He Wanted Place Among World’s Great Figures : History Spoiling Marcos’ Dream

He had dreamed of a place in history alongside Julius Caesar and Winston Churchill, but now, three days after his death, it is clear that the world is more eager to bury Ferdinand E. Marcos than to praise him.

The Philippine Consulate here, a few miles from where Marcos’ body lies, refused Saturday to lower its flag to half-staff. The consul general said he would not let Marcos “slip into history with honors.”

As his family continued to wage a public, and sometimes unseemly, battle over his remains with the Philippine government--which won’t let him come home even in a coffin--U.S. officials offered to settle the matter by permitting Marcos’ burial in a U.S. military cemetery reserved for war veterans.

Meanwhile, the closest thing to a tribute so far by the President of the United States--American Presidents were Marcos’ closest foreign allies through 20 years in the presidential palace at Malacanang--merely lauded Marcos for having left office 3 1/2 years ago without bloodshed.

Wrote in Bedside Diary

That was hardly the eulogy Marcos had in mind on Oct. 8, 1970, when he wrote in his bedside diary:

“I often wonder what I will be remembered in history for. Scholar? Military hero . . . ? The new constitution? Reorganization of government? Builder of roads, schools . . . ? Uniter of variant and antagonistic elements of our people? He brought light to a dark country? Strong rallying point or a weak tyrant?”

Last week he was remembered as the deposed head of state whose infamous corruption crippled his nation’s economy and finally cost him his palace, his country and earned him a criminal indictment.

“We owe him no demonstration of special sentiment,” said Tomas (Buddy) Gomez II, the Philippine consul general who refused to lower the flag in mourning at Marcos’ death. Other leading anti-Marcos figures in the United States reacted similarly.

‘He Ruined His Country’

“He betrayed his country; he ruined his country,” said Severina Rivera, a longtime Marcos foe in Washington, D.C., who directed legal efforts by the Philippine government to recover $5 billion to $10 billion in assets believed stolen by Marcos and his cronies.

But if death has not improved Marcos’ standing in history, neither has it helped the campaign to track down those missing billions.

“He took so many secrets to his grave I think it is less likely than ever that we will find or recover 100% of the assets,” Rivera said.

Rivera, who until earlier this year was legal adviser to President Corazon Aquino’s Commission on Good Government, said that Marcos’ death has caused her to feel an odd personal loss, too.

“I’ve been fighting him for so long that it feels very strange,” she said. “He’s not here for us to hate anymore.”

It remains to be seen how long the intense anti-Marcos passions that fueled the revolution ousting him can survive after his death.

It appears to have survived the first few post-Marcos days at the Philippine Consulate, where there were no signs of mourning.

Gomez said Marcos loyalists have “made such a big issue out of the flag.” Not only have they pressed for ceremonial lowering of the Philippine flag, but they have sought the lowering of the U.S. flag here as well.

In death, Marcos is literally wrapped in the flag of the nation he was forced to flee in February, 1986. The flag drapes his casket, and his widow wears a flag pin on her black mourning dress.

“If they care so much about their country, why don’t they return what they stole from their people?” Gomez said.

In an earlier casket-side press conference, Imelda Marcos, who faces trial in March on federal fraud charges, spoke defiantly in defense of her dead husband.

As a scramble of microphones and cameras reached over Marcos’ silent form, his widow said: “The truth is that we are not guilty.”

Philippine officials, while publicly refusing to negotiate with Marcos, had been hopeful privately that he would return substantial portions of his wealth under the pressure of criminal prosecution.

They concede that they have been unable to find half of what they believe is missing.

Rivera predicted that Marcos’ death will slow the already frustrating pace of discovery in Switzerland, where it is believed Marcos may have stashed as much as $7.5 billion at one time.

“There has been so much transfer of funds in Switzerland that I doubt if there is much more than half a billion dollars remaining there,” Rivera said. “The most valuable thing for us to find is the paper trail, to find out where it went.”

Ironically, it is likely to be criminal investigators who write the last chapter of the Marcos history, a factor that would have disturbed the former president.

In life, Marcos had been so concerned about how history would treat him that he trusted no one but himself to write it.

“History should not be left to historians,” he wrote in his diary almost 19 years ago. “Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it.”

Even before he died, however, the early returns of history were coming in.

Journalist and historian Stanley Karnow, whose recent book “In Our Image” chronicles the rise and fall of the would-be Marcos dynasty, said that in the end, it was the corruption issue that brought Marcos down and left him to die in exile and disgrace.

“Marcos was not overthrown . . . because Filipinos clamored for the return of democracy,” he wrote. “He crumbled under the sheer weight of his flagrant mismanagement and venality, which bankrupted the country. . . .

“Had Marcos been an honest despot who deprived his people of political freedom but offered them economic growth in exchange, as Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and the South Korean generals have done, he probably could have lasted forever,” Karnow said.