Without directly mentioning his name, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. recognized the last-ditch appeal made by one of his predecessors, the late President Benigno Aquino III, in saving former Filipina death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso from execution in 2015.
Marcos made the statement during a brief media interview on Thursday, saying the good news about Veloso’s expected return to the Philippines soon “took a long time” and involved the efforts of previous administrations.
“We have been working on this for… All the previous presidents, hindi lang ako, 10 years ito e (not just me, it was 10 years in the making),” the incumbent Philippine leader told reporters, after leading the groundbreaking ceremony of a solar power facility in Nueva Ecija.
Marcos said the Filipinos should also be grateful to former President Joko Widodo and his successor President Prabowo Subianto for making it possible. He said the Indonesian government really found ways to reach the agreement.
“That’s why our immense gratitude must go to Indonesia. We must give our huge thanks to the last president and present president—President Widodo, President Prabowo now—because of their consent, we are able to achieve this,” he said mostly in Tagalog.
The Veloso case has been making headlines since the early 2010s when she was arrested. In 2015, the Indonesian government scheduled her date of execution until Aquino broke diplomatic protocols and convinced Widodo to delay her death sentence.
In a post on X on Wednesday, former senator Leila de Lima, who led the Department of Justice (DOJ) under then President Aquino, recalled these moments with the late Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary Albert del Rosario.
“Saving Mary Jane Veloso traversed administrations. During the time of PNoy, the DOJ and DFA worked for a last-minute reprieve on Mary Jane’s scheduled execution culminating in a midnight phone call of PNoy to then President Widodo of Indonesia,” De Lima said.
“It was a race to work out an agreement with President Widodo, so close that some Philippine dailies released morning editions that reported a supposed execution that, fortunately, did not push through,” she added.
De Lima noted, however, things were not the same when President Rodrigo Duterte took over. She said all credits for keeping Veloso alive during this period must go to Indonesia because Duterte “could not care less” if Veloso was executed in line with his brutal anti-drugs campaign.
Speaking as a human rights advocate, De Lima thanked and congratulated President Marcos for succeeding in the mission to grant Veloso a permanent stay of execution, as she welcomed and celebrated the news that the overseas Filipino worker is finally coming home.
“Congratulations to the BBM Administration for Mary Jane’s impending return to the Philippines after years of waiting in Indonesia’s death row. It is extremely important to save even just one like, because a single death is always one death too many,” De Lima said.
