User:Alternativity/sandbox/The Plunder Notebook

This page collects material to multiple already-existing Marcos plunder related wikis

Early participation in politics
Although his career as a politician would formally begin at age 23 when he became Vice Governor of Ilocos Norte, his father’s political profile meant that the Marcos children, particularly Bongbong and his sister Imee, became an integral part of the Marcos propaganda machine. Bongbong was thrust into the national limelight as early as when he was three years old, and the scrutiny became even more intense when his father first ran for President of the Philippines in 1965.

During his father's 1965 campaign, Bongbong played himself in a Sampaguita Pictures film "Iginuhit ng Tadahana", a biopic based on the heavily-portrayal of Ferdinand Marcos in the novel "For Every Tear a Victory." The young Marcos was portrayed giving a speech towards the end of the film, in which he says that he would like to be "a politician" when he grows up. The public relations value of the film is credited for having helped the elder Marcos to win the Presidency.

Another prominent instance in which young Bongbong Marcos was the subject of intense media coverage was his "haircut" interview during the Beatles Live in Manila incident of July 1966, just one year after the Marcos Family came to Malacañang.

Bongbong's Mother Imelda expected the Beatles to attend a reception she had organized for them in Malacañang, with 400 children - including Bongbong and Imee - in attendance. As the planned event went on without the beatles appearing, the Marcos children were interviewed. Bongbong's sister Imee remarked "There is only one song I like from the Beatles, and it’s Run for Your Life." - a quote which media later associated with the way the Beatles scrambled out of Manila X days later, receiving rough treatment at the Manila International Airport. Bongbong, in the meantime, was quoted referring to the group's long hair, saying "'I’d like to pounce on the Beatles and cut off their hair! Don’t anybody dare me to do anything, because I’ll do it, just to see how game the Beatles are.'"

Later becoming a fan of the group, he has made overtures to surviving Beatle Ringo Star to come back and visit the country.

Participation in the Marcos dictatorship
Marcos was just 15 in 1972 when his father declared Martial Law, and was in the United Kingdom because he had been sent to board at the boys-only Worth School in West Sussex. He turned 18 in 1975, a year after he graduated from Worth school.

Since he was technically a minor at the exact year Martial Law was declared, Bongbong Marcos and parties connected to him have often insisted that neither he nor his sister Imee should be blamed for any wrongdoings during their father’s dictatorship.

By the time their father was ousted from power in 1986, however, both Bongbong and Imee had held key posts in the administration.

Imee was already thirty when she was appointed as the national head of the Kabataang Barangay in the late 1970s, and Bongbong himself took up the vice-gubernatorial post for the province of Ilocos Norte in 1980, and then became Governor of that province from 1983 until the Marcos family was ousted from Malacañang in 1986. During Bongbong Marcos’ term, at least two extra-judicial killings took place in Ilocos Norte, a point raised by organizations like the Martial Law Victims Association of Ilocos Norte (MLVAIN) during Marcos’ lost campaign for the Vice Presidency in 2016.

Additionally, Bongbong Marcos’ father appointed him chairman of the board of Philippine Communications Satellite Corp (Philcomsat) in early 1985. In a prominent example of what Finance Minister Jaime Ongpin later branded “crony capitalism,” the Marcos administration had sold its majority shares to close Marcos associate Roberto S. Benedicto in 1982, despite being very profitable because of its role as the sole agent for the Philippines’ link to global satellite network Intelsat. Bongbong was appointed chairman of the Philcomsat board in early 1985, drawing a monthly salary ranging from USD9,700 to USD97,000 despite rarely visiting the office and having “no duties there.” Philcomsat was one of five telecommuniction firms - principally owned by Marcos Cronies Roberto S. Benedicto and Manuel H. Nieto - sequestered by the Philippine government in 1986 after government investigators discovered that they had together funnelled a “steady flow” of “tens of millions of dollars” out of the Philippines over the course of 10 to 15 years.

In 2011, the South China Morning Post reported that Bongbong Marcos had admitted having “had a direct hand in trying to withdraw US$200 million from a secret family bank account with Credit Suisse in Switzerland.”  The paper also noted that it was Bongbong Marcos who pushed a 1995 deal to allow the Marcos family to keep a quarter of the estimated US$2 billion to US$10 billion that the Philippine government had still not recovered from them, on the condition that all civil cases be dropped - a deal that was eventually struck down by the Philippines’ supreme court.

San Juanico Bridge
Construction

"Birthday Gift to Imelda"

"10 to 20 years too early"

From http://pcij.org/stories/7-in-10-oda-projects-fail-to-deliver-touted-benefits/, with context: "Stories about “white elephants” — grand but unfinished or unused public works projects, such as the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in the ’80s to the Telepono sa Barangay program in recent years abound. Yet many more ODA-funded projects disappoint, even after completion and roll-out.

“I’ve been saying that for the past 10 to 20 years in my lectures,” says Ruperto Alonzo, former NEDA deputy director general and now the country’s foremost expert on project evaluation.

He points out that many feasibility studies for foreign-assisted projects in agriculture are required to use the World Bank’s commodity price forecasts, which are typically twice higher than the actual numbers. According to Alonzo, this tends to lead to artificially high economic return estimates during project appraisal."

"...road projects fare somewhat better and tend to yield higher economic returns than initially estimated because of spillover effects. The EIRR on farm-to-market roads in the small sample of projects examined by PCIJ were generally higher after completion compared to appraisal.

But there are many exceptions, and one that easily comes to mind is the majestic but costly San Juanico Bridge that links Samar to former First Lady Imelda Marcos’s native Leyte island.

“San Juanico was constructed several decades too soon,” says Alonzo who used to bring his students to the bridge for the annual field trip years after it was built with Japanese ODA loans in the early 1970s. “We’re in the bridge for several hours already but we don’t see any cars or jeepneys, only carabaos.”

Public works engineers, he adds, used to joke among themselves that average daily traffic (ADT) was not measured in terms of vehicles but carabaos."

Initial reception

Marcos Scandals
See source: https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=cBFFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT443&lpg=PT443&dq=marcos+oda+scandals&source=bl&ots=sC_LiEOsZc&sig=pzpjSD9UF39UVsVr3vrXP9MY7E8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_4Lqlic_aAhXHoJQKHZaWBZ8Q6AEwDHoECAAQYQ#v=onepage&q=marcos%20oda%20scandals&f=false

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/10bn-dollar-question-marcos-millions-nick-davies

Marcos Debt
Relevant article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_the_Philippines#Ferdinand_Marcos_(Dec_1965_%E2%80%93_Feb_1986)

See http://opinion.inquirer.net/99481/the-marcos-debt

RoCu list
https://www.pressreader.com/philippines/philippine-daily-inquirer/20100927/285538016850027