P11.5-B human rights fund release remains uncertain

The trust fund containing P10 billion set aside to compensate alleged human rights victims during the 20-year regime of former President Ferdinand Marcos remains intact and has grown to P11.5 billion but its release remains uncertain since the bill which provides for its allocation was not included by President Aquino among his administration’s priority measures.

The trust fund to compensate the victims of supposed atrocities during the Marcos administration remains beyond the reach of its supposed beneficiaries since the previous Congress failed to ratify the bilateral conference committee report that would have enacted its disbursement, Sen. Joker Arroyo said.

Arroyo added the bill had been excluded anew from the priority bills endorsed to Congress by Aquino following a recent convening of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac).

Arroyo, however, said that with or without the President’s endorsement of the human rights compensation bill, either in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) or in the Executive’s priority bills,

the Senate and the House can act on its own to give priority to the bill.

The P10 billion fund is part of the Marcoses’ confiscated $684 million deposited in a Swiss bank and was earmarked to compensate about 10,000 victims of human rights violations during the 20-year Marcos dictatorship.

The bill, long pending in both chambers, seeks to authorize the reallocation of the amount for the human rights victims since the law specifically provides that ill-gotten wealth from the Marcoses and their associates would be used solely to fund agrarian reform program.

The Supreme Court had ruled that the $684 million confiscated from the Marcoses’ Swiss banks account should be forfeited to the government.

“The bill was filed during the previous Congress for those who were tortured and killed during the Marcos dictatorship. We’re done with the bill and all it needed then was the ratification of the bicameral report. It was ratified by the Senate but, unfortunately, in the lower house, it failed to be ratified. I do not know what happened,” Arroyo said.

Sen. Sergio Osmena III who co-authored the bill along with former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr., said he had already re-filed the measure in the current session of Congress.

Osmena, however, said the House of Representatives must pass the measure first since it is an appropriation bill.

All three senators – Arroyo, Pimentel and Osmena – were among the more prominent detainees of the Marcos regime along with assassinated Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.

“For 25 years the human rights victims have not received any compensation,” Arroyo lamented.

The House of Representatives, Arroyo said, should not use as an excuse the compensation bill not being included in the Palace priority list in not enacting it since Congress can draw up its own priorities independent of Malacanang.

Still, Arroyo said, the bill re-filed by Osmena should be “fine-tuned” to make the compensation more equitable. Some beneficiaries, mostly aging activists who were detained and tortured for defying the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s, are entitled only to P50,000 while others will get as much as P200,000.

“It varies, because there’s a formula being followed,” he explained. Arroyo said he was assured that the P10 billion fund set aside for this bill remains intact in the national treasury and has ballooned to P11.5 billion already.

At the time that Osmena and Pimentel filed the original human rights compensation bill, he said, the money available was only P10 billion so that as the amount that was set aside for the claimants.

Osmena assured that despite the delay, the families of claimants who already died, like the late journalist Julius Fortuna for instance, can collect compensation, as well as the families of salvage victims. –Angie M. Rosales, Daily Tribune