Diokno urges gov't to review remaining cases vs Marcos
Free Legal Assistance Group chairman Jose Manuel Diokno urged government agencies to review all cases filed against the Marcoses.
Following another court dismissal of a civil forfeiture case against the late President Ferdinand Marcos, First Lady Imelda Marcos, and cronies on the alleged P267 million ill-gotten wealth, Diokno suggested the government to re-examine the remaining cases.
"The government agencies concerned - Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), prosecution arm of the Ombudsman, the PCGG (Presidential Commission on Good Government) - all of these should put their heads together and figure out, look at all the dismissed cases, tally what happened, analyze the pending cases to make sure that they won't suffer the same fate," Diokno said in a television interview over ANC on Saturday.
"If you look by the previous cases, there have been rulings against the Marcoses. So there's nothing really stopping us or the courts from coming out with similar rulings in the future depending of course on the state of the evidence," he added.
Civil Case No. 0007 filed by the government against the Marcoses and spouses Fe and Ignacio Gimenez was dismissed by the Sandiganbayan Fourth Division on Friday.
The court granted demurrer to evidence to the accused after it found that the evidences submitted for the case were "afflicted with defects" and were photocopied and mostly unauthorized.
Last October 8 and August 5, the anti-graft court junked two civil cases regarding an alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses amounting to P1 billion and P102 billion respectively. Cristina Eloisa Baclig/DMS
