SC affirms decision backing Marcos burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani 

The Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday stood firm on its decision allowing the burial of the late President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, in a development that came a month before the former leader's 100th birth anniversary.

Voting 10 to 5, the SC voted to dismiss the separate appeals to overturn the November 8 ruling that paved the way for Marcos' interment at the Taguig cemetery.

Siding with the ruling penned by Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta are Justices Presbitero Velasco, Teresita Leonardo De Castro, Lucas Bersamin, Mariano Del Castillo, Jose Mendoza, Estela Perlas-Bernabe, Samuel Martires, Noel Tijam and Andres Reyes Jr.

Maintaining their dissents are Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, and Justices Marvic Leonen, Francis Jardeleza and Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa.

The magistrates also junked the plea for the exhumation of Marcos' remains as pushed by Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman and the contempt plea against the Marcos family, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, and ranking military officials for pushing through with the burial even if the decision was not final at the time.

The late strongman was laid to rest in clandestine rites at the Libingan ng mga Bayani on November 18 last year, sparking protests from groups which opposed his one-man rule that ended with his ouster on February 25, 1986.

His interment, backed by President Rodrigo Duterte, came days after the SC, by a vote of 9 to 5 with one abstention, ruled that no law was passed to prohibit the burial of Marcos, who had met the military regulations to be buried at the LNMB, having been a former president, statesman, and war soldier.

Two motions for reconsideration were then filed separately by the group of Lagman and former Bayan Muna Representatives Neri Colmenares and Satur Ocampo.

In his motion, Lagman said the "speed and stealth" by which the burial was carried out by the immediate members of the Marcos family "showed their incorrigible addiction to deception, underhandedness and abuse, which the Supreme Court must never condone."

Lagman added the Armed Forces of the Philippines Regulations G 161-375, which the government used to justify Marcos' spot at the LNMB, is not effective and enforceable due to absence of registration with the Office of the National Administrative Registrar (ONAR) of the University of the Philippine Law Center as required by the Administrative Code of 1987.

Ocampo and Colmenares, meanwhile, said the respondents led by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea violated the constitutional provision on the government's mandate to fight graft and corruption and the laws, jurisprudence and public policy.

They also said the SC should not have dismissed the consolidated petitions on the ground that the interment was a political question, which is beyond judicial review.

Days before the SC came out with its final ruling, Marcos' daughter, Ilocos Norte Governor Imee Marcos, had hoped the high court would put closure to the burial issue before the 100th birth anniversary of her father on September 11.

The governor said on July 26 that they still have no concrete plans for her father's centennial although they have received suggestions to hold academic discussions and release books authored by the former leader including the "Notes on the New Society of the Philippines."

Marcos died while in exile in Hawaii in 1989 due to lung, kidney and liver complications.  —KBK/ALG/KVD, GMA News