Imelda R. Marcos
(born Imelda Remedios Visitacion Trinidad Romualdez
on July 2, 1929) is the widow of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and is herself an influential political figure in the Philippines. She is known as the "Iron Butterfly"
[1] due to her role as a controversial figure in her home country and around the world. [2] In 1996, the Australian Magazine
ranked her 58th among "The 100 Most Powerful Women in the World". Newsweek, meanwhile, listed her in 2009 as one of the "Greediest People of All Time". She said she pleads guilty to being the "greediest for the good, true and beautiful." [3] [4] Her extensive shoes, gowns, and jewelry collections have allowed her to gain notoriety. [5]
[6]
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IMELDA TICKETS
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Early life
Imelda was born on July 2, 1929 in San Juan de Dios Hospital in Manila. Her parents were Vicente Orestes Lopez Romualdez (of
Spanish-Chinese-Filipino blood) and Remedios Trinidad (1902–1938) , the second wife of the widowed Vicente. She is of
Visayan and
Tagalog descent. Her paternal ancestors, the wealthy and prominent Lopezes of Leyte, claimed to have founded the town of
Tolosa, Leyte [7]. Her own branch of the family was not political. Her father was a scholarly man more interested in music and culture than in public life. Her mother, Remedios Trinidad, a dressmaker who grew up in an orphanage in Manila, said to have been an illegitimate offspring of a friar,
[8] was from the town of
Baliuag, Bulacan.
Marcos spent her childhood in the shadow of the
Malacañang Palace in San Miguel District in Manila, since her family then lived near San Miguel Church. After Marcos's mother Remedios died, and their home foreclosed, her father, Vicente, moved his family back to Leyte to live with relatives,
where Marcos earned a bachelor's degree in education at
St. Paul's College."
[9]
She became a
beauty queen. At the age of 18, she was crowned the "Rose of
Tacloban," became "Miss Leyte", went to Manila in 1953. Her photogenic face soon graced many of Manila's magazine covers and she was named the "Muse of Manila" by then Manila Mayor,
Arsenio Lacson, a special title given her after she protested her loss in the Miss Manila pageant.
In 1954, Marcos met then-Ilocos Norte Congressman Ferdinand E. Marcos. After a whirlwind courtship in Baguio during Holy Week, they were married in May of that year at the Manila Pro-Cathedral Church with President
Ramon Magsaysay as principal sponsor.
They have four children:
Maria Imelda "Imee" Marcos,
Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr., Irene Marcos, and Aimee Marcos, who was adopted.
In 1966, Ferdinand Marcos became the 10th President of the Philippines. Together with Imelda, he would rule the Philippines from September 21, 1972 up to his removal in February 1986 in the famous
People Power Revolution when he fled the Philippines.
First Lady
In December 1965,
Ferdinand E. Marcos was proclaimed as the 10th Philippine
President of the Philippines.
In 1969, Ferdinand Marcos became the first President of the Philippine Republic to be re-elected a second and last 4-year term amidst charges of vote buying and election fraud. On September 23, 1972, he declared
martial law to preserve his hold on power. It was during the martial law period that President Marcos abolished the Philippines' 1935 constitution and established a parliamentary system (Batasang Pambansa or National Assembly) composed mainly of his own political appointees. It was during this period that Imelda Marcos assumed a more public and powerful role in the government. She was appointed by her husband to various positions in the government, such as: Governor of Metropolitan Manila, Minister of Human Settlement, and Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary. On December 7, 1972, an assailant,
Carlito Dimahilig, tried to
stab her to death with a
bolo knife during an award ceremony broadcast live on television. Although the assassination attempt appears to have been staged, the government claimed that the assailant was shot to death by security police and that the wounds on Marcos' hands and arms required 75 stitches.
[10] In 1978, she was 'elected' as member of the 165-member Interim Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly) representing the National Capital Region.
As a Special Envoy, Marcos toured China, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe (Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, etc.), the Middle East, Libya, the non-Soviet dominated communist state of Yugoslavia, and Cuba. To justify the multi-million expenditure of traveling with a large diplomatic entourage using private jets, she would later claim diplomatic successes that included securing of a cheap supply of oil from China and Libya, and in the signing of the Tripoli Agreement.
Marcos's extravagant lifestyle reportedly included five-million-dollar shopping tours in New York, Rome and Copenhagen in 1983, and sending a plane to pick up Australian white sand for a new beach resort. She purchased a number of properties in
Manhattan in the 1980s, including the $51-million Crown Building and the $60-million Herald Centre; she declined to purchase the
Empire State Building for $750m as she considered it "too ostentatious." Her New York real estate was later seized and sold, along with much of her jewels and most of her 175 piece art collection, which included works by
Michelangelo,
Botticelli, and
Canaletto. She responded to criticisms of her extravagance by claiming that it was her "duty" to be "some kind of light, a star to give [the poor] guidelines."
[11]
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Marcos orchestrated lavish public events using millions of dollars in public funds to extol her husband's regime and bolster her public image. Marcos secured the
Miss Universe 1974 pageant for Manila which necessitated the construction and completion of the 10,000-seat
Folk Arts Theater in less than three months. Marcos organized the Kasaysayan ng Lahi, an extravagant festival parade showcasing the history of the Philippines.
[12] [13] She initiated social programs such as the
Green Revolution, a program that, although did not address hunger and the core problem of agricultural land reform (most Filipino farmers were tenant farmers and did not own their land), encouraged Filipinos to plant vegetables and fruits in their gardens. Other short-lived social programs included a national family-planning program to reduce the country's population growth.
[14]
Marcos was criticized for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on high-profile infrastructure projects that did little to alleviate poverty and were beyond the reach of ordinary Filipinos. These included the
Cultural Center of the Philippines,
Philippine Heart Center,
Lung Center of the Philippines, Kidney Institute of the Philippines, Nayong Pilipino;
Philippine International Convention Center, Folk Arts Theater,
Coconut Palace, and the infamous
Manila Film Center, a costly and imposing edifice built in 1982 to host Marcos's short-lived international film festival. By 1985, it was estimated that the Philippine government had acquired more than $28 billion in foreign loans, much of it during President Marcos' 20-year rule.
Exile
On February 25, 1986, Ferdinand Marcos and his family fled to
Hawaii (via
Guam) after his regime was toppled by the
four-day People Power Revolution in EDSA. Marcos was succeeded by
Corazon C. Aquino, widow of
Benigno Aquino, Jr., Marcos' foremost political rival who was assassinated at the Manila International Airport during his return to the Philippines in 1983 after years of political exile. It was widely assumed that Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were involved in the assassination which ignited the People Power Revolution of 1986. Upon assuming office, President Aquino issued Executive Order No. 1, creating the Presidential Commission on Good Government to investigate and sequester the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses. President Aquino abolished the
Batasang Pambansa (Philippine Parliament) and the Ministry of Human Settlements, both creations of Marcos, and established in 1987 a modified version of the Philippines' original 1935 constitution abolished in 1972 by Marcos.
After the Marcos family fled
Malacañang Palace, Marcos was found to have left behind 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags
[15] and 1060 pairs of shoes.
[16] In February 2006, Marcos insisted that her husband acquired his wealth legitimately as a gold trader. By the late 1950s, she claimed, he had amassed a personal fortune of 7,500 tons of gold, and after gold prices climbed in the 1970s, the Marcos family was worth $35 billion.
However, the Bureau of Internal Revenue has no record of the Marcos family declaring or paying taxes on these assets, and the source of their wealth remains open to investigation.
Ousted President Marcos died in
exile on September 28, 1989. President Aquino refused to permit the repatriation of his remains for national security reasons.
[17] The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the government in
Marcos vs. Manglapus
.
[18] In 1991, Marcos was allowed to return home.
Marcos was the first wife of a foreign head of state to stand trial in an American court. In 1990 she was acquitted of
racketeering and
fraud charges, alongside co-defendant
Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian former billionaire and arms dealer. The "theatrical" trial involved many celebrities: Marcos and Khashoggi were represented by trial lawyer
Gerry Spence; Marcos' $5 million dollar bail was posted by tobacco heiress
Doris Duke; and actor
George Hamilton was a star witness for the defense.
[19]
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Return
In 1992, Mrs. Marcos ran and finished fifth in the seven-way presidential race. Her votes were split between her, with 2,338,294 votes, and Ambassador
Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr., a Marcos crony, with 4,116,376 votes.
Fidel Ramos, Aquino’s anointed candidate, received 5.3 million and won the election.
[20] In 1995, she was elected Congresswoman of Leyte, representing the first district of her home province.
In 1998, she made another bid for the presidency but later backed out of the race to support the candidacy of then Vice President
Joseph Ejercito Estrada. Marcos finished 9th among 11 candidates vying for the Philippine government's top post. During the administration of her friend and ally, President Joseph Estrada, many of the cases filed by the Aquino government were dismissed by Ombudsman Aniano Desierto, owing to technicalities (lapse of the prescriptive period for filing cases). On June 29, 1998, the
Sandiganbayan (Philippine anti-corruption court) convicted the Former First Lady of the charge that she had entered into an agreement disadvantageous to the government. On appeal, the
Supreme Court reversed the decision and cited Sandiganbayan Justice Francis Gatchitorena for his alleged bias against Mrs. Marcos.
[21]
Trial
On
September 21,
2007, the
Sandiganbayan's 5th Division chair Associate
Justice Ma. Cristina Cortez-Estrada granted Marcos'
motion for daily
trial on her 10 pending graft cases (beginning
January 21,
2008, as requested by
defense lawyers on
September 17 alleging the
illnesses,
inter alia).
[22]
On
March 10,
2008, Judge Silvino Pampilo (Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 26) acquitted Marcos of 32 counts of dollar salting (involving £430m in Swiss bank accounts) due to reasonable doubt. Marcos stated: "First of all, I am so happy and I thank the Lord that the 32 cases have been dismissed by the regional court here in Manila. This will subtract from the 901 cases that were filed against the Marcoses." Her lawyer Robert Sison said that she has 10 pending criminal cases remaining before the
Sandiganbayan Courts.
[23] [24]
See also
- Coconut Palace
- Malacañang Palace
- Here Lies Love
References
- A "Roller-Coaster" Life For One Of The World's Most Famous Women
- The First Lady Treatment
- Photos: The Greediest People of All Time - Newsweek.com
- Imelda pleads guilty to being 'greedy' | ABS-CBN News Online Beta
- Homage to Imelda's shoes
- The Shoes of Imelda Marcos
- Kerima Polotan, "Imelda Romualdez Marcos, A Biography of the First Lady of the Philippines", The World Publishing Company, Ohio
- Katherine Ellison, ''Imelda, Steel Butterfly of the Philippines'', McGraw-Hill, New York, 1988. ISBN 0-07-019335-5
- Carmen Navarytro Pedrosa. ''The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos'', Manila: Bookmark, 1969, p. 3–4.
- Mrs. Marcos / Assassination Attempt
- The weird world of Imelda Marcos
- Kasaysayan ng Lahi video, Manila: National Media Production Board, 1974
- Serin, J.R., A.L. Elamil. D.C. Serion, et al. ''Ugnayan ng Pamhalaan at Mamamayan.'' Manila: Bede's Publishing House, Inc., 1979.
- Ramona Diaz. Imelda [1]. Ramona Diaz-Independent Television Service, 2003.
- Imeldarabilia: A Final Count
- The exact number of shoes varies between accounts; estimates of up to 3000 pairs of shoes have been published, but ''Time'' later reported that the final tally was http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,963620,00.html 1,060].
- Department of Transportation and Communications Memorandum Circular No. 89-291, dated June 9, 1989. Excerpts: "Resolved, as it its is hereby resolved that, in the interest of national security and tranquility and pursuant to the declared national policy, any aircraft carrying deposed president Ferdinand E. Marcos is prohibited from entering Philippine airspace or, landing or disembarking in Philippine territory. This prohibition shall apply to the remains in the event of his death."
- 177 SCRA 668, The Philippine Supreme Court, voting 8–7, prohibited the return of President Marcos and members of his family to the Philippines
- Judge Wapner, Where Are You?
- Commission on Elections. Report of the Commission on Elections to the President and Congress of the Republic of the Philippines. Manila: Commission on Elections, Manila
- Imelda Marcos vs. Sandiganbayan, GR. No. 126995 Court Resolution, dated October 6, 1998
- GMA NEWS.TV@em`tixe`, Sandigan OKs Imelda bid for daily hearings on graft cases
- abs-cbnnews.com, Imelda not guilty of dollar salting
- ukpress.google.com, Marcos cleared of illegal money move