Australian anchor Sarah Fergurson on Wednesday, March 20 revealed that the staff of President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. attempted to stop their sit-down interview the moment she mentioned his family's plunder case.
During the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Australia in February, Marcos spoke with Fergurson for the Australian news program "7.30," where the President discussed the issues concerning the South China Sea. The said episode aired last March 4.
In an Instagram post by the Australian news outlet, the 7.30 presenter gave a look at what went down when she asked him about their family's corruption.
"What happens when you ask a president a question about his father’s corruption? 7.30’s Sarah Ferguson breaks down what you may have missed from her interview with Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment with his minders behind the scenes," the caption read.
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In the clip, Fergurson said that she initially planned to divide their interview into two parts. She noted that while Marcos was there to talk about the Philippines' relationship with China, she knew that she would come to the "sticky part" of it — which is discussing his family's decades-old ill-gotten wealth.
In the said part of the interview, Marcos visibly got flustered after Fergurson confronted him about his family's corruption.
The President only let out a laugh, prompting the anchor to question him: "May I just ask you why that's funny?"
"No. I'm thinking that that maintains, that idea maintains because I take exception to many many of the assertions that have been made," Marcos replied.
"We went, we were taken to Hawaii. Everything. Everything was taken from us. We had nothing left," he added. He also dismissed as “propaganda” past findings that hold them accountable for their stolen wealth.
That part of the clip went viral on social media, with people criticizing Marcos himself and his family.
Shut the interview down
According to Fergurson, the moment she mentioned Marcos' late father, former president Ferdinand Marcos Sr., his team began moving and talking to the show's producer to shut the interview down.
"What is not visible, except for a few, literally, like a few little shadows on the screen is that from the moment I mentioned his father, the minders, first of all, start to move. They start to talk amongst themselves. Then they start talking to the producer, trying to get her to shut the interview down," she recalled.
As the questions went on, Fergurson stressed that the President's staff started moving closer to her and Marcos.
"They are standing just behind his chair and I want to push on to ask him what his responsibility is, what his relationship is to what his father did and his acceptance of that and what it means to him as president. But I'm doing that in this extraordinary space where the temperature in the room has, depending on how you see it, has either gone right up high or way down low," she continued.
Towards the end, the Australian anchor believed that the Philippine president might have regretted saying yes to the interview.
"I’m just trying to get to the end so I can land a ‘Thank you for talking to 7.30,’ when at that stage, I know he’s wishing that he hadn’t," she said.
The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) first lodged the complaint in 1987, seeking to forfeit the illegally acquired properties supposedly held by the defendants. However, the "expanded complaint" which the Sandiganbayan ruled on was dated 1988.
In its complaint, the PCGG accused ex-President Marcos of unlawfully withdrawing funds from the National Treasury, the Central Bank, and other Philippine financial institutions, and of transferring these to various payees with the intention of obtaining ill-gotten wealth.
