By Al S. Mendoza 

 

WHEN Bongbong Marcos, barring any unforeseen event, finally becomes President on June 30, he will enjoy immunity from suits.

That’s a luxury awarded only to a head of state.

Thus, when he flies to the US, BBM will no longer be arrested for contempt.

Take it from no less than a top Washington diplomat.

“The fact is, when you’re a head of state, you have immunity in all circumstances and are welcome to the United States in your official role,” US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told reporters during a round-table discussion in Pasay City.

Earlier, she had an audience with Philippine officials headed by BBM.

“When someone is the head of state, they have [diplomatic] immunity and would be welcome to the United States,” Sherman said.

BBM, his mother Imelda, and the estate of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. were slapped a contempt judgment in 2012 by a US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The Inquirer said in its recent report that that was in violation of an injunction that barred them from dissipating assets of the estate of the Marcoses.

It came after the court discovered that the Marcoses entered into a settlement with the then Ramos administration in 1992, agreeing to share the Marcoses’ wealth with the Ramos government.

That was a violation of the 1991 decision of the US District Court of Hawaii that prohibited the Marcos family from touching their US assets because these were the source of potential payments of damages to the human rights victims of martial law under the Marcos dictatorship from 1972 to 1986.

In 1986, months after the Marcoses were driven out of Malacanang in February that year, thousands of martial law victims won a class action lawsuit for human rights violations against the estate of Marcos Sr. in Hawaii where the Marcoses were then in exile.

The amount awarded the martial law victims totalled a staggering $2 billion!

I was a martial law victim and I am entitled to some amount of recompense, having gone underground for more than two years.

Loss of self-worth more than loss of potential income.

But I refused to avail of the award.

Pride maybe?

Love of country has no price, Aro.

Several of my fellow victims have received a million pesos or more.

Glad to see that some of them shared their “bounty” to the needy.

But going back to the contempt portion of the decision.

It emphatically stopped the Marcoses to set foot on any US territory.

But Sherman virtually nixed that, telling Bongbong in their meeting of the “robust” relations between Manila and Washington spanning 75 years.

She fell short of reminding Marcos Jr. that Marcos Sr. was saved from the mob storming the Palace gates in the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolt, when then American President Ronald Reagan sent a chopper to bail the Marcoses out of Malacanang on Feb. 25, 1986.

Said Sherman: “The friendship between the US and the Philippines runs deep. And so, too, does our shared commitment to upholding and strengthening the rules-based international order.”

Happy days are here again.

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