Extraordinary terrorists

“All day, every day,” confided President Marcos Jr. on Oct. 28, 2025, “I get messages, ‘jail them now. You know who they are, jail them. Seize their money, sell their mansions, have them return what they stole’.”

- TONY LOPEZ

The President (Bongbong Marcos Jr., BBM) was talking to his press corps at the end of the four-day ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur. He had been resisting the call of business, employers and labor groups for faster action to arrest, jail and prosecute the culprits behind the P1-trillion floodgate — the biggest act of corruption ever.

BBM exposed the whole thing in his July 28 SONA when he hollered at the corrupt contractors behind the massive scam, “Mahiya naman kayo sa inyong kapwa Pilipino (Shame on you, especially towards your fellow Filipinos).”

The corrupt have no shame. They are demanding due process. As the ancient Greek scholar Plutarch said, “I do not see what use there is in those mills of the gods said to grind so late as to render punishment hard to be recognized, and to make wickedness fearless.”

PBBM pleads: “We have to remind people that we have now moved from the political arena to the legal one. And the legal one, the legal arena has very strictly defined procedures.”

If he did not follow procedures, “what would I be accused of?” he asked rhetorically, in a mix of English and Filipino, the President whose father was said to be a dictator of 14 years. Secondly, “if willy-nilly, we say ‘never mind if the evidence is weak, just sue them,’ what if they win their case — just because our case is ill-prepared? We lose on a technicality.”