Marcos Jr looks shoe-in for Philippines presidency
Within the white stone walls of the national shoe museum in Marikina, the Philippines, Judy Esquejo Camer has for years taken pride in her role as custodian of hundreds of pairs of Ferragamo, Dior, Chanel and Givenchy designer shoes once belonging to former first lady Imelda Marcos.
The opulent collection is a symbol of the extravagant lifestyle enjoyed by Ms Marcos and her family while in power for some 20 years between the 1960s and 1980s. They have since been accused of plundering billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth.
Ferdinand Marcos, her late husband and the former strongman president, oversaw a notorious dictatorial regime before he was forced into exile by a “people power” revolution in 1986.
Tomorrow, Philippine voters will go to the polls to decide whether to anoint Imelda’s only son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, 64, as the next president of the nation of 112 million.
Among them will be Ms Camer, 61, who said she would back Mr Marcos out of admiration for his mother.
“She puts pride into every shoemaker in our city,” she said. “If Mr Marcos becomes president, he will revive the old glory.”
The most recent polls predict an extraordinary resurrection for the Marcos dynasty who returned in 1991 to rebuild their political fortunes and hold several positions of power despite still being subject to multiple investigations into their wealth.
They remain defendants in at least 40 civil cases. In addition, Imelda, 92, is appealing against her criminal conviction on seven separate graft charges in 2018, each of which carries a maximum prison sentence of 11 years.
The World Bank in a 2007 report attributed the family’s “ill-gotten wealth” in part to the “raiding” of the national treasury and “skimming off foreign aid”. Other riches are reported to be linked to business associates.
The public gained an insight into their financial empire after they fled the presidential palace, leaving behind artworks, designer clothes and jewellery. Seized documents revealed a global network of bank deposits, trust accounts and a vast real estate portfolio, including four buildings in Manhattan.
Mr Marcos and his family have denied any wrongdoing, often stressing that their fortune was legitimately obtained.
On the campaign trail, he dismissed criticism about the roots of the family wealth as “fake news”, brushing aside the accusations of his main rival, Leni Robredo, 57, that he has benefited from his “father’s sins”.
The most recent polls put Ms Robredo, the current vice-president and a human rights lawyer, on 23 per cent of the vote versus Mr Marcos’s 56 per cent – a lead analysts attribute to strategic political alliances and a well-funded campaign that has romanticised his father’s reign as a “golden era”.
“He is the only candidate who supports unity,” said Joey Fornier, a volunteer campaigner for Mr Marcos. “If we don’t come together, this country will not move forward.”
Behind the resurrection of the Marcos family has also been a highly successful social media campaign to whitewash the family’s past. During a nine-year period of martial law from 1972 to 1981, some 70,000 people were jailed, 34,000 tortured and 3,200 killed, says Amnesty International.
Bonifacio Ilagan was a 23-year-old activist when he was arrested by the
‘Imelda puts pride into every shoemaker in our city. If Mr Marcos becomes president, he will revive the old glory’
military in 1974 and tortured for running an underground publication that opposed Marcos’s rule.
He recalls intelligence officers pressing hot irons to his soles, painfully squeezing bullets between his fingers and an inhumane torture method known as the “San Juanico Bridge” where detainees were forced to lie straddled between two metal cots and beaten if their body sagged.
The Marcos era of his youth “defined the rest of my existence”, said Mr Ilagan, now 70. He still does not know the fate of his younger sister, who was disappeared by the military in 1977, and he can barely fathom the political rise of Mr Marcos Jr. “It’s really unimaginable,” he said. He hopes Ms Robredo could pull off a surprise win.
“I certainly wouldn’t say it’s a certainty that Marcos wins,” said Peter Mumford, an analyst at Eurasia Group, pointing to the low frequency of polling. “She is getting huge numbers at her rallies. That suggests she has had the momentum in the last stages of the campaign.”
Maria Ela Atienza, a politics professor at the University of the Philippines, said that Ms Robredo’s electoral run had morphed into a social movement of grassroots volunteers opposed to the ruling elite’s traditional hold on power. “Even if Bongbong wins, this kind of organisation, if sustained, can really give him and his supporters a big challenge,” she said.