Imee: We’ll bring Digong home

Imee: We’ll bring Digong home | Daily Tribune

Senator Imee Marcos on Thursday vowed to bring former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (PRRD) back to the Philippines, following a meeting with the latter’s lead counsel.

“Thank you Atty. Nicholas Kaufman. Together, we will bring PRRD home,” said Senator Marcos in a statement on Facebook, along with a photo of Kaufman shaking her hand.

Marcos met Kaufman, Duterte’s lead defense counsel in his crimes against humanity case before the International Criminal Court (ICC), during a recent visit to The Hague, Netherlands.

Fresh from winning another six-year term in the Senate backed by Vice President Sara Duterte, Marcos reaffirmed her support for the embattled former president.

“I told VP Inday Sara Duterte that, more than anyone else, I know what it feels like to be separated from one’s own country. That’s why from the very beginning, she has known what’s in my heart regarding the unacceptable fate that befell PRRD,” she said.

“But we are not here to be dramatic. We are here for solutions, we are here to act,” she added.

Senator Marcos said they had “learned from history,” an apparent reference to her family’s exile to Hawaii following the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution.

“I did not wait 39 years just to make the same mistake again. There is a Marcos who has learned from history. I am here not for one person, but for the Filipino people,” she added.

The senator, her brother President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and the rest of the Marcos family were bundled off to Hawaii on a US aircraft to escape from the revolution that ended the 21-year regime of their father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

During the final years of Marcos Sr.’s rule, the Philippine economy hit record lows — contracting by 7.3 percent in 1984 and by 6.86 percent in 1985.

Marcos Sr. placed the country under martial law from 1972 to 1981, a period often described as the “darkest era” in Philippine history due to rampant corruption, extrajudicial killings, and human rights violations.

Duterte, meanwhile, was arrested last 11 March at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on his return from Hong Kong. That night, he was flown to The Hague where he is under ICC detention awaiting trial on a charge of crimes against humanity in connection with the bloody drug war during his terms as Davao City mayor and president of the Philippines.

The government recorded at least 7,000 deaths during the drug war, but local and international human rights groups said the actual number was as high as 30,000.