Appeals for Son’s Return From Exile : Marcos’ Dying Mother Calls for ‘My Ferdinand’

The ailing 95-year-old mother of deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos made an appeal from her deathbed today for her son to be allowed home from exile.

In a plea fraught with political difficulties for the government, Josefa Edralin Marcos wrote to President Corazon Aquino as “one mother to another,” calling on her to grant “my dying wish; the one thing that will put a smile upon my lips when I leave this world is to see my Ferdinand by my bedside.”

Marcos, who is not permitted to leave his exile in Hawaii, told relatives by telephone he wants to return to see his mother.

Doctors said Mrs. Marcos is now comatose and is not responding to treatment. She was admitted to a Manila hospital two days ago suffering from pulmonary infections, fever and diabetes.

“We’re trying our best to keep her alive,” Dr. Sergio Brillantes said. “She is very, very sick.”

In a strongly Roman Catholic country where family ties and honoring the dead are considered paramount, the plea for the ousted former president to return seemed likely to leave Aquino stuck for options.

The president told reporters she would take up Mrs. Marcos’ appeal with her Cabinet crisis committee on Wednesday. Marcos’ mother made the plea in a letter which was signed with her thumb print and witnessed by two nurses before she lapsed into a coma.

Gen. Renato de Villa, the armed forces chief, suggested security problems could be raised by allowing the return of the strongman who ruled the country for 20 years before his overthrow in February, 1986.