Something’s athwart with the Marcos Jr. administration’s logic. Instead of allowing the ministerial process of submitting the impeachment complaints against Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio to the Office of the Speaker, they have not moved, to the astonishment of the complainants and lawmakers who have endorsed them. No President has ever done that, and it smacks of the twisted logic invoked against filing a legitimate impeachment complaint against Sara as Marcos Jr. and his acolytes, the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), have done.
In effect, Marcos Jr. and his cohorts insist that filing the complaints divides the Filipino people rather than respecting the right of taxpayers to seek redress of grievances. As it is, Sara stands accused not only of wasting P612.5 million in the purported confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) to which she was not entitled under the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA) but also of spending willy-nilly hundreds of millions of pesos more for her luxurious 13 satellite offices and three extension offices at the cost of P64-million each, the scores of millions for the rent of 34 “safehouses” in the most obscene environs of the Bonifacio Global City (BGC.)
There have been billions more of taxpayer money that Sara has not accounted for both the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) and Marcos Jr. himself has advanced the lame excuse that the impeachment complaints would not move since lawmakers will be out campaigning. Marcos Jr. is lawyering for Sara and shunting aside his sworn duty to ease the filing of corruption complaints against grafters, grifters, and plunderers, whether they be surnamed Marcos, Duterte, Romualdez, Piattos, Nova, Tempura or Villamin, or the 407 other mysterious creatures who signed acknowledgment receipts for Sara. Instead of praising citizens who filed the impeachment complaints, they are now being tagged as “divisive forces” using the irrational theory of the INC.
Not content with their criminal level of optimism in blaming the victims, the Marcos Jr. regime is now tagging non-government organizations (NGOs), activists, and development workers as the culprits why the Philippines could not be released from the so-called “gray list” of the Financial Action Task Force (FTAF), the international organization that seeks to cripple terrorist financing and tap the money stream of criminal organizations responsible for the Chinese “pig slaughter” scheme, the global payment system for narcotics trafficking, the remittance business of the Philippine overseas gaming operations (POGOs), and the explosion in the number of family offices that handle dirty money in such lily-white financial hubs like Singapore, where one operative linked to a controversial Filipino politician engages in such business.
Since the government is not keen on gunning after the handlers of offshore accounts, they are more than enthusiastic in tagging NGOs, activists and progressive organizations for violating their weaponized Republic Act No. 10168 (Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act) and Republic Act No. 11479 (Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.) Both RA 10168 and RA 11479 have been used to arbitrarily file charges and freeze the accounts of NGOs and church groups whose “crimes” were to support the schools of indigenous peoples (IP), promote the organization and operation of workers and farmers, and call for the Anti-Terrorism Act and other repressive laws. Now, their victims will be demonized by the Marcos Jr. regime’s “Project Exit Grey List.”
“Marcos Jr. is using terror laws and FATF directives to wage an unjustified crackdown on NGOs and dissenters,” said KMP chairperson Danilo Ramos. “The freezing of accounts and filing of fabricated cases not only hinders essential services in rural areas but also perpetuates the criminalization of humanitarian work. This regime’s priorities are clear—it protects oligarchs while targeting those who empower the poor.” Since the enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Act, human rights group Karapatan has documented at least 112 victims of terror laws. Recent cases include arrests of Paghida-et sa Kauswagan Development Group (PDG) workers in Negros and United Methodist Church (UMC) ministers in Zamboanga Sibugay. Accounts of organizations like the women’s peasant federation Amihan, the Leyte Center for Development (LCDe) and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines have also been frozen.
The groups also called for international scrutiny of the FATF’s role in influencing domestic policies. As a creation of the G7 bloc, the FATF serves the interests of imperialist powers, particularly the US, which uses financial and anti-terror mechanisms to justify economic control and suppression of movements for national liberation but pays lip service to the plutocrats who have been using safe havens in the Caribbean, Cyprus, Europe and in Singapore to move their ill-gotten wealth and invest their money in multinational corporations as well as cryptocurrency and the profitable narcotics trade. For its part, the Defend NGOs Alliance reported that nearly 70 individuals from some 30 NGOs have been baselessly charged with financing terrorism, terrorism and other criminal cases and civil actions. “Organizational and personal funds have been frozen and the false charges put them through tedious judicial processes. This violates their rights, creates a climate of repression and fear, and prevents NGOs and civil society from delivering their services to communities in need,” the alliance argued. Yet, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) does not investigate a notorious billionaire who pays his workers with gift certificates, not cash. Better yet, call it “grift certificates.”
Of course, the government would only be as bad the FATF, which has never bothered to investigate how the global billionaire class saw its wealth rising by $2 trillion last year, or $5.7 billion a day, thrice faster than in 2023, Oxfam lamented. The number of billionaires rose by 204 to 2,769, and the 10 richest men saw their wealth rise nearly $100 million a day on average. On the other, Oxfam noted that World Bank data show that the number of people living on less than $6.85 per day has “barely changed.” The crime committed against humanity by the plutocracy is shown by the fact that while four new billionaires were “minted” every week in 2024, 60% of their wealth comes from inheritance, monopoly power or crony connections. Low- and middle- income countries also spend half of their budgets on debt repayments. As the US journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd warned nearly 150 years ago: “If our civilization is destroyed, it will not be by barbarians from below. Our barbarians come from above.”
