Manila Bracing for the Return of Imelda Marcos

It’s almost shoe time--Imelda R. Marcos is coming home.

The former First Lady of the Philippines, onetime owner of 6,900 dresses and 1,220 pairs of shoes, says she will return here Nov. 4 for the first time since she and her late husband, Ferdinand E. Marcos, fled to America almost six years ago with crates stuffed with cash, gems and gold.

But first there are some matters to clear up. “I was never attached to power or valuables,” Imelda Marcos explained in a telephone interview from New York City. “I have no attachment to worldly things.”

Nor should anyone think she has a political agenda. “As mother of the country, it is not political for me to take care of the poor, the sick and the young,” she said. “It is not political. It is natural.”

And finally, her plans upon arrival?

“I feel I’m going to be crazy running around, going from one place to the other,” she said excitedly. “I have missed it so much. The 7,150 islands, if I would have the energy at this ancient stage, I’d go around to each and every one.”

How much the Philippines has missed the 62-year-old Marcos, half of the so-called Conjugal Dictatorship that ruled and plundered the country of an estimated $5 billion over two decades, remains to be seen. The government’s chief prosecutor, Francisco Chavez, has filed 32 criminal charges against her since August for tax fraud and graft. He promises more cases will be filed before she arrives. At least 34 civil cases are also pending against her.

Chavez says he won’t arrest and fingerprint her until the day after she arrives. “I don’t want to make her a martyr,” he said. Bail will be set at less than $1,000. “She’ll be out even before she’s in,” he said.

Marcos’ former attorney, Rafael Recto, goes further. “Chavez has been filing useless cases, for which Mrs. Marcos will neither go to jail nor be punished,” he said.

The Marcoses fled in February, 1986, after a military coup brought millions of Filipinos into the streets in the “people power” revolt that brought Corazon Aquino to power. Marcos died in Honolulu in September, 1989, leaving a legacy of bad government, repressive terror and mind-boggling corruption.

His wife was acquitted of U.S. racketeering charges after a three-month federal court trial in New York last year, inspiring her to crawl on her knees in thanks down the aisle of a nearby church. But Marcos’ successor, President Aquino, refused to let her return home and banned the return of her husband’s body for fear that pro-Marcos demonstrations would destabilize the government.

The government recently relented, saying she can bring the dictator’s body to his home province in northern Luzon for burial. Imelda Marcos insists that her husband’s dying wish was to be buried in Manila as a soldier. She says she still hopes Aquino will change her mind.

“Mrs. Aquino has been given everything but a heart,” she complained.

But Marcos said she looks forward to facing trial here to clear her name. Despite all evidence, she insisted that her late husband became secretly rich trading precious metals before he was elected president in 1965, then gave most of his money away.

“The Marcoses were no thieves, but givers,” she said. She added that she has “absolutely no idea” of her current worth.

Chavez says he does. “In 1965, the Marcoses had a net worth of $7,000,” he said. “In 1986, when they left, they had an estimated net worth of $5 billion in bank accounts, land, stock, aircraft, paintings, buildings in New York and California and so on.”

In the most important case filed so far, Chavez has accused the Marcoses of salting away $356 million in at least five sets of secret Swiss bank accounts. In a precedent-setting case, a Swiss court has agreed to hand the money to the Philippine government if she is convicted. The Swiss government already has handed over two crates of documents used to prepare the case.

According to the forfeiture complaint, the Marcoses began opening Swiss bank accounts under false names in 1968 “to hide their dastardly and despicable acts of siphoning off the money of the Filipino people.” The couple’s illegal acquisitions around the world were “grossly and astronomically disproportionate to their legitimate incomes.

“The greed was simply unparalleled, the plunder unmitigated, the pattern unbelievably remorseless,” the complaint adds.

So far, however, government attempts to recover the Marcoses’ “ill-gotten wealth” have produced more embarrassments than results. The Presidential Commission on Good Government, which Aquino set up as her first official act, has successfully prosecuted only one court case and collected just $218 million from Marcos assets.

It includes $200 million from the sale of four buildings in Manhattan and $18 million from a New York auction of jewelry, paintings and antique silver. Another $264 million has been recovered from so-called Marcos cronies, mostly in out-of-court settlements. Virtually all the money has gone to cover fees for lawyers and brokers and for travel and operating expenses, according to the commission chairman, David Castro.

Also, the commission has been marred by scandal. Arrest warrants were issued this week, for example, for two former commission chairmen on graft charges. And Swiss authorities were understandably angry after commission consultant Reiner Jacobi was arrested for allegedly tapping into Swiss bank computers to uncover Marcos assets. Jacobi was later rearrested in Hong Kong on drug-related charges, further embarrassing the Philippine government.

Back at home, commission treasure hunters have dug in at least seven sites around the country for thousands of tons of gold that Ferdinand Marcos supposedly buried, stashed in caves, walled into guest houses or even hid in coffins and crypts.

No gold has been found, though tension built recently when diggers hit something big and metallic near a family mausoleum on Leyte--it was a septic tank.

“It’s obviously embarrassing,” said one of Aquino’s top aides. “It makes us look ridiculous.”

Most of the Marcos properties sequestered by the commission in 1986 have been looted or have deteriorated beyond repair. For example, the opulent Marcos family mansion in San Juan, a Manila suburb, was stripped of furniture, light fixtures and even sinks and toilets. Rain blows through broken windows and missing doors, ruining the inlaid wooden floors. The pool is muddy; the weeds are waist high.

Claiming she is “homeless,” Imelda Marcos says she wants to stay at one of three opulent homes near the presidential palace. The government refuses.

“The three antique homes she pointed to here are not her houses,” said Franklin Drilon, Aquino’s executive secretary. “They’re government houses. I’m not surprised that she confused them. During her administration, she considered all government property her private property.”

Marcos is likely to find other changes, as well. She returns to a city where newspapers and opponents may criticize her lavish lifestyle and rambling speeches, an option few dared exercise during her husband’s strongman rule. She also returns as a national political campaign is heating up. At least two of her husband’s former cronies are running for president, and her endorsement or support may be feared as much as welcomed.

Still, all are bracing for a homecoming circus that one newspaper warned “might be the greatest show this country has ever seen.”

Once again, the former beauty queen will be in the international spotlight.

The only fear, one of her aides confided, is that some may find the Middle East peace conference that starts next week in Madrid more compelling copy. “We’re hoping and praying the peace talks don’t happen,” the aide said.