Duterte: Marcos was just ashes when buried at Libingan

President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night insisted that only the ashes of late dictator President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

"But for those who cannot forget, you are condemned to--enjoy your grief until you die. Marcos when he was buried in Hawaii, you know, the Americans were very strict with that, you cannot go around the law and preserve a body there it’s not allowed. You have to go inside the tomb," Duterte said before guests of the Wallace Business Forum in Malacañang.

"And Marcos when the time they got him out there, bring it to the Philippines, he’s just ashes. Or at the very least skeletal remains. And by the time that he was buried there in Libingan ng [mga] Bayani, he’s just ashes. So and I…And they would just paint me as a bad guy," he added.

Marcos died in Honolulu, Hawaii on September 28, 1989 because of his kidney, heart, and lung ailments. But his remains were brought back to the Philippines four years after his death, during the time of former President Fidel V. Ramos.

Since then until his burial at the heroes' cemetery, he was interred in Batac, Ilocos Norte in a refrigerated, glass coffin with his supposed preserved body inside.

Duterte repeated in his speech that his mother, Soledad Roa-Duterte, fought against the Martial Law.

"My mother led the Yellow Friday Movement in Davao City. You can ask everybody and anybody. Sonny would tell you. She was the only one in the plaza bullying at the military because all of the audience were policemen and Philippine Constabulary at that time," he said.

"And so my mother was the only who stood up and bullshit them in public. And they were only four of them walking in the streets every Friday until it blown into something big and eventually the revolution. Baka hindi nila alam iyan," he added. —ALG, GMA News