MANILA : The Return of Imelda

Imelda Marcos, the flamboyant former Philippine First Lady, plans to return to Manila on Monday from nearly six years’ exile in the United States.

Marcos says she will fly home in a charter jet from Honolulu after visiting the crypt of her late husband, Ferdinand, the former president. Accompanying her, aides say, will be doctors, scientists and others who will assist in her self-appointed role as “mother of the Filipino people.” The government says the Marcoses looted the country of $5 billion to $10 billion between 1965 and 1986.

Manila is bracing for a media circus, but it can’t be much worse than the New York tabloid that welcomed her last year with a porcine portrait and a headline of “OINK!” “They should have looked into (me) maybe more kindly,” Marcos told The Times last week.

” . . . She was not a criminal. Nor was she a pig. Because pigs don’t wear shoes.”