But in another part of the city, those who were tortured and imprisoned under martial law will hold their own rally to mourn a lack of justice.

They will also try to raise the alarm over the dictator’s only son and namesake from getting elected vice-president, as he has surged to the top of polls with national elections less than three months away.

“The Marcoses have not returned what they stole and they are rewriting history,” said Enriquez, who was imprisoned for two years and whose activist sister was believed killed by government forces.

– Treasure hunt –

=================

Philippine parliament passed a law in 2013 to distribute money that was plundered by the Marcos family to human rights victims.

However, out of $10 billion that the government estimates to have been plundered, it covers only $210 million that was discovered in a Swiss bank account.

The government says it has recovered close to $4 billion worth of assets, but can not distribute the vast bulk of it because of legal challenges by the Marcoses and their cronies.

Meanwhile, an arduous process to verify 75,000 claims will not be finished until 2018, and only then can the victims finally get much-delayed compensation.

The victims have submitted medical records, prison logs and photos of themselves bruised or behind bars, according to Lina Sarmiento, head of the Human Rights Victims Claims Board tasked to verify the applications.

Although the money may not be a lot when it is finally distributed, she said it would be an important symbol of justice.

“More than the compensation for the victims, this is a recognition from the state, giving them back their dignity because they suffered for democracy,” Sarmiento told AFP.

“This is long overdue.”

The need to finally recognise and compensate human rights victims is not lost on the government claims board.

A timer that counts down to the number of days until the board’s 2018 deadline to pay all approved claims is installed on every computer screen in their spartan office.

– Marcos resurgence –

=====================

Meanwhile, Ferdinand Marcos Jnr is on the verge of cementing a remarkable comeback for the family.

The dictator died in US exile in 1989, but wife Imelda was allowed to return a few years after with her son and two daughters, and they began rebuilding a political power base.

If Marcos Jnr, 58, wins the vice presidency, he would be well positioned for a tilt at the nation’s top post at the next elections in 2022.

In the Philippines, the two positions are elected separately.

His mother and elder sister are also poised for re-election as congresswoman and governor, respectively, of Ilocos Norte, a northern province that has long been the family’s stronghold.

“This is the irony of our time: the activists of the 70s are now ageing and struggling for indemnification and we have not really achieved our objective and here comes another Marcos trying to make a comeback,” Selda president Bonifacio Ilagan, a former student activist who was jailed without trial for two years during the dictatorship, told AFP.

Marcos Jnr was not available for comment.

But he has consistently denied any wrongdoing by his family while portraying his father’s 20-year rule as benevolent, with tough measures used only to quash security threats such as communism.

In slick election campaign videos, Marcos Jnr proudly declares that “I am not my past” — in a nod to critics of his father — while trumpeting his father’s alleged gains in the economy and peace and order.

Marcos Jnr is surging in the polls on the back of the family’s “loyalists” and a generation of voters who were born after the martial law years, political analyst Ramon Casiple told AFP.

One third of the voters in the upcoming election were born after “People Power”, and are susceptible to the Marcos charm offensive as they live in a country still racked by poverty and corruption, according to Casiple.

He said democracy had failed to end these and other long-standing problems, allowing Marcos Jnr, known by his nickname of Bongbong, to falsely portray his father’s rule in a golden light.

“Bongbong is portraying the Marcos years as paradise,” Casiple told AFP.

– AFP

“The complaint will be discussed during the commission en banc meeting tomorrow (Tuesday),” Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Andres Bautista told AFP.

Bautista said Pacquiao’s promotion of his April fight with Timothy Bradley in Las Vegas was a “grey area”, given the cap on radio and television airtime for candidates during the 90-day campaign period that started this month.

A rival senatorial candidate who has trailed Pacquiao in opinion polls, Walden Bello, filed the complaint against the boxing champion on Monday.

The most recent poll by Social Weather Stations put Pacquiao in eighth place in the race for 12 Senate seats up for grabs in May.

Bello said the poll body should determine whether Pacquiao’s television appearances to promote the Bradley fight should be counted against the 120-minute television airtime limit for the campaign.

“We want to know if this violates the equal time rule because in our view, this will give overwhelmingly great hours to Pacquiao and put us at a tremendous disadvantage,” Bello told AFP.

Should Comelec decide to count Pacquiao’s media blitz against his airtime limit, Bello suggested the boxer postpone the fight until after the elections.

Pacquiao’s Senate run is seen by his supporters and analysts as part of preparations for a possible presidential run.

While revered in the boxing ring for winning world titles in an unprecedented eight divisions, Pacquiao’s political track record has been lacklustre.

Pacquiao is notorious for his absences in parliament, where he represents his wife’s impoverished home province of Sarangani.

In 2014 he attended only four congressional sessions and did not help pass a single law, with boxing training taking up most of his time.

Pacquiao’s anti-gay slur cost him a lucrative endorsement deal with US sportswear brand Nike, which called his comments “abhorrent”.

But Pacquiao, a conservative Christian, stood by his comments even as he apologised for offending the gay community.

– AFP

“It seems the authorities will keep blocking us, although they show no signs of cracking down on us,” Pala Lum Hkawng, a member of PatJasan, told dpa by phone.

“There was a small fight between Pat Jasan members and authorities yesterday following an army officer’s attack on a reporter,” he said.

Pat Jasan formed two years ago and has campaigned to eradicate local poppy fields, whose crop is used to produce opium and heroin.

Myanmar is the world’s second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.

A Kachin activist, Khun Ja, said the poppy fields were located in an area controlled by a local militia.

“It is too bad that authorities blocked the anti-drug campaigners instead of providing the security to go and destroy the poppy fields,” Khun Ja said.

“These poppy fields are owned by the militia, not by the individual farmers,” she said.

Local police did not make any official comment on the stand-off.

A local officer, who did not wish to be named, told dpa: “The militia would not tolerate the Pat Jasan members from destroying their poppy fields just before harvesting. That’s why we are blocking them.”

A powerful militia leader in the area was quoted by local media saying Pat Jasan was seeking funds from international organisations in exchange for destroying the poppy fields.

“I want to ask why they’ve come to destroy the poppy fields at this time. Why not when the farmers started growing the poppy? The farmers will lose everything if they are let through,” said militia leader and former member of parliament Zakhung Ting Ying.

– DPA

The unusual profile of the patients, such as old age and monogamy, raised a red flag with provincial health authorities.

Health officials visited the village at the weekend, Health Minister Mam Bunheng told dpa on Monday, declining to discuss details, saying it would “only create chaos.”

Residents blamed contaminated needles used by a local doctor, the Cambodia Daily reported.

In December, an unlicensed medic was sentenced to 25 years in prison for transmitting HIV to 270 people through contaminated needles in a village of Battambang province, 250 kilometres north-west of Phnom Penh.

The preference for medication administered by injection and poor medical training raises the risk of HIV transmission in local medical facilities.

Cambodia has slowed HIV transmission since its peak in the late1990s, but there are still 75,000 people living with the virus in a population of 15 million, according to UNAIDS.

– DPA