BURYING JUSTICE?

This "script" of family members taking on the political mantle is probably familiar to many Filipinos. But that may not have been the only thing happening in Chile that would have given Filipinos a sense of déjà vu. Many Chileans were also probably pondering over the same questions we asked after Marcos's death: Does the death of the dictator mean justice denied? Would it make it easier to go after his underlings, his family and relatives, prompt the military to finally come clean about Chile's dark history — or would it become easier to forget everything that happened now that the face of dictatorship is gone?

	JUBILATION. Amid the watchful eye of the police nearby, demonstrators celebrate Pinochet's death. [photo by Johanna Son]

"Well, many say it's now time to forget and move on, but tell me, how we can we forget what this man has done?" said a former professor in his nineties, whose career had been wrecked by the witch hunts of the Pinochet regime and who, like more than a million Chileans, went into exile in the years after the 1973 coup.

Yet in the Philippines, time seems to have erased a lot of memories, even if a reminder in the form of an embalmed Ferdinand Marcos still lies inside a refrigerated crypt in his home province of Ilocos Norte. Imelda Marcos has even said she feels vindicated after her acquittal last year in yet one more case in a local anti-graft court. "I have survived 20 years of persecution," she said in October. "The truth has prevailed."

Chileans might well pick up some tough pointers on the accountability of dictators and their minions from the Philippine experience, too. While the Hawaii court in 1995 upheld the claim of Filipino victims of human-rights violations under the Marcos regime and awarded them $2 billion in total, not one centavo has been given out. The victims say the Marcoses' Swiss bank deposits should be used to give them compensation under this verdict, but Philippine law specifies that recovered ill-gotten wealth have to be used for land reform.

About $658 million of the Marcoses' supposed ill-gotten funds were found in Swiss bank accounts years ago and awarded to the Philippine government. Legal tussles continue over $25 million of those deposits that have since been parked in the Singapore branch of a German bank. The Philippine government argues that the victims should get the money from Marcos's estate, not recovered ill-gotten wealth. Imelda Marcos, meanwhile, has repeatedly said the Philippine government has stolen her family's money.

Many Chileans are waiting to see what the Pinochet clan — and their government — will do next. But there will probably be no apology of any kind coming from the Pinochets. Last November 25, on his 91st birthday, Augusto Pinochet's wife Lucia read a statement he wrote. He said he took "political responsibility" for acts that occurred under his rule, but insisted that these were done in Chile's best interests. The 1973 coup was necessary, he added. In a letter he had prepared for release after his death and published here last Christmas Eve, Pinochet said of his 1973 golpe de estado: "Quite honestly I tell you, I'm proud of the great effort that was made to prevent Marxism-Leninism from reaching total power.''

Johanna Son, a Filipino journalist based in Bangkok, is the Asia Regional Director of Inter Press Service. She used to work for the defunct Manila Chronicle.