Imelda Remedios Visitacion Romualdez-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 "Steel Butterfly"[1] due to her role as a controversial figure not only in her home country but also 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", to which she said "I plead guilty."[3][4] Her extensive shoe, gown, and jewelry collections have allowed her to gain notoriety.[5] [6]
Early life
Imelda Remedios Visitacion Romualdez-Marcos was born on July 2, 1929 in San Juan de Dios Hospital in Manila. Her parents were Vicente Orestes Lopez Romualdez (of Spanish-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 (The eldest daughter of Friar Francisco Lopez, the Lopez patriarch, Doña Trinidad Lopez Romualdez is Imelda's paternal grandmother), 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.
Imelda 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 Imelda's mother Remedios died, and their home foreclosed, her father, Vicente, moved his family back to Leyte to live with relatives,[8] where Imelda earned a bachelor's degree in education at St. Paul's College."[9]
She also 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, Imelda 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.[9] 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 as a dictator from September 21, 1972 up to until he was ousted in February 1986 in the famous People Power Revolution when he fled the Philippines.
[edit] Shoes
Imelda is probably well known around the world by the general public mostly due to her massive shoe collection, which contained over 2,500 pairs of shoes.[10] [11]
[edit] First Lady
In December 1965, Ferdinand E. Marcos was proclaimed as the 10th Philippine President of the Philippines.
Imelda Marcos was "snubbed" by The Beatles, who were in the country on tour, when they did not accept an invitation to join the First Lady for breakfast. After the 'snub' was broadcast on Philippine television and radio, all of The Beatles' police protection disappeared. Brian Epstein was forced to give back all the money that the band had earned while they were in the Philippines before being allowed back on the plane. Paul McCartney, speaking in the Anthology series, said that after he'd heard about what she had allegedly been doing, he took some belated pride in snubbing her.
In 1969, Ferdinand Marcos became the first President of the Philippine Republic to be re-elected a second and last 4-year term admidst charges of vote buying and election fraud. In 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 also during this period that Imelda Marcos assumed a more public and powerful role in the government. Imelda 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 knife (a bolo) 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 Imelda Marcos' hands and arms required 75 stitches.[12] 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, Imelda 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.
Imelda Marcos' 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."[13]
Imelda Marcos orchestrated lavish public events using millions of dollars in public funds to extol her husband's regime and bolster her public image. Imelda 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. Imelda also organized the Kasaysayan ng Lahi, an extravagant festival parade showcasing the history of the Philippines. [14][15] She also 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. [16]
Imelda was also 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 Imelda'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.
[edit] 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, Imelda's former ministry, 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, Imelda was found to have left behind 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags[17] and 1060 pairs of shoes.[18] In February 2006, Imelda insisted that Ferdinand Marcos 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, and as of 2008 would give them a net worth of over $215 billion[19] 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 especially in light of Ferdinand Marcos' annual average official salary of $13,000 spanning two decades could by no stretch of the imagination have grown to such a vast multi-billion dollar fortune.[13]
Ousted President Marcos died in exile on September 28, 1989. President Aquino refused to permit the repatriation of his remains for national security reasons.[20] The Supreme Court upheld the decision of the government in Marcos vs. Manglapus.[21] However, in 1991, Imelda Marcos was finally 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.[22]
[edit] 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.[23] 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. Imelda 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.[24] Presently, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is finishing his first term as Congressman of Ilocos Norte in lieu of her resting sister, Imee.
[edit] 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).[25]
On March 10, 2008, Judge Silvino Pampilo (Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 26) acquitted Imelda Marcos, 79, in a 17 years case regarding 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.[26][27]
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