Promises to Marcos Violated, He Tells His L.A. Supporters

Deposed Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, lashed out angrily at the American news media and the U. S. legal system in rambling telephone addresses to supporters gathered in Los Angeles on Thursday evening.

Talking from his exile in Hawaii to about 60 people at the Hyatt Wilshire Hotel, Marcos declared: “Those promises that our family would be given hospitality and be treated fairly are being violated.”

The couple seemed especially angry that their youngest daughter, Irene, had been recently sentenced to jail for contempt of court for refusing to answer questions before a federal grand jury in Washington investigating alleged improprieties in U.S. arms sales to the Philippines.

“She has been accused of contempt of court because she did not know anything,” Imelda said in a tearful voice. “What does she know about arms sales?”

Marcos said his daughter had been guaranteed immunity against prosecution “and then compelled to testify against herself, which to me is a mockery. And when she refused to testify, she was convicted and (ordered) incarcerated, although she was given a 30-day stay.”

Marcos’ wife criticized the U.S. news media for virtually ignoring the incident.

“We are convicted before we are tried . . . deprived of honor, deprived of everything valuable in life,” she said. “We know that there must be some kind of justice and fair deal somewhere, for right now the Marcoses have been convicted without trial--tried and convicted in the world press.”

She also responded to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge’s recent ruling, freezing more than $800,000 being held in her name in a Lloyds Bank of California account. The account was set up “18 or 20 years ago,” she said, as a trust fund to educate her children in the United States, and she thought they had used the money.

“Little did we realize no one had taken advantage of the trust fund, which was over $100,000 18 or 20 years ago,” she said. “There was no intent to steal or hide.”

Ferdinand Marcos repeated charges that the American government had forced his departure from his homeland, telling his Los Angeles area loyalists that he “was practically kidnaped and taken out of Malacanang (the Philippine presidential palace) by force and deceit.”

He attacked new Philippine President Corazon Aquino’s government as “a dictatorship” guilty of “violations of human rights. Many of our own people have been deprived of their property and many have been killed.

“The foreign press and the local (Philippine) press are completely corrupted, bought, totally controlled and illegally used to print false information . . . this is true even in the United States, which is supposed to be the land of freedom.”

Organizers of Thursday’s show of support for Marcos released a manifesto saying he is the “duly elected” Philippine president and calling for his “ultimate reinstatement.” Marcos had told them during his 25-minute talk that he hoped he would “be able to go back to the Philippines as soon as possible.”

The Marcoses thanked those gathered to hear them for their support of “freedom, justice and democracy,” and the former president warned of the threat of a communist takeover in the Philippines.

Before the telephone talk, about 30 Marcos supporters demonstrated for two hours outside the Philippine Consulate, across from the hotel, trying to draw attention to what they called “a grave, grave danger of communism taking over in the Philippines.”

Corazon Aquino “is right now hiding in the guise or disguise of a naive housewife,” said Rosita La Bello, who heads the Friends and Supporters of President Marcos in America. “But in my thinking, Aquino is following a communist master plan and timetable.”

Some of Thursday’s demonstrators, however, disagreed.

“I don’t think she’s a communist,” said Milo Castelo of Pasadena, a spokesman for Filipino-Americans for Democracy. “But I think she’s being used . . . she’s an ordinary housewife who could be swayed easily, and she has advisers who are communist.”

The demonstration is part of “an orchestrated campaign to destabilize the Aquino government,” said Eric Furbeyre, press attache at the consulate, and it represented an ironic twist in his own political history. Over the past 15 years, he took part in about 30 anti-Marcos demonstrations outside the consulate, the most recent about three months ago, he said.

“It’s like a ‘Twilight Zone’ situation,” he said. “Now I have to explain the government side. It’s a reversal of roles.”