Marcos family to skip Noynoy inaugural

Members of the Marcos family who were elected into office in the May 10 elections will skip Wednesday’s inauguration of President-elect Benigno “Noynoy" Aquino III and Vice President-elect Jejomar Binay due to conflict in schedule. Former First Lady Imelda Marcos, who took her oath as Ilocos Norte congresswoman at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, told reporters that Aquino’s inauguration coincides with the mass oath-taking of local officials in the province. The mass oath-taking will be led by Marcos' daughter, Governor-elect Imee. “We were invited, and I would have gone if Imee was not going to be [taking her oath of office]. She is going to take her oath in Ilocos as governor. But I would have gone. It would have been an honor," the widow of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos said. The decades-old Marcos regime met its end in 1986 during the height of the historic People Power Revolution, the same uprising that catapulted Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon “Cory" Aquino, to Malacañang. The Marcos family fled to the United States afterward and stayed there in exile for several years. Saying she is not one for divisiveness, Marcos, who herself ran for president in 1992, vowed to support the incoming Aquino administration. “Anything that’s good for the Filipino people, I am there, committed, supportive," she said. Senator-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong" Marcos Jr., who also took his oath at the SC Tuesday, said he is looking forward to working with Aquino. “I look forward to working with [him] and I hope that we, together, and with all the newly elected officials, can bring our country to a better place than it is now," he said. Asked for reaction on the recommendation of the Presidential Commission on Good Government for the new government to pursue the recovery of the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos family, the elder Marcos said the state-ran commission went beyond its mandate of recovering it. “What is there to recover? Nakuha na ni Cory lahat (Cory got them all)," she said. The PCGG was created under the Aquino administration. Marcos Jr. said he does not want to second guess the moves of the Aquino government in terms of recovering the supposed wealth of his family. “We can’t react to something when nothing yet has happened. We can’t speculate on what they will do, we can only wait to see what they will in fact do. So let’s give the guy (Aquino) a break. Let him do what he wants and let’s see. From that point on we will know what position to take and how we proceed accordingly," he said. Accompanied by their usual retinue of red-shirt wearing loyalists, the two took their oaths before SC Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta. - KBK, GMANews.TV