“It spits in the face of the victims of human rights violations whose lives were robbed while the Marcoses lived an extravagant lifestyle.”

MANILA – The Supreme Court (SC) has reversed Imelda Marcos’s convictions in seven graft cases. For martial law survivors, the decision is a spit in the face of the victims.

“Her acquittal is one of the gravest blows to the decades-long struggle for justice and accountability for the massive plunder attributed to the Marcos dictatorship,” Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (Selda), an organization that led the efforts on the historic class suit against the dictator Marcos Sr. in Hawaii, noted in a joint statement with human rights group Karapatan.

The decision of the high court acquitted Marcos of graft charges due to reported failure of the prosecution to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

“It spits in the face of the victims of human rights violations whose lives were robbed while the Marcoses lived an extravagant lifestyle,” the groups added. 

“This is how hollow justice can be in a country where those accused and convicted of plunder continue to evade accountability, while ordinary Filipinos are made to bear the cost of corruption and the big-time robbery of public funds.”

What is more enraging for them is that the decision was released during the administration of her son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The groups emphasized that this represents full rehabilitation of the Marcoses.

“This Supreme Court ruling is yet another indication of how far that rehabilitation has come. From the outset of Marcos Jr. ‘s presidency, the Marcoses’ agenda was clear: to keep the wealth they had stolen and to systematically secure their exoneration from accountability before the country’s courts,” the groups said.

The Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law (CARMMA) meanwhile said that the decision is outrageous, saying that Marcos Jr. has done what he set out to do in gunning for the presidency: “to recoup all his family’s ill-gotten wealth sequestered by the government and wipe the slate clean of any remaining corruption cases against his family.”

The seven graft cases were linked to the Swiss foundations she and her late husband used for entrepreneurial activity, earning interests and profit reaching up to $200 million, during the time when she was still a government official for almost two decades.

Imelda was already charged with graft in December 1991 and the case dragged on for more than 26 years before the conviction. She did not spend a single day in prison back in 1991 because she surrendered and posted bail. 

When her conviction was announced in November 2018 by the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan, she was allowed to post a P300,000 bail, securing temporary freedom again due to her “age and medical condition.”

“The Marcoses can now cite these dismissals to bolster their distorted narratives and revisions of history,” said CARMMA Spokesperson Kris Lacaba. “But the Filipino people have not forgotten their thievery, which even landed Ferdinand Marcos Jr. a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as having been responsible for the greatest robbery of a government,” he said.

The distinction was made after the Philippine government identified a total national loss of $5 billion to $10 billion since their rule from November 1965 until the end of the dictatorship in 1986.

Lacaba also casted doubt on the timing of publicizing the SC decision. The ruling was dated on June 10, 2026 and was only made public on September 8, 2026.

This “suspicious” timing, he said, is an effort to distance himself and his immediate family from close relatives like his first cousin Martin Romualdez who was recently arrested for plunder in connection with the flood-control project scandal.

“But Marcos Jr. cannot forever feign innocence over his leading role in today’s massive cases of government corruption when no less than former Public Works Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo disclosed that P8 billion in graft money had been delivered to high-ranking Malacañang officials in the first quarter of 2025 alone,” said Lacaba. 

He added, “In the same vein, the dismissal of martial law-era cases of thievery against the dictator’s family, while another Marcos now sits in Malacañang, cannot remove the stench of corruption that will always follow this kleptocratic family wherever it goes.”

This September 21 will be the commemoration of the atrocities and human rights violations committed under the Martial Law of his dictator father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. For martial law survivors, this ruling will not erase the suffering of martial law victims and the continuing struggle to recover all of the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth. (AMU, RVO)