The Malacañang Palace cannot give the exact date of Marcos burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Former President Ferdinand Marcos will be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani before the year 2016 ends.
This was the statement of the Malacañang Palace after the Supreme Court gave go signal to the Marcos burial at the Heroes’ Cemetery.
“The best we can say is it will be within the year,” presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said in a press briefing on Friday.
However, the President’s spokesperson could not provide a working date of the burial but indicated that it was bound to happen soon.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court on denied petitions to stop President Rodrigo Duterte from allowing Marcos’ burial at the cemetery reserved for soldiers and heroes.
In a press conference on Tuesday, SC spokesman Theodore Te said that by a vote of 9-5, the 15-man SC dismissed the consolidated petitions seeking to stop the burial backed by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte.
Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Arturo Brion, Mariano del Castillo, Jose Perez, Jose Mendoza, Teresita Leonardo De Castro, and Estela Perlas-Bernabe favored for the burial.
Those who opposed were Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, and Associate Justices Francis Jardeleza, Marvic Leonen and Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa.
On the other hand, Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes, a fraternity brother of the President at the San Beda College of Law, inhibited from the deliberations due to reported close relations with a party in the case.
But the petitioners, including the human rights violations victims during martial law, are expected to file a motion for reconsideration of the high court’s ruling.
Earlier, the Department of National Defense said it is still waiting for the official communication from the Supreme Court regarding the ruling allowing the burial of the late Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Despite the calls to stop the plan of Marcos burial, Duterte earlier said he was allowing Marcos’ remains to be laid to rest at Libingan ng mga Bayani because he was a former soldier and, under the law, is allowed to be buried there.