Victims’ kin press transfer of massacre case to Manila -Imelda Marcos aims for stunning Philippine comeback

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Families of victims and witnesses in the Maguindanao massacre Thursday pressed for the immediate implementation of the Supreme Court-expressed approval to transfer the case to Metro Manila, saying the new venue will be a lot better for all justice seekers.

“Holding the court hearings in Metro Manila would mean extra expenses for us to personally attend, but in the final analysis it will be more favorable,” the wife of a journalist slain in the massacre told the Bulletin last Thursday.

She said the “families of feargripped witnesses and government prosecutors” would benefit more in the transfer of the litigations from Cotabato City to Metro Manila.

The plea of the families of victims and witnesses came in consonance with the publicized demands of foreign and media groups for the prompt dispensation of justice on the grisly deaths of their 30 colleagues via independent probe and safer venue.

Earlier, Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera said the Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked the Supreme Court to transfer the case to Metro Manila for security reasons.

Asked by newsmen about Devanadera’s statement, SC spokesman Jose Midas Marquez has said the High Tribunal would consider the DOJ petition.

The SC spokesman, however, did not state when the High Tribunal will cause the official transfer of the case venue.

Last Tuesday, Judge Melanio Guerrero received documents for the 25 counts of murder filed against Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., the main suspect in the massacre, who is detained in Manila.

Marquez said Chief Justice Reynato Puno had assigned Guerrero from Sultan Kudarat to the Cotabato City RTC Branch 15, which had no judge.

Dozens of policemen surrounded the courthouse while the prosecutors were filing the charges inside, reports said.

On Wednesday, state prosecutors indicted former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. and seven members of his powerful clan in the massacre of 57 people in a widening investigation that prompted the replacement of 1,092 policemen and relief of some military officers in the area.

Also on Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno ordered ARMM Gov. Zaldy Uy Ampatuan to answer within five days allegations that he failed “to protect the civil, human and political rights” of the victims.

Puno said investigators had found “sufficient cause” to charge him on a complaint filed by Esmael Mangudadatu, vice mayor of Buluan town who had sent the convoy to file his certificate of candidacy for governor of Maguindanao.

Meanwhile, police medical experts said they found semen on the sex organs of five female victims of the massacre, an indication, they said, that they could have been sexually abused before they were brutally killed.

Chief Supt. Arturo Cacdac, head of the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory, said the five female victims who were possibly abused before the carnage includes a journalist.

“We would like to report that the initial examination conducted in the process called acid phosphatase examination, we determined that five of the female victims, which we autopsied were positive for semen, presence for semen,” said Cacdac in a press briefing in Camp Crame.

But Cacdac was quick to clarify that the presence of semen on the victim’s sex organs does not necessarily mean that they were raped.

“Two of the female victims are married and it is possible that they stayed with their husband before the incident,” said Cacdac.

Asked if their findings that the semen found on the five female victims indicate that they were raped, Cacdac said: “It is a presumptive evidence.”

But PNP Crime Laboratory officer Ruby Grace Diangson said that of the five female victims, only one has a strong possibility that she was indeed raped because of the bruises in her sex organ and the fact that her pants were down when her cadaver was exhumed from the mass grave site in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town.

The police medical officers believe that the woman was mistaken as the wife of Mangudadatu, what with what she suffered in the hands of the gunmen, particularly the fact that a barrel of a gun was placed inside her mouth before it was fired.

The PNP Crime Laboratory has autopsied 37 massacre victims, six of them female. The other 20 were autopsied by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) including Mangudadatu’s wife Genalyn.

A former governor of the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao meanwhile blamed the current administration for the massacre citing that it could not have happened during the Aquino presidency.

Imelda Marcos aims for stunning Philippine comeback

Imelda Marcos launched a bid for a stunning political comeback Wednesday after registering to run for a parliamentary seat in the northern Philippines where her late dictator husband remains a revered figure.

More than two decades after a popular revolt sent the Marcos family fleeing into exile, the flamboyant widow with the fetish for fancy shoes will seek to take the lower house seat being vacated by her son in next year's elections.

Marcos's spokeswoman Sol Vanzi told AFP the former first lady registered her candidacy late on Tuesday, just before the deadline expired.

"She filed at the last minute in Ilocos Norte," said Vanzi, a longtime Marcos associate.

Ilocos Norte is a province in the northern Philippines where her late husband Ferdinand Marcos Snr was born, and which remains a Marcos stronghold.

Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has held one of Ilocos Norte's two seats since 2007 and is standing down so he can make a tilt at the Senate.

A Marcos daughter, Imee, will also run for governor of the province next year against one of her cousins, incumbent Michael Keon, Vanzi said. Imee Marcos had preceded her brother as the legislator for the province.

Long-time Marcos critics and political analysts immediately expressed anguish at her decision to return to politics, which no-one in the media had predicted.

But they said she was certain to win as Ilocos Norte remained a family stronghold that had prospered under the family's patronage.

"Ilocos is their bailiwick and I suppose they have done something good for their constituency," said Conrad Castillo, secretary-general of the left-wing AKBAYAN (Citizens Action Party).

However he expressed sadness at the short memory of voters.

"The new generation, they dont know what the Marcoses did. The youth must be reminded of what happened more than 25 years ago when (Ferdinand Marcos) was in power."

Ferdinand Marcos ruled the Philippines from 1966 to 1986, earning a reputation as a feared dictator who oversaw the country's economic demise while plundering the country of billions of dollars.

Imelda Marcos became perhaps even more famous than her husband as she travelled around the world enjoying a fabulously extravagant life while meeting and befriending many of of the world's top leaders.

The Marcos family fled overseas in 1986 after a popular revolt toppled the dictator from power. After her husband's death, Imelda Marcos returned to the country in 1991 and made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 1992.

She was elected to Congress and served from 1995 to 1998, representing her home province of Leyte.

Imelda Marcos has never been convicted of a crime and maintains she has nothing to apologise for, particularly her taste for the finer things in life that saw her amass thousands of shoes.

"I have been so misunderstood," Marcos told AFP in an interview earlier this year inside her two-storey penthouse apartment overlooking one of Manila's wealthiest suburbs.

"My role as first lady was to be a star and a slave. To set the standard because mass follows class. And so I had to enslave myself so that everyone becomes a star."

Former senator Ernesto Herrera said Marcos's comeback was another example of the country's struggle to build a viable democracy and the problems with family dynasties that have ruled their own chunks of the Philippines for generations.

"The candidacy of Imelda is just like what is happening with Gloria Arroyo. Both are running for Congress to replace incumbent relatives," said Herrera, who is now secretary-general of the country's largest labor federation.

"Gloria controls her district, Imelda also controls her district. They will win. What can you expect? It proves there is democracy in this country, but it also shows the weakness of democracy."

In another controversial development, President Gloria Arroyo announced on Monday she would run for a seat in the lower house of parliament in her family's stronghold of Pampanga province.

Arroyo is banned by the constitution from running again for president and her opponents say she is making the unprecedented move of going into parliament so she can try and rule the country from there.

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