budget. If we needed to spend something, it would be in our budget. If we needed to travel,
02:53.0
if we needed to hire lawyers, it would just be in the budget. In the DND, that was more difficult
02:58.6
because you have the military, which is flush with all kinds of these funds. But I already saw
03:06.9
that in that position, that this was also used for waste, if not outright corruption.
03:14.1
So, to me, I think the larger policy debate here is whether there should be confidential funds in
03:21.9
the first place for anyone. I'm sure there will be arguments that certain agencies and certain
03:27.4
types of expense should not be so transparent. But like I said earlier, you can have an audit
03:34.1
system to deal with that, but not a system where it's simply just given to you as a lump sum,
03:39.7
you spend it the way you want, and then you just account for it at the end when it's too late.
03:44.6
So, that's the policy argument. Now, the political argument, your question of
03:49.8
what is going on behind the scenes, basically. I'm sure your insights are far better than mine
03:56.3
here, but let me just specify something. I think every Filipino who pays attention
04:05.4
already knows this is a Marcos-Duterte fight. And that's the tragedy because Filipinos are
04:11.7
victims of both Marcos and Duterte. And so, why would you pick one side over the other?
04:17.3
Why would you think that Marcos is a more honest person than Duterte? Why would you think that
04:23.4
Duterte deserves to be believed against Marcos? These are just people fighting for spoils.
04:32.3
These are people fighting for who gets to steal more and who gets to kill more. And that's the
04:38.2
tragedy of this debate. And you can see that playing out in the media coverage of newspapers
04:45.8
that are owned by the Marcos Romualdez family. Why is the Inquirer, for example,
04:53.8
covering it in a way that it wouldn't cover Martin Romualdez donating $2 million? At first,
05:00.7
everyone thought it was just $1 million. The Tagalog Language Program, it turns out to be $2
05:07.0
million. And I was interviewed for that, and the article came out at first, and then they took it
05:13.1
down. So, you can see here that this is more than just about transparency and accountability
05:19.4
for confidential funds. It's Marcos against Duterte fighting for control over the spoils
05:25.1
of government. Or more like Marcos via Romualdez. Because if you look at BBM himself, he tries to be
05:33.9
above the fray. And I think that's a plausible deniability is very important. But before going
05:39.8
to that bardagulan and the whole tambaluslos one, let me rewind a little bit. Exactly.
05:44.3
That's the reason why I wanted to ask you, Attorney Carranza, is because you serve in the
05:48.6
Department of National Defense, which is national defense, right? All of these things we're hearing
05:53.5
from Duterte about defense. Well, that is your job when you're in the Department of National Defense.
05:58.2
But you're also with PCGG, which had to do with good governance. So, the question basically here,
06:03.8
Attorney Carranza, is, I know you're categorically skeptical, to just put it nicely.
06:10.2
But for the sake of argument, under what circumstances can a confidential fund make
06:15.3
sense? So, for instance, we had Secretary Llamas as a guest, and he talked about how Pinoy as the
06:21.5
president, they had, you know, quite minimal compared to what comes later on under Duterte.
06:25.6
But nonetheless, the president had a confidential fund. And then what are the safeguards? Or what
06:31.0
is the golden mean? Like a while ago, you said something like, it doesn't have to be confidential
06:36.0
fund. But, you know, it can be somewhere like you can just report to the Commission of Edit.
06:40.4
Because if you give too much details, then if it's a national security relevant one,
06:44.2
then the enemy knows what you're doing. For example, you cannot say we're buying 10 AK-47
06:49.6
or 10 ISR. I mean, so obviously, there is an argument to make. But what's the golden mean?
06:54.7
And what are the circumstances under which you think confidential fund makes sense? Because
06:59.1
under the Aquino administration, the president has confidential fund,
07:02.1
although nothing close to what will come later on under Duterte or BBM.
07:10.5
It's both a cultural and a legal issue. Legally, you do have an argument for not disclosing
07:21.2
how you will spend certain line items in your budget, because they're confidential,
07:26.3
because they're intelligence funds. And you can have a rule legally, where you only allow
07:34.9
certain agencies rather than certain activities, right? Agencies, not activities, who have access
07:41.6
to these types of funds. So that narrows it down considerably. You can have National Defense,
07:47.7
you can have the PCGG, you can have National Intelligence Agencies, the National Bureau
07:55.0
of Investigation. But I wouldn't stop there legally, because within that group of agencies,
08:04.0
you still have to narrow exactly why they will spend this money for what. And that's where
08:09.9
the trouble is. Because even within those agencies, there's a lot of corruption. Even
08:14.7
within these agencies, there's a lot of non-accounting of how this money is spent.
08:20.2
They would usually say reward money, they would say money for confidential informants,
08:26.6
money for whistleblowers. Then call it that, right? Put it in the budget as money for whistleblowers
08:37.8
or money for confidential informants. Obviously, you don't have to detail who the confidential
08:43.0
informants are. There's a witness protection program, for example, in the Department of
08:47.0
Justice. That's allocated as a line item in the Department of Justice budget for witness
08:54.2
protection. Do you need to specify the witnesses you protect? No. So in other words, you do have
08:59.2
a civilian example of what these military and police agencies ought to do when they want access
09:05.1
to these types of funds. But on the cultural side, that's a problem. This always comes down
09:10.9
to power. These people think that dispensing power requires access to corruption. That's
09:18.9
really what it is. Obviously, you cannot put a budget line for corruption. So you call it
09:24.6
something else, confidential funds. And if you ask what's going on, well, it's confidential,
09:30.8
right? You just look at it that way. No, it's a tautology. So it's ridiculous. I know.
09:38.7
Right. Just for technicality purposes, what's the difference with the maintenance and other
09:43.7
expenses, the MOE? Because for example, they did this. It's not confidential anymore in the
09:48.6
DepEd. We'll just put it in the MOE. What's going on there? Well, in government accounting,
09:56.6
that should have been very basic, right? Maintenance of your facilities, of what you
10:01.0
do day-to-day. So everything you usually do and other expenses. And that already covers salaries.
10:07.9
That covers gasoline. That covers things that make you function. That's the spying part of your
10:17.8
regular activity. Now, that's where the arguments you already know come in, right? Why would the
10:24.4
Department of Education need money to spy on people? Then maybe you're not educating, you're
10:32.3
spying. So I think that's the difference. And when politicians get away with stretching this
10:41.7
concept of what a line item in a budget is for, it's meant for this, but not for that, you might
10:49.3
as well get rid of the budgeting process. You might as well not have any of these distinctions
10:54.3
because you might as well not have a commission on audit and just leave it to congressmen and
11:01.0
senators to decide how much will be stolen from corruption, for corruption, and how much will be
11:06.6
left to spend on the public. Atty. Carranza, are you, I don't know if the word impresses right,
11:13.9
but are you surprised that the commission on audit, regardless of changes in leadership,
11:18.4
we can debate about whether the right persons are now there, et cetera, that in fairness,
11:23.0
it looks like pretty consistent in, well, indirectly exposing some gaps, loopholes,
11:29.6
if not anomalous practices out there. And at the same time, you also have the office of ombudsman
11:35.6
coming out now and essentially telling them, hey, to back off, something along those lines.
11:41.2
And then you have also people, I don't know, Congressman Richard Gomez, something like,
11:44.7
huwag niyong masyadong i-publicize para hindi mapaya yung ibang tao. May mga ganon. So parang,
11:51.3
what's going on here? First of all, are you surprised that the audit folks have not been
11:58.2
neutered? Or is this just like performative transparency? And then that's really it?
12:05.3
Because you can be cynical and say, of course, this is part of the performativity. Si may
12:09.8
commission on audit naman, inexposed naman. So we're a democracy, right? You know what I'm
12:14.2
saying? Like there could be levels of cynicism there, but for ombudsman to come in and all,
12:19.5
is this a next level kind of thing going on because we have a Duterte and BBM in power or not?
12:26.3
Yeah. And that's actually the right starting point to answer you because
12:31.1
once a country elects a family that stole five to $10 billion from them,
12:39.4
there is no bar anymore to outrightly defending corruption. So when the ombudsman of the
12:45.8
Philippines, who's supposed to be a constitutional office that checks every single branch of the
12:52.5
government, even to some extent, the Supreme Court comes out and says, we don't have to
12:57.7
publish the statement of assets and liabilities of public officials. It's essentially saying,
13:06.2
they can commit corruption in secret. We don't have to show how much they earned from corruption.
13:11.9
And that's because when you're a country that elects the Marcoses, puts them back in power
13:17.7
after they stole billions from you and lie about it, then there is nothing that stops
13:26.2
people like an ombudsman who got appointed by Duterte. There's nothing that prevents
13:32.1
corrupt politicians from coming out now and saying, we don't have to be checked. We don't have to be
13:39.9
required to disclose our income. We don't have to be exposed to public scrutiny
13:47.2
because what? You're not public officials. That's the problem. The commission of audit
13:52.7
functions because you have a bureaucracy in place. And to that extent, that's the value of
14:00.1
having a civil service that isn't affected by political change to a large extent. But as we
14:11.1
know, the civil service commission as an example, it's fine from a certain salary grade
14:18.2
downward. The problem will be in appointing higher level officials. The same thing with
14:23.4
the commission of audit. They audit mayor's offices. They audit fire departments. And then
14:30.3
you find out that the fire department bought a truck secondhand, but describe it as firsthand
14:37.4
and everyone goes to jail for that. You find a market, a city market treasurer
14:45.0
absconding with money, and she goes to jail for that, but not Imelda Marcos,
14:51.0
who stole 500 times more than anyone else in the Philippines. So did the commission on audit play
14:59.0
a role in checking her? Of course not, because the commission on audit was headed by someone
15:04.0
close to Ferdinand Marcos during the dictatorship. When Chofisto Gingona,
15:08.3
senior, became commission on audit chair right after the dictatorship, there was an audit of
15:14.5
all the Marcos debts and all the foreign aid that was sent to the dictatorship. And that's
15:21.4
when they found out that the Marcos dictatorship, for example, used USAID money for Imelda Marcos
15:27.4
shopping. So while we think the commission on audit does its job and these are bureaucrats
15:34.2
and civil servants who are professionals who follow certain standards, that's fine.
15:38.1
But I think we need to have them do more than what they're used to doing with regular government
15:46.2
agencies, with government agencies that have little money and therefore little corruption
15:51.7
and therefore not much to check. I saw some, I don't know, was it authentic or not,
15:58.6
may nag-circulate online as some sort of a Malacanang document now, intelligence or
16:04.0
confidential fund for Imelda or something like that. I mean, can we talk about the genesis of
16:10.0
this whole practice? Is this an Imeldafic Marcos legacy thing, or is this something common among
16:17.2
developing countries and we just copy it from someone else? How original is this whole
16:21.2
confidential fund saga? Dictators everywhere, not just the Philippine dictator, have always,
16:32.4
for some perverse reason, tried to find legal excuses for their corruption. Why they do that,
16:40.1
I think, has to do more with outward appearance towards people other than their citizens
16:50.0
than to their citizens. Other dictators commit corruption. Augusto Pinochet was corrupt.
16:57.3
The Argentine Junta was corrupt. South Korea's Chun Doo-hwan and the other dictators that followed
17:04.2
him were all corrupt. They were also brutal, but they were talking about corruption. It's not
17:09.3
exclusive to a Filipino dictator. What is exclusive is the fact that we re-elected the
17:18.3
same people who stole from us. Augusto Fujimori of Peru was corrupt, right? Augusto Fujimori was
17:27.2
corrupt, Peruvian dictator. He was ousted. His daughter tried to run for president. She lost.
17:34.2
Three times she ran? How many times? I've lost count.
17:38.6
You do have this daughter of one of the former dictators of Korea running and actually winning,
17:45.8
and then exposed for corruption and forced to resign. That document, maybe we're talking about,
17:54.8
I don't know, this memo that tells the Philippine National Bank to give Imelda Marcos her shopping
18:01.2
money when she arrives. There's a PNB branch here in New York. That's the same branch that gave
18:05.7
her money, and then they take it out of the so-called intelligence fund, which is just
18:10.3
rigmarole because what's the point? You're a dictator. It's just PNB, like I said, trying to
18:19.6
show to its foreign banking partners that there has to be some way to justify what is going on,
18:26.9
but really, internally within the dictatorship, they couldn't care. Imelda Marcos, for instance,
18:32.6
converted part of the National Food Authority's money into an intelligence fund, stole from the
18:39.5
NFA, the same agency that is now in charge of trying to lower the price of rice in the Philippines.
18:45.6
So kahit yung ahensya na nagpapatakbo ng pagkain at presyo ng bigas sa Pilipinas,
18:52.9
dinakawan ng mga Marcos. In fact, the Sandigan Bayan ordered them to pay what was found,
18:58.3
only what was found lost, 10 million pesos. Sa gagayon, hindi pa binabayaran ni Imelda Marcos.
19:04.0
So ginawang intelligence fund ang pera para pambilin ng bigas.
19:09.6
The reason I ask this is because doon sa isang podcast ko with Leloy Claudio, of course, we go
19:14.5
history, right? We talk about all sorts of securities of the Philippines. One of the things
19:19.5
that we discussed was how actually the term crony capitalism is perhaps a Philippine invention.
19:28.1
Way before talking about the Russian oligarchs and all of that, na-inventan ng Pilipinas. Kaya in
19:33.8
that context, I ask you the question if this intelligence confidential fund tradition,
19:39.4
if I can put it, if this is another only in the Philippines or authentic contribution natin to
19:46.3
humanity, that's why I ask about it, no? But I have another question, Tony Carranza.
19:54.2
Of course, there's the aspect of, to put it mildly, performative transparency or rule of law,
20:00.2
right? Because you want to show to the world, oh no, we operate by rule of law. And that's what
20:05.0
makes modern dictators. I mean, old despots didn't give a heck. They would just massacre
20:10.0
half of the villages and they'll say, you're my subjects. The difference with the modern
20:13.6
dictator is that they pretend that there's institution going on there. But the other
20:18.4
thing I've noticed, especially since the Duterte is coming to power is what we call securitization,
20:25.0
right? This idea that you try to shut down any kind of rational evidence-based debate by saying,
20:32.0
no, no, no, this is a matter of national security. So no question in confidential fund,
20:37.8
and later on, this will be relevant as we discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
20:41.8
because actually the context of the term securitization starts with how things
20:46.4
disoperate in countries like Israel, for instance, under certain right-wing administrations.
20:50.2
But speaking of the Philippines, we see with Duterte, if you question, for instance,
20:55.9
Sara Duterte, right? When she questioned her confidential fund, she immediately goes to an
21:00.1
event with some police folks and says, the ones who questioned the confidential fund,
21:04.1
effectively they are the enemy of the country. It's not even like defending herself on good
21:09.7
governance ground. It's immediately pushing it back to you, and not only gaslighting,
21:15.5
it's something even more menacing for some people. Is this something new in your opinion,
21:23.0
or don't you think this makes Duterte a bit different from our current version of Marcos?
21:27.4
Because at least in the case of Marcos Jr., you don't see him doing that securitization thing,
21:32.1
right? Well, with Duterte, that's quite consistent from the father to the daughter.
21:40.6
I think when you've stolen five to ten billion dollars already,
21:45.9
there's really no need for you.
21:51.0
Yeah, to some extent, yes. But also to the extent that you've done it with
22:01.2
over 20 years, and you needed 20 years to do it, and you needed 20 years of brutal dictatorship to
22:07.8
do it, you probably think that it's enough of a lesson for you to find another way to commit
22:21.2
corruption without having to go through the brutality of it. And not because you don't
22:26.7
want to be brutal, but because it takes too long. And with the internet, with social media,
22:33.4
with so much transparency available, it's not going to be something that you could do the way
22:38.6
you did it 20, 36 years. It's just some learning curve here, like strategic learning, kind of like
22:45.4
game theory. Right, right. And for the Dutertes, that's why they had to kill so many people
22:54.6
when they were in Davao, when Duterte was president, because they only had a short time
23:00.6
to do the kind of brutality that they could do nationwide. And in some ways, you might be
23:09.8
tempted to think, is this a distinction between a sophisticated set of oligarchs versus a very
23:16.7
crude set of oligarchs? I think the term we use is old new rich versus new new rich.
23:24.6
Right, and then to an extent, maybe that's true as far as their appeal,
23:33.2
that their populist appeal is concerned. One is totally honest about the murder
23:43.4
he wants to commit and has been committing. The other relies on lying to deny the corruption
23:50.5
that they commit. So, which one do you want? A brutal murderer or a dishonest plunderer?
23:58.9
That's your choice, right? Are you on the side of the liar who steals,
24:03.8
or are you on the side of the non-liar who kills people? What kind of choice is that?
24:09.5
I'm on the side of the party boy, Grand Prix, Formula One.
24:15.8
Right, except that now, as you suggested before we started,
24:21.0
this dishonest plunderer will create a fund so that they can consolidate all their corruption
24:31.6
and they can steal not in retail terms, not one by one from the NFA,
24:36.1
I will steal from my province, I will steal from the Ministry of Agriculture.
24:40.9
Instead, I will just steal the biggest assets being held by my largest financial institutions,
24:47.0
my central bank, my government-owned bank, and call it something that honors my plunderer father,
24:54.1
I'll call it Maharlika Fund. So, you have a plundering family that has mastered
25:07.0
plunder and is now carrying it out. On the other hand, you have a crude murdering family
25:13.3
that is still trying to make sure it consolidates power, but has already
25:19.1
left a trail of blood and bodies, and is trying to transcend that legacy.
25:29.1
It's a terrible set of choices, and there are no good choices in it. I think if you were
25:38.9
presenting yourself as an alternative to these two sets of terrible choices, you'll have to
25:47.0
address both corruption and human rights violations and say, there has to be
25:53.5
something better than just choosing between a corrupt family and a violent family.
25:59.2
Attorney Carranza, since you're in the United States, let me ask you this question.
26:04.2
I'm getting a lot of people asking me, especially from abroad, especially those who are
26:09.2
beginning to turn against BBM because he's perceived to be not pro-China, right? So, you can
26:14.4
guess who are these people. They're saying, oh, these Americans, they may have
26:21.0
offered something to the Marcoses, and that's why Marcos is so nice to them. I mean, how much
26:25.9
do you think is there to that? Because it's not like Biden controls the courts, right? I mean,
26:32.3
Marcoses have pending court cases, to put it mildly, right? It's not like Biden can tell
26:36.9
these courts what to do, right? But does the Treasury Department, for instance, have some
26:41.8
leeway in terms of dealing with alleged funds parked in, I don't know, Caribbean or something
26:46.5
like that? Assuming this conspiracy theory is true, I mean, how much leeway does the Biden
26:52.5
administration or any American president have to supposedly hook in the Marcos? Because that's
26:58.0
the argument that many pro-China people are saying that, oh, Marcos was our boy, except
27:02.4
Americans offered them a nicer deal. And they say, I don't know about that. And of course, for me,
27:08.6
it's ironic. Oh, you didn't have any issues when there were all those pogo and questionable things
27:12.4
under the table. Now, you're concerned about corruption in the Philippines. But I want to
27:16.6
ask you, honestly, realistically, what can Biden really offer if he were to be completely real
27:22.6
politic about this because he cares about China containing China? Therefore, let's give Marcos
27:27.2
whatever he wants. Assuming that's the case, theoretically, what is the leeway there?
27:33.8
Two years ago, in the middle of summer and the pandemic, I was asked to testify by the
27:39.8
Department of Justice here in a case against the Marcoses or involving stolen Marcos assets
27:46.2
still being litigated in New York. And the Department of Justice was very serious in
27:53.0
supporting the Philippine claim to those assets. In other words, this was an offshoot
27:57.9
of the Aquino administration, Benigno Aquino administration, claiming these assets. These are
28:04.2
paintings that were stolen by Ferro, Vilma Bautista, Imelda's aide from the New York
28:10.7
properties of the Philippines, and then hidden for a long, long time. And they came out and they
28:15.0
were taken back by the Department of Justice. And I helped them in that measure as well many
28:20.4
years ago. So they finally asked me to testify and say, where did these assets come from?
28:26.2
Did the Philippines know that these paintings were being hidden? And I testified on that.
28:31.6
But the point I'm making here is that the Department of Justice does what it has to do
28:37.7
when it comes to pursuing Marcos assets, when it comes to supporting Philippine government claims
28:44.9
against the Marcoses. Because it's a professional bureaucracy. They, to a very
28:52.2
large extent, they're insulated from changes in administration. And not that there is no way
29:00.5
to corrupt that process, not that there is no way to undermine that process. There's constant
29:05.4
undermining of that process, not just under Trump, but even presidents before him. But the
29:11.2
difficulty here is that you have other interests trying to make sure that the Department of Justice
29:19.6
does not lean on one side or the other, because everyone has an agenda. And so in the end,
29:24.7
everybody with an agenda has to arrive at a consensus and a compromise of sorts that maybe
29:31.2
let's let the DOJ do its job. I'm saying that because that doesn't mean that there are other,
29:38.1
that there are no other ways to give Marcos what he wants in return for what the United States
29:44.5
wants from Marcos. And I'll give you an example. You mentioned the US Bureau of Treasury, which
29:49.5
among other agencies in the US, administers sanctions and freezing of assets based on
29:55.0
various laws that more or less allow the United States government to freeze assets to prevent
30:02.9
travel by refusing US visas, or even to order the arrest, if they appear on US soil,
30:09.6
of persons who are not just convicted, but even just suspected of corruption or human rights
30:15.5
violations. And the Filipinos know one example of that, Kiboloy, son of God, or whatever he
30:22.2
claims to be. He's not just under FBI investigation, he's subject to these
30:28.3
sanctions. One of the more prominent examples is the Global Magnitsky Act sanctions for corrupt
30:35.7
officials, for human rights violators. The United States government doesn't impose sanctions,
30:42.2
freeze assets, prevent travel based on some objective, applicable to everyone criteria.
30:49.8
They use these tools of accountability to promote their power, to pursue their
30:57.0
foreign policy interests, to support America's military might elsewhere.
31:02.4
There's a strategic prerogative.
31:04.6
Yeah, so there's a strategic prerogative, yeah.
31:07.2
And the fact that they haven't used this on Marcos, and to some extent did not use this
31:11.8
on Duterte himself, but on certain individuals around Duterte, under pressure from the US
31:18.5
Congress, by the way, shows you that the US, by not doing anything against the Marcos family,
31:27.9
when they could have, when there is legal basis to do so, is giving Marcos what he wants.
31:34.5
Thank you for clarifying that. Exactly. Because my argument is, for all the ills of American
31:41.0
democracy, their courts are not banana republic courts. They have their own logic. And in
31:46.6
fairness, we saw even under the Trump administration, despite tremendous amount of
31:50.6
pressure he tried to put on many agencies, there was a fight back, there was a resistance.
31:55.2
I think the term was the steady state, right? Remember that anonymously written NYTBs?
32:02.5
Now, of course, we're not exaggerating the healthiness of American state institutions,
32:07.9
but this is not the Philippines, just to put it mildly. This is not a banana republic, all right?
32:12.7
But as I said, my sense is if there is a place where there could be prerogative or
32:17.8
room for maneuver is the Treasury Department's enforcement or pursuit, right, of certain
32:25.5
questionable personalities or individuals and all. Because the reason I know that is because,
32:29.6
for instance, we know that the Department of Treasury in the US has tremendous amount of
32:34.2
leeway on how to strongly go against American rivals, whether it's China, whether it's Russia,
32:39.6
whether it's Iran, for instance, for instance, on tech transfers, on oil transfers. So clearly,
32:46.9
there's a lot of room for maneuver and prerogative there, right? So I just had to
32:51.0
clarify that this is not a case of Biden telling courts to drop anti-Marcos cases.
32:56.7
He can't because those decisions are already final. So as far as those cases are concerned,
33:05.1
all he could do, which he did, was to allow Marcos Jr. and Aimee Marcos to visit the United
33:11.0
States. That's why, all of a sudden, how was it that Aimee Marcos never went to Hawaii?
33:19.0
You don't see pictures of her in Hawaii because she couldn't go. She would have been arrested.
33:23.1
She fled to Morocco, got a passport there. How is it that Bongbong Marcos, the last time he was
33:28.6
in Hawaii was 1995, if I'm not mistaken, never went back because that time, he was allowed by
33:35.0
the U.S. District Court in Hawaii to visit. At that time, there was no contempt judgment yet
33:40.0
against the family. So he was allowed to visit, provided he would testify, and he did.
33:45.0
So these people suddenly have an itch to travel to the United States. Why? Because
33:51.8
the Biden administration allowed immunity, temporary, temporary for as long as they're
33:57.1
in power, to be given to them. Once they're out of power, the U.S. courts can absolutely
34:04.9
enforce their judgments against this family. Wait, the sovereign immunity also applies to Aimee?
34:11.8
No, these are all, in the case of Aimee Marcos, let's go technical here,
34:19.4
she is not part of the contempt judgment in the District Court of Hawaii. Why? Because it's only
34:25.8
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Imelda Marcos who were held in contempt because they're administrators
34:31.4
of the so-called assets of Marcos Sr. Yeah, I have to clarify that because sovereign immunity,
34:37.0
you're talking about president, head of state, right? Some people are not even head of state.
34:42.2
Now, it perfectly makes sense. Thank you for that. Now, and I think this is a perfect transition
34:47.0
to what we really want to talk about. Let's talk about Duterte and then let's go to his pals on
34:51.2
the other side, right? ICC. So, what is your sense with ICC so far since last time we talked
34:59.7
vis-a-vis Duterte? And I think that's also a segue for our next part of conversation,
35:04.6
because Duterte had his own ideas about how to deal with the Gaza situation, right? With his
35:11.1
friend on the other side, who right now is also coming under a lot of criticism and people are
35:16.9
also talking about war crimes being committed. But let's talk about Duterte first before we
35:20.8
transition to the very thorny issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. How is the ICC
35:28.1
situation in your opinion? You know, the ICC prosecutor has won the appeal against the
35:40.3
original decision by the prosecutor to open an investigation, right? So, that was challenged by
35:46.0
the Philippine government under Marcos Junior. So, there are obviously still political
35:53.0
compromises and negotiations between the Marcos and Duterte families going on back there. But at
35:58.7
the ICC, that doesn't matter. So, the investigation has been approved. Technically, what should
36:06.6
happen now is for the prosecutor to file the charges at the trial chambers and ask
36:18.4
that chamber to issue either a warrant or summons to whoever he says should be
36:26.8
summoned or issued a warrant for. That hasn't happened. And largely, the reason that that
36:33.6
hasn't happened is, well, two reasons actually. Resources. The prosecutor does not have
36:41.6
enough resources to spread around, but that isn't really, well, that in part is the fault
36:47.7
of the prosecutor and also the states that are members of the ICC in terms of funding. But also
36:52.2
because this particular prosecutor has been a prosecutor that wants to please Western governments,
37:01.3
opens an investigation into Ukraine, but refuses to act on a two-year-old investigation
37:07.3
in Palestine. So, if you want to segue there later, we can segue there.
37:13.2
That is more poignant now than ever, right? Yeah.
37:16.3
Right. And there's a second reason why the Duterte case has not moved forward. They can move it
37:23.9
forward. They can issue warrants of arrest, but they can't force Duterte or anyone who might be
37:30.5
charged in the Philippine situation to appear at the Hague in the so-called confirmation of
37:39.1
charges hearing. But even before you get to that, there are other possible openings for litigating
37:45.5
this case, the Philippine government, and later on Duterte could still challenge these charges.
37:50.3
So, there's a long way to go. And I think that Filipinos who are awaiting this, again, I always
37:57.0
say this, the ICC is not the only way to get justice for victims of the drug war. In the
38:03.3
Philippines, you can have justice for victims of the drug war by letting them tell the truth about
38:08.7
what happened to them, who these people are who were killed, that they were not drug addicts, or
38:12.9
even if they were, that they were entitled to human rights, not to be killed. Give them reparations
38:19.0
for what they suffered, for what they lost. These are very poor families. So, don't pin all your
38:24.6
hopes on the International Criminal Court. At the end of the day, justice is better when it's
38:32.1
done at home, because you can build a better home for justice. What you're saying is the
38:40.2
shadow of ICC being there is not the bad thing necessarily, but let's not rely on that. At the
38:45.4
end of the day, we have to push it in turn. So, that's an important point because I think that
38:50.0
was not as much fleshed out in the past. And I think every time you and I talk about ICC,
38:53.9
there's a lot of excitement and expectation, and I'm not sure it really captures the essence
39:00.4
of the struggle at hand here. So, thank you very much for emphasizing that. Now, let's go to this
39:05.0
issue. It's a heavy
