88 THE SHOCK RETURN OF IMELDA MARCOS:
the Philippines’ former first lady has grand plans
In the 1970s and ’80s, Imelda Marcos’ name was synonymous with excess, as was her husband’s with a repressive, dictatorial regime in the Philippines. Now, at 90, the Marcos matriarch is back, and looking once again to become the power behind the president. William Langley reports.
Perched on a Louis XIV sofa, beneath a gilt-framed Picasso,
Imelda Marcos is explaining how tough the job used to be.
“When I became First Lady, it was very demanding,” she says.
“I had to dress up and make myself more beautiful because the poor are always looking for a star in the dark of the night.”
With a perceptible creak of her pink silk gown, Imelda, 90, rises, adjusts her raven perm, and is soon speeding into
Manila, the down-at-heel capital of the
Philippines, which she once used as a gigantic shopping trolley for all the finest things in the world. The poor are waiting, and at traffic lights she hands out crisp banknotes to children. “See how they love me,” she says.
These are among the opening scenes of a new documentary film about the infamous ‘Steel Butterfly’, which has caused outrage and apprehension in a country that still hasn’t recovered from the consequences of Imelda’s two-decade spending spree.
Investigators estimate that around US$10 billion was plundered from the state’s coffers by Imelda and her husband, the late President Ferdinand Marcos, a substantial portion of which is still missing.
Much of it went into an eye-popping portfolio of properties including grand homes in Paris, Beverly Hills, the Swiss Alps, and an entire skyscraper in New York. Hundreds of millions more went on Imelda’s jewellery collection, later found to include a rare pink diamond “the size of a grape”, a Cartier tiara and a 150-carat Burmese ruby.
Nikki Haskell, an American TV presenter, remembers going aboard the Marcos’ private yacht during the Manila Film Festival. “It was decorated like a French château,” she says, “and against the wall there were two gigantic Limoges [French porcelain] urns, six or seven-feet high. There were two guys on stepladders with oil drums filled with caviar, pouring it into the urns. It was the coolest thing I ever saw.”
Imelda appears to have held on to enough of this booty to secure herself a comfortable retirement. Today she lives in a palm-fringed villa on the outskirts of the capital, surrounded by her trophies – Old Masters paintings, caskets of gems, closets crammed with couture – of the good times. There are maids to tend her, flunkeys to do her bidding and an air-conditioned vault for her famous shoe collection. Chronicling her career of wretched excess, the recent film has incensed many Filipinos, but what really scares them is the news that she’s planning a comeback.
For several months Imelda has been quietly positioning herself as the power behind her son, ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, a 62-year-old, British-educated ex-businessman, who is hungrily eyeing the presidency. Not everyone feels Bongbong is qualified for the job, but according to sources within the Marcos camp, Imelda thinks her boy’s political career simply needs a sprinkle of stardust – and some hard campaign cash.
“Bongbong stood for the vice-presidency a couple of years ago, and lost,” says Vincente
Espina, a London-based Filipino journalist and blogger, “but he’s never accepted the result, and it’s pretty certain that he will try for the presidency in 2022. You can bet Imelda wants to be there to see it. They are each other’s biggest fans.”
Further beefing up the family comeback effort is Imelda’s daughter, Imee, 64, who won a seat in the Philippines Senate last year and describes her political ambition as: “Bringing the Marcoses back to the Presidential Palace.”
To many in this beautiful but unsettled archipelago who remember the family’s previous stint, the prospect evokes only dread. For behind the image of extravagance and eccentricity, the Ferdinand Marcos years left a brutal legacy of repression and economic failure. Thousands of political opponents were killed and tortured during Ferdinand’s time in office, and the divisions left by their rule have never healed.
Rather than the ‘Steel Butterfly’, many in her homeland see Imelda as the Teflon Butterfly. At one time she faced more than 900 criminal and civil
“They found no skeletons, only beautiful shoes.”
actions around the world relating to allegations of corruption, but despite receiving a Philippines-record 1824year prison sentence, she has never spent a night in jail, and as the film shows, sails serenely on in a state of Marie Antoinette-style bewilderment that anyone should reproach her.
“I was investigated by everyone,” she sighs to the camera, “but they found no skeletons, only beautiful shoes.”
Now down to her last 720 pairs – the remains of the infamous horde once kept in an air-conditioned room at the Presidential Palace – Imelda insists that she was merely supporting local industry. “I had no special love for shoes,” she says, “but whenever we had a shoe fair I would always go to open it, and they would give me a pair as a token of gratitude.”
Certainly, she had plenty of occasions to wear them. One of the enduring mysteries of the whole Marcos tragi-farce is the readiness of heads of state, movie stars, royalty and religious leaders to roll out the red carpet for her. Did none of them suspect what she really was?
Imelda was born in 1929, the sixth child of an obscure but comfortably off Manila lawyer. The comfort didn’t last long as the economy dived and her parents separated. For part of her childhood she lived in a rented garage with her mother, and her education at a Catholic girls’ school was regularly interrupted by her parents’ inability to pay the fees.
She made it to college, but had to lodge with relatives who, she later recalled, treated her “only slightly better than the servants”. To make ends meet she took a part-time job in a Manila music store.
Things began looking up when she reached the finals of the 1953 Miss Manila beauty contest and shortly afterwards was introduced to Ferdinand Marcos, a rising politician, 12 years older than herself and already trailing a reputation for ruthlessness. They were married less than a month later.
In November 1965, Ferdinand became the 10th President of the Philippines and paid lavish tribute to his wife, whose “grace and beauty” had been a winning weapon on the campaign trail. The rest of the world didn’t take much notice of the big news from this sub-tropical former Spanish colony – a situation Imelda immediately decided to address.
Ferdinand had reasons beyond gratitude to keep his wife happy. “While he doubtless appreciated the glamour Imelda lent to his otherwise dour public image,” says Imelda’s biographer Carmen Pedrosa, “he privately recoiled from her frivolity, and his indulgence was a means of keeping her out of his way.”
At least no-one could accuse Imelda of concealing her intentions. Asked about her feelings on the eve of the election, she replied: “Win or lose, we go shopping.”
And shopping she did go. For the next 20 years, while Ferdinand tightened his grip on power and millions of Filipinos existed on an average wage of $50 a month, the
Steel Butterfly spent her way through virtually the entire national development budget. There was nothing Imelda wanted that she didn’t believe she could have. When The Beatles played in Manila in 1966, a military police squad was sent, late at night, to their hotel with orders to escort the band – with instruments – to a party Imelda was giving at the Presidential Palace.
The group decided to flee the country instead, but an angry crowd attacked their getaway limo with rotten eggs and vegetables, forcing them back to the hotel where they spent several nights under siege. “I’ve never been so scared in my life,” recalled John Lennon later. Only when Imelda received what she considered a suitable apology was the band allowed to leave.
When the Marcos regime was overthrown in 1986, the couple fled to Hawaii, where Ferdinand died three years later. Imelda and her children were allowed back in the Philippines in 1991.
Around her still swirls a heady air of absurdity and menace. “When you are with her,” says Lauren Greenfield, director of the new film, The Kingmaker, “you can’t help but like her. What I was most interested in was the contradiction between her personal charisma and its terrible consequences.”
The consequences rumble ominously on. Imelda, who only recently stepped down as a Congresswoman, is on chummy terms with the Philippines’ current president Rodrigo Duterte, a veteran right-wing bruiser, who is said to be relaxed about the prospect of Bongbong taking over.
“I will be in London soon, and we must meet for lunch,” booms Bongbong, when I reach him at his office in Manila. Those who describe the Marcos heir as more likeable than his father and less synthetic than his mother may be onto something, but coronavirus scuppers the trip, and he is suddenly unavailable. In a brief conversation, he insists he hasn’t finally decided on whether to run for the top job, pointedly adding that, “I will make up my own mind”. In the film he declares: “My mother is the best politician I’ve ever seen,” which he confirms with the qualification: “Sure, she’s a genius, but we don’t agree on everything.” Bongbong has been a strong supporter of his father’s legacy, while disassociating himself from its more controversial aspects. There is no suggestion that he had any personal involvement in the torture and brutality that accompanied martial law. On the campaign trail, floppy-haired Bongbong cuts a dressed-down figure in blue jeans and tropical shirts, and he is certainly not accused of being another tyrant-inwaiting. The big worries are over his competence and the alarming prospect of his mother pulling the strings.
Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Jr, was born in 1957, soon after his father’s ferocious rise to power had begun. At 12 he was sent to England as a boarder at Worth, a boys’ Catholic school in Sussex, where he failed to shine academically and was described as “lazy but well-adjusted” in his headmaster’s report. Bongbong’s official biography claims he went on to earn a degree in politics from Oxford University, but his old college, St Edmund Hall, disputes this, saying he only got a ‘diploma’, which is usually given to students who fail to get beyond their first year.
“Frankly,” says Vicente, “the worry is that Bongbong isn’t the brightest, and would be putty in Imelda’s hands.”
Even more worrying is the likely reaction on the streets if the Marcoses came back to power. At showings of the film, Imelda’s appearances have been greeted with booing and chants of “No more Marcos! No return to martial law!”
Yet other Filipinos say the country needs strong leadership to tackle inequality, a creaking education system, crime and cronyism.
“A lot of younger people don’t know or care much about what happened in the 1970s,” says Ronald Chua, a lawyer who helped investigate the abuses of the Marcos era. “They are fed up with being forced to leave the country, and just want someone to sort things out.”
Even at 90, time may be on Imelda’s side. Up at her villa she remains ready for the summons. Her tables are dotted with photographs of the politicians she met and admired – Chairman Mao, Saddam Hussein, Richard Nixon – and it is best to believe her when she turns to the camera and says: “Think what you wish of me. Perception is real, but the truth is not.” AWW