It is said that Ferdinand, and nation, paid very dearly for his love affair with Hollywood starlet Dovie Beams because he could not but humor Imelda at every turn of extravagance and political ambition ever after.
But was it just the Dovie scandal that turned Imelda into the power-tripping steel butterfly who fancied herself a highborn queen with crowns and tiaras and a palace to match?
Scholar Caroline S. Hau reminds that there was, too, the fact of martial law and, corollary to that, the all-important question of who would succeed the dictator Ferdinand.
HAU. The turning point for Imelda’s “rise” to power is arguably not the Dovie Beams scandal, but the declaration of martial law and the dictatorship that Marcos established in the Philippines. It is one thing to be the wife of an elected president, living in a country whose politicians are corrupt and enrich themselves at public expense, but with a free press that can criticize the president’s (and his wife’s) policies and actions and a body of elected officials to vet or else block the president’s decisions. It is another thing to be the wife of a dictator unconstrained by any institutional checks and balances, capable of putting rivals and enemies behind bars and stripping them of their assets, commanding an army to arrest anybody given the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and helping himself to the nation’s funds and taking over various industries and turning them into personal expense accounts for himself, his wife and relatives, and his cronies and political allies.
Any number of explanations can be offered to account for Imelda’s growing clout in the martial law government, but the most important is regime maintenance, the desire of Marcos to keep himself, his closest kin, and his most trusted people in power for as long as he could. Ferdinand’s deteriorating health, the knowledge that his children were neither old nor experienced enough to “inherit” his position, the suspicion shared by all dictators that their lieutenants–especially those with strong connections to the military such as Executive Secretary Alejandro Melchor Jr. and Minister of Defense Enrile–were conspiring to build thier own power bases and ultimately dislodge the dictator in a coup d’etat: all of these would have had salience in determining (as well as upsetting) the “balance of favor” through which Marcos managed his dictatorship.
Imelda metamorphosed into the “Steel Butterfly” because she could do so and did so from 1972 onwards: there would be no institutional mechanism to hold her decisions and actions to public accountability, and there would be no one, not even an increasingly debilitated Ferdinand, to stop her from doing what she wanted. [Dovie Beams and Philippine Politics: A President’s Scandalous Affair and First Lady Power on the Eve of Martial Law. Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, September-December 2019. pp. 595-634. Ateneo de Manila University. p623]
I believe Ferdinand was already grooming Imelda to succeed him when he appointed her Governor of the newly-created Metro Manila Commission in 1975, and then Minister of Human Settlements in 1976, and Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary in 1978.
He did not have much of a choice. Who else but Imelda could he trust with the children’s future. Who else but Imelda shared his dream of a Marcos dynasty “reigning for ever and ever” as in Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”.
This is why Ninoy Aquino, the only one who posed a serious challenge to the Marcos dynasty dream, had to go. ‘Yun nga lang, sumabit sa execution at sa post-production. Hindi bumenta sa audience ang storya nina Marcos at Ver na si Galman ang pumatay kay Ninoy sa tarmac.
The evidence of a military conspiracy was clear: a soldier shot Ninoy from behind, midway down the service stairs. The airport security had been so tight, Galman could only have been part of the military conspiracy to kill Ninoy and blame it on the communists.
Because the people saw through all the lies, na-EDSA ang mga Marcos. Poetic justice.
EXILE
The ouster in 1986 was totally unexpected, and unacceptable, to the disgraced tandem and their kids who had expected to live happily forever and ever in the Palace by the Pasig. To the (his) very end in September 1989, Ferdinand schemed and maneuvered for a quick forceful comeback, the surest way to bring back the good old days of impunity ASAP. But the coup attempts kept failing and he died just two months before the last, the biggest, the bloodiest, attempt which failed anyway because America played knight in shining armor to Cory’s damsel in distress.
I imagine that in the ailing Ferdinand’s lucid moments over those three years and a half when they were in Hawaii, and he was in and out of hospital, aching to go home, na paulit-ulit nilang napag-usapan ni Imelda, at napag-isipan nang malalim, exactly HOW to get the family back to the Pinoy future, with the patriarch’s luster restored.
No doubt Ferdinand continued to mentor | lecture Imelda on the ways of the law, and of politics, and of propaganda. Surely that famous line “Perception is real, truth is not” is a Marcos legacy, his very own political mantra passed on to Imelda and now the kids. It explains all the lying, all the denials, all the twisted stories, repeated endlessly over a decade on all media, so that people have started believing the bogus Marcos version of martial law and EDSA history.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Looking back now on Imelda’s trajectory upon her return from exile, it is clear that she came home in November 1991 not just to face and plead innocent to ill-gotten wealth court cases and the like, but to work on denying and disputing all accusations of wrongdoing by her husband and herself, including the Ninoy assassination, if not in judicial courts then before the bar of public opinion.
And, let’s give it to her, the Marcos widow has done exactly that in the last 30 years, to the point that many decry the alleged persecution of the Marcoses and believe they deserve a second gig in the Palace.
BACK IN BUSINESS 1992-2016
She lost in the ’92 presidential elections but Bongbong won a seat in Congress as Ilocos Norte rep. In ’93 she was convicted for graft but the case was on appeal so she was out on bail, praise the law, I mean, the lord. Also in ’93 she lost the bid to bury Marcos in Libingan ng mga Bayani but at least she got him back home in Ilocos to display in a museum while awaiting more opportune times. In ’95 Bongbong lost his first run for the senate but Imelda won the seat he vacated in Congress as Ilocos rep. In ’98 she again ran for president but withdrew a few weeks before E-day and threw her support behind landslider Erap who ordered Marcos’s burial in Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB) even before he had taken his oath, but the outrage was so huge, the new prez backed off. Consuelo de bobo: Imee ran for Ilocos rep and won the first of three consecutive terms.
By 2000 the campaign to free the convicted killers in the Aquino assassination, in jail then for some 14 years (counting from ’86), was in full swing, fueled by one of the convicts, Sgt. Pablo Martinez—one of 16 lowly-ranked officers serving double life sentences for Ninoy’s and Galman’s killings—who confessed in ’94 that he had been Galman’s handler, claimed he saw Galman shoot Ninoy on the tarmac, and named a general and a businessman identified with Danding Cojuangco who allegedly gave him and Galman their orders on the morning of the 21st of August 1983.
The story didn’t gain traction because Martinez was lying–Galman did not shoot Ninoy–but over the years, everytime August rolled around, media would keep repeating and speculating on the story, eventually succeeding in sowing doubt about Marcos and Ver as co-conspirators and throwing shade on Danding Cojuangco instead as the mastermind. By the 20th anniversary of the assassination, the big lies had taken hold.
In 2005 Imelda Marcos threw her support behind Gloria Arroyo when the prez needed it most, after the Hello-Garci scandal, which must have counted a lot because in November 2007 Arroyo started releasing the killers of Ninoy and Galman after serving only one of two life sentences. By March 2009 they all walked free, they had suffered enough, it was said; they might even be innocent like Marcos, it was also said. In 2016 Bongbong ran for VP and almost won. Imelda won anyway: Marcos got his hero’s burial in November, though behind closed gates. In 2019 Imee won a seat in the senate. And now Bongbong’s running for prez.
NEXT STOP, THE PALACE?
Imelda’s incredibly close to fulfilling the Marcos dream. Can we still stop her | them at this point?
Our only fighting chance is to prevail upon Isko, Ping, and Manny to withdraw from the race for love of country—make the battle one-on-one as in the time of Cory. With all of the opposition ganging up on Marcos-Duterte may panalo tiyak si Robredo. Sa VP race, may the best man win—sana may bulagaan!
*
Read Randy David’s “If Marcos Jr. becomes president” https://opinion.inquirer.net/151481/if-marcos-jr-becomes-president
Bongbong’s agenda #Halalan2022
https://stuartsantiago.com/bongbongs-agenda-halalan2022/