"That P23-billion tax assessment against the estate of Ferdinand Marcos affirmed by the Supreme Court will haunt and hound the Marcoses forever and their properties, wherever they are, present and future, until it is satisfied. The government has a alien on them superior to all other claimants," was the reaction of Makati Rep. Joker Arroyo to my query regarding the latest events that surround the Marcoses.

According to Arroyo, "even the $590 million held in escrow by the PCGG may be exposed to deficiency tax levy if the real properties attached by the BIR when auctioned do not amount to P23 billion." By some striking coincidence, the $590 million, if converted to pesos, equals P23 billion at current exchange rates. Could the government really have planned it this way--to get to the $590 million the circuitous way?

"Why the Marcoses neglected their tax case is beyond belief," Arroyo mused, allowing that by some stroke of fate, what has befallen the Marcoses is eerily similar to that of the untouchable Chicago gangster, Al Capone. "The FBI could not pin down Al Capone to any crime. So they built up a tax evasion case around him and he was convicted. The Philippine government has not succeeded in getting a judgment against the Marcoses on ill-gotten wealth or for human rights violations.

Bingo, they were caught on a tax case!"

* * *

The tax case was actually started during Cory Aquino's presidency when the BIR on July 26, 1991 issued notices of tax deficiency to the Marcoses, who ignored them. Now the Estrada administration will be the beneficiary of the P23 billion windfall. The tax case overshadows the Honolulu agreement for the human rights victims to receive $150 million out of the $590 million supposedly held in escrow by the PCGG from the Swiss banks. It has been attended by bickering and recriminations. Arroyo contends that the government should not have been involved in it, considering that "while human rights victims have all the right to enter into any kind of agreement with the Marcoses on the injustices and pain they suffered, the government is something else; it cannot be a party to any document that transgresses, however inferentially, government policy or the Constitution on the matter of respect for human rights."

Just to release the $150 million, the undertaking prepared in Hawaii requires not only that it be approved by the Sandiganbayan or a competent court, but it must also be signed by the President of the Philippines no less. "How demeaning," Arroyo remarked.