Philippine election: Bongbong Marcos slams 'nuisance candidate' who called him an impostor

Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jnr, the 64-year-old son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, faces several petitions seeking to stop him from running to become the Philippines' next president. One says he's a convicted tax cheat, another that he's morally unfit. But surely the most unusual charge is that he's dead.

That allegation was filed by a man who also has presidential aspirations. Tiburcio Villamor Marcos, who refers to himself as TVM, claims that Bongbong Marcos is an "impostor" and that the "real" Bongbong died when still a young man after being stabbed dead while studying abroad.

It's one of various conspiracy theories surrounding the election that are starting to grip the wilder areas of the internet, but in this case, the strange accusation has been officially filed in a petition by one of Marcos' rivals for the presidency - a colourful character also claiming the surname "Marcos".

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According to online news site Rappler, TVM enclosed as "proof" comparative photos of Marcos as a boy and as a man, which allegedly show - perhaps if people squint hard enough - that the ears are different.

TVM, for his part, claims to be not only a son of the deceased dictator and a Spanish princess, but also a king, a "seven-star" general and an admiral.

Those positions would make him easily the most colourful candidate - if he withstands the scrutiny of the Commission on Election, which is vetting the candidates before producing a shortlist in mid-December.

The commission might find a red flag: in 2002, a Hong Kong judge convicted a man with a very similar sounding name of Tiburcio Villamor Tan Marcos for trying to withdraw billions of US dollars from a bank using forged documents.

Bongbong, 64, has petitioned that TVM be declared a "nuisance candidate".

It isn't the first time the fake Marcos tale has emerged. In May, Bongbong recorded a YouTube video where he warned his followers against "conspiracy theories" and said the story about his being an impostor is so pervasive, when he meets friends who haven't seen him for a long time, he catches them looking at him suspiciously.

"Don't worry, it's really me," he told viewers.

The tales of alternative Marcoses goes back to 1986, when Marcos the dictator and his family were chased out of the country in a nonviolent "People Power" uprising. As investigators uncovered the extent of the dictator's plunder, stolen wealth and holdings, the revelations spawned a cottage industry of fraud that has not only survived but has become more overwrought and global.

The scams typically involve a man claiming to be the dictator's illegitimate son, who approaches victims promising them a share of the toppled tyrant's loot, usually gold certificates in Swiss banks.

Over the years, both the tale and the fortune have grown and now include a Spanish princess, trillions of dollars in gold, a spurious police organisation and certificates of ownership over the entire Philippines.

In 1992, police in Melbourne arrested an unnamed Australian who was trying to sell a bank US$7 billion worth of Marcos gold held in Swiss banks, accessible via gold certificates, which turned out to be forged.

In 2001, the late Max Soliven, publisher of The Philippine Star newspaper, wrote how there seemed to be a proliferation of Marcos illegitimate sons. He noted how one of them, Edilberto Marcos, together with a former Philippine government official, was arrested in New York after both tried selling a Swiss bank gold certificate to a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. The certificate, supposedly worth US$20 million, was fake.

Soliven recalled how years before the same scammer had tried selling him gold bullion certificates from the Swiss bank UBS, but he had spotted spelling mistakes in the documents.

In 2002, when Tiburcio Villamor Tan Marcos was convicted in Hong Kong, a South China Morning Post report identified him as a 53-year-old Filipino man who claimed to be the son of the dictator Marcos.

Representing himself in court, he explained he had tried to withdraw US$90 billion from HSBC using fake documents because he planned to donate to Hong Kong charities. He claimed he had actually been on the way to meet then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji in Beijing when he stopped over in Hong Kong and saw children sleeping in the streets, which moved him to give to charity.

Unimpressed, the judge handed him a four-year jail sentence, although reports do not say if he eventually spent time behind bars. The judge said she would have imposed a tougher sentence, but the forged documents were so "amateurish" in quality.

In 2017, Philippine police in Angeles City northwest of Manila arrested fake "Marcos son" Edilberto del Carmen for fraud and illegal possession of firearms. Del Carmen, who claimed to be "Angel Ferdinand Marcos", had three assault rifles, five hand grenades, one submachine-gun and one pistol in his villa.

Facebook and YouTube have magnified the power and reach of these colourful characters.

According to a 2019 report by the Philippine media outlet Vera Files, TVM is featured in a Facebook page for the "Alpha Omega World Development Marshall Programme", where his claimed pedigree includes being the youngest son of dictator Marcos and a non-existent "Princess of Spain" named Enimecia Cruzen Villamor Tagean Tallano.

TVM also claims a coat of arms and displays crudely Photoshopped images of himself in various uniforms. Apparently he is involved with the "Bureau of Central Interpol" - an obscure group that claims to be an international organisation and will issue crude IDs and certificates to people who will pay a "processing fee".

The page also contains a deposit code for a bank account it claims controls fabulous wealth which includes tonnes of gold, and says followers can expect to receive a portion of that treasure. It also claims the non-existent Spanish princess has certificates entitling them to ownership of the entire Philippines.

The story, although sounding like a lunatic fringe tale, is a rabbit hole that has attracted plenty of followers - enough of them to hold rallies in Manila.

For its part, the Marcos family has repeatedly distanced itself from the circus. In 2017, Bongbong issued a statement saying "I have repeatedly warned the public against unscrupulous individuals who have been using our family to advance their personal interests."

In his motion to disqualify TVM as a presidential candidate, Marcos Jnr said "TVM is merely using the election process to gain popularity and for other purposes only known [to himself]".

Meanwhile, the Marcoses themselves are no stranger to crime. Investigators have estimated the dictator's family plundered at least US$10 billion of the country's wealth. Marcos' wife Imelda has been convicted of plunder, while Bongbong has been convicted of tax evasion.

The dictator's daughter Imee lost a civil suit in the US for the murder of a young student by her military bodyguards. None of the Marcoses can set foot in the US without facing arrest, as they continue to defy a Hawaii court order to pay a US$2 billion settlement to human rights victims.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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