PRESIDENT Estrada did the right thing in suspending talks with the family of the late President Marcos on the sharing of the Marcos wealth and waiting instead for the Supreme Court's decision on the recent petition filed by the Marcos heirs seeking to implement a 1993 compromise agreement with the Presidential Commission on Good Government. The PCGG-Marcos compromise agreement, which would have given the government a 75-percent share, was nullified by the Supreme Court last December 1998 because of "serious legal flaws." The Estrada administration has alarmed many citizens with its seeming determination to forge a final agreement with the Marcoses, on the argument that the courts have taken so long to get the Marcos wealth to no avail. For the administration, the only question seems to be how much the government should get. Mr. Estrada earlier favored the PCGG compromise of 75 percent, but in the face of mounting criticism, Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora now speaks of 80 percent. Young House neophytes like Bukidnon Rep. Juan Miguel Zubiri, however, want the Marcoses to keep no more than 2 percent.

Isabela Rep. Sonny Alvarez is right when he said that the sharing of the Marcos hoard is "more than a financial arrangement--it is a historic and moral question." He pointed out that the acquisition of this hoard "may be the greatest anti-graft accomplishment of the Erap administration" and that all statements purporting to a declaration of war against graft and corruption would "sound hollow" if the President persisted in entering into a compromise. Since it's "public knowledge" where the money came from, he said, "a compromise would be the biggest defeat in our war against corruption."

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The Marcos heirs' court petition has given Mr. Estrada a graceful way out of what could have been a huge legal mess, and I'm glad he took it. But I suspect that what caused the President to see the light was former Sen. Jovy Salonga's double-barreled letter last Jan. 22 to PCGG Chair Magdangal Elma attacking the "spurious, illusory" escrow agreements covering the $580-million Marcos deposits in Swiss Banks and enumerating the legal infirmities cited by the Supreme Court in nullifying the 1993 agreement last Dec. 9. Anyone reading Salonga's letter cannot but see the light.

Among the major arguments set forth by the high court in that historic decision penned by Justice Artemio Panganiban are:

1. that the grant of criminal immunity to the Marcoses run counter to Executive Order No. 14, which provides that such immunity can be granted only to a state witness, not to the principal defendants in the string of ill-gotten wealth cases now pending before the Sandiganbayan;
2. that the exemption of the properties to be retained by the Marcoses from all forms of taxes would constitute a clear violation of the Constitution, since all the power to tax and to grant tax exemptions is vested in Congress, and even Congress cannot grant such an exemption to the Marcoses as this would violate the equal protection clause under the Bill of Rights and the constitutional rule that "taxation shall be uniform and equitable";
3. that in binding the government to dismiss all cases against the Marcos heirs pending in court, the agreement constitutes a "direct encroachment on judicial powers, particularly in regard to criminal jurisdiction"; and
4. by nullifying all claims and counterclaims, whether past, present or future, the agreement places the Marcoses effectively beyond the reach of the law and sets a dangerous precedent as "it is a virtual warrant for all public officials to amass public funds illegally since there is an option to compromise their liability in exchange for their portion of the ill-gotten wealth."

The bases for rejecting the compromise cited by the high court are clear, but the wonder is that Mr. Estrada's advisers didn't present them to him earlier. Indeed, as the Inquirer editorial pointed out, some of those around him are acting like lawyers of the Marcoses.

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"Worse than the Mickey Mouse money of Japanese times" is how Salonga described the documents being held by the government as "evidence" that the Marcos deposits are being held by the Philippine National Bank. In attacking the 1995 escrow agreements between the PCGG and PNB as "spurious, illusory, anticipatory, speculative and incomplete," Salonga noted that what the PNB has in its vaults is not hard cash but mere records of the deposits still held by various "foundations" which the dictator used as conduit for siphoning the money abroad. The cash, Salonga said, is still being held by these foundations and remain invested in various corporations abroad. The biggest of these foundations is Aguamina Corp., a Panamanian-registered depository of Japanese reparations kickbacks cornered by Marcos, in the amount of $100 million. The loot was disclosed to the PCGG in 1986 by Marcos' Public Works Minister Baltazar Aquino before he died.

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Salonga says only the records are being held by the PNB under the defective escrow agreements, but Mr. Estrada insists the hard cash is in the PNB's vaults. The challenge is for the government to prove that it's not holding "Mickey Mouse money."

If Salonga is correct, he did some A-1 sleuthing. One disturbing revelation could prove him correct. On a hunch that something was wrong with the escrow agreements, owing to the conflicting statements of top administration officials, Salonga asked PNB President Benjamin Palma Gil last Dec. 16, 1998 for copies of the agreements. The PNB demurred, saying he would have to secure the consent of the "account holder" in keeping with the law guaranteeing the secrecy of bank deposits. Salonga fired off an acerbic reminder to Palma-Gil that "the amount involved ($580 million) does not belong to your anonymous account holder" but to "our aggrieved, exploited people." Salonga pointed out that while the PNB president was citing the law on banking secrecy "as if our people were private depositors whose identity must be protected by the PNB," the decision of the Swiss Federal Court dated Dec. 10, 1997 proclaimed "to the whole world who are the ultimate owners of the Marcos Swiss deposits" which are of "criminally acquired origin."

Peter Cosandey, the district attorney of Zurich who is also the examining magistrate in the escrow agreements, is here in Manila. This is a good time to set those agreements in order.