MANILA >> The raucous rally was called by demonstrators to protest one of the biggest corruption scandals in the Philippines. One of the speakers was President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s older sister, who was expected to criticize the plundering of a public works budget under her brother’s watch.

But when the sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, took to the microphones, she stunned the crowd of tens of thousands. Her speech comprised a laundry list of accusations against her brother, including that he had been taking cocaine since childhood. She did not offer any proof to back up the claim.

“I knew he was using drugs,” Marcos said at the rally in Rizal Park in Manila on Nov. 17. She added that the supposed addiction was the reason for the “flood of corruption, the lack of direction and the many wron

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