Acquitted, not Exonerated

The Marcoses — Imelda in particular — seem to be the luckiest people this side of the planet. On 10 June 2026, the Supreme Court acquitted her of seven counts of graft, reversing the finding of guilt that could have kept the 97-year-old former First Lady behind bars for 77 years.

But what curious timing for the nation’s highest court to reveal its judgment on 9 September, two days before the birthday of Mrs. Marcos’ husband, the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., four days before that of her son, the sitting President, and two weeks shy of the 54th anniversary of the imposition of martial law by Marcos Sr., who became a dictator.

The SC ruling wiped out a 2018 Sandiganbayan conviction on charges that the Marcos couple funneled at least $200 million abroad through Swiss foundations while Imelda held public office.

Whether by design or accident, the optics have damaged a supposedly independent institution that thrives on public trust.

The Court’s reasoning was narrowly legal. Justice Rodil Zalameda held that prosecutors failed to authenticate documents and never proved the Swiss foundations qualified as “business enterprises” under the antigraft law. He was right that public outrage cannot substitute for evidentiary rigor and also right that the burden of proof fell on the state. These are uncontroversial principles.

And yes, a conviction demands proof beyond reasonable doubt, however notorious the accused or however long the public has waited.

But a technical acquittal is not vindication, and treating it as one is dishonest.

The Court never found the transactions legitimate — only that the case against them collapsed.

That case was filed in 1991, took the Sandiganbayan 27 years to decide, and was then appealed by a defendant who remained free on bail throughout, never serving a day.

This is not justice meeting its natural limits. It is a system so slow it let the clock run out on someone so powerful as to make delay work in her favor.

Nor is this the first time. In 1993, the Court overturned a 24-year sentence meted out to Imelda in a separate case. Pattern, not coincidence, is the operative word. Each reversal erodes the credibility of a judiciary that claims neutrality even as its rulings keep bending around the same family.

The family, meanwhile, has achieved a political restoration few could have predicted in 1986.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. now occupies Malacañang. His cousin, Martin Romualdez, faces plunder charges of his own even as this ruling favoring his aunt extinguishes what advocacy groups called a “flicker of hope” for accountability.

The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law put it bluntly: dismissing martial law-era corruption cases while a Marcos sits in Malacañang cannot erase the stench trailing the family.

That stench is historical, not merely legal, and no acquittal will launder it.

T h a t s t e n c h e m a n a t e s f r o m t h e detention and torture of thousands who opposed the dictatorship, the seizure of the businesses of families that refused to cooperate, and the plunder of the national treasury on a scale that has never been fully accounted for.

Fifty-four years after martial law was declared, the question is not whether the High Court followed proper procedure — it likely did. The question is whether procedure, applied this selectively and this slowly, still amounts to justice.

The Court has every right to demand rigorous evidence. And Filipinos have an equal right to ask why that rigor so consistently favors the same family. And why cases against the powerful take three decades to resolve while the powerful return, unbothered, to power.

That is the real verdict here — not about Imelda Marcos’ guilt, but about whose accountability this system was created to pursue.