ASEANEWS HEADLINE-ECONOMY | MANILA: Marcos sold gold reserve – Duterte
FORMER president Rodrigo Duterte launched a scathing attack on the Marcos administration during the Cebu People’s Indignation Rally on Saturday in Mandaue City, accusing the Marcos family of stealing and selling the country’s gold reserves and blaming them for the weakening Philippine peso.He urged the public to demand transparency regarding the country’s gold reserves.
Duterte also warned that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was becoming a dictator, following in his father’s footsteps.
“Ang unang gikawat ni Marcos, ang atong gold reserves. Sigehan nana’g baligya ang atong gold hangtod karon, gamay nalang kaayo. So unsaon nalang pagtindog ang ekonomiya pag-abot sa panahon? (The first thing Marcos stole was our gold reserves. They have been selling our gold until now, and there’s very little left. So how will the economy stand in the future?),” Duterte declared during his speech at Pasilong sa Paradise.
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He urged the public to demand transparency regarding the country’s gold reserves.
“We don’t know how much was sold or when. That’s the biggest (expletive) there; we have no idea,” he added.
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The former president’s presence drew a massive crowd, estimated by organizers at 20,000.
Hakbang ng Maisug Cebu, the group behind the rally, said the number could have doubled as the night progressed. The event started at 4:30 p.m. and ran until late in the evening.
The rally focused on issues such as corruption, governance, and the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte.
Hakbang ng Maisug Cebu insisted that the rally was a grassroots movement and not a political event, although many politicians aligned with Duterte and the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP) attended.
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Duterte used the event to endorse local candidates under PDP Laban. In Lapu-Lapu City, he urged voters to support former mayor Paz Radaza.
In Cebu City, Duterte threw his support behind dismissed Cebu City mayor Michael Rama.
The host city’s dismissed mayor, Jonas Cortes, and his ticket were also there.
Among the prominent figures at the rally, senatorial candidates Jimmy Bondoc, Rodante Marcoleta and Vic Rodriguez echoed Duterte’s criticisms of the Marcos administration.
Rodriguez, a former spokesman for President Marcos and later his executive secretary, called for greater scrutiny of government spending.
He questioned the alleged blank items in the national budget and criticized the impeachment process against the vice president, saying it threatens due process.
Bondoc, a singer-songwriter and lawyer, praised national and local politicians who continued to support the Duterte family despite Marcos being in power.
He emphasized the importance of having “principle” in politics.
Bondoc, who attended the event after learning about it while in Cebu for other engagements, reaffirmed his loyalty to Duterte’s leadership and expressed concern over what he called the administration’s failure to prioritize urgent issues.
Baseless
On Sunday, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin fired back at Duterte for alleging that President Marcos was “veering towards a dictatorship.”
Bersamin branded as “baseless and ridiculous” claims that Marcos, like his late father, is likely to impose martial law to prevent the May elections from happening and ensure that he stays in Malacañang way beyond his
“A tall tale from a man prone to lying and to inventing hoaxes. This hoax is another budol (trickery) emerging from a one-man fake-news factory,” Bersamin said in a statement.
“As our actions have consistently demonstrated, we will stay the course in upholding the Constitution, in adhering to the rule of law, and in respecting the rights of the people,” he said.
Bersamin said the present leadership will not mirror what Duterte did during his “oppressive” term, where “critics were jailed upon trumped-up charges and when kill orders were publicly issued with glee and obeyed blindly.”
It is not Marcos but Duterte who ignored the rule of law, Bersamin said.
“It is the leader of that troubled past who is depicting us as veering toward a system where anyone can be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, as many had been on his mere say-so as a tyrant who did not respect the rights of the people,” he noted.
The president’s father, Ferdinand Sr., declared martial law in 1972, paving the way for him to rule for more than two decades.
It was during the People Power Revolution in February 1986 that he was forced to flee the country and go into exile in the United States.
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