‘Penniless,’ Marcos Stays in Plush Suite : Philippines: Unreality marks the first day back. Her entourage occupies 60 hotel rooms.

It was vintage Imelda Marcos.

Sitting in a luxury hotel, where she has taken the $2,000-a-day Imperial Suite and 60 rooms for her entourage, surrounded by some of her four high-priced American lawyers, 20 American security agents and members of a Washington-based public relations firm, the former first lady on Monday told a clamoring crowd of reporters and supporters it is time to tell “the truth.”

“I come home penniless,” she said, appearing to fight back tears.

A similar air of unreality pervaded much of Marcos’ first emotion-charged day back in the country where she and her late husband, Ferdinand E. Marcos, are accused of stealing billions of dollars during their 21-year dictatorial rule.

There were endless tears and waves of her white lace hankie to the thousands of cheering loyalists who lined streets and rooftops, banged drums, shot off fireworks and mobbed her motorcade in near pandemonium for almost three hours under a blazing sun. Many in the rent-a-crowd then lined up again to collect promised payments of $5.56 for their role in the day’s carefully scripted drama.

In a packed rally outside the Philippine Plaza Hotel, she told supporters that she will fight poverty.

“As long as there is one Filipino who is poor, Imelda’s work will not be over,” said the woman best known for her million-dollar shopping sprees and 1,220 pairs of shoes. “I will never turn my back on anyone who suffers in pain.”

Saying she is neither angry nor bitter, the 62-year-old widow appealed to the heartstrings and tear ducts of the nation that forced her and her husband to flee in disgrace to America during the “people power” revolt of February, 1986. “I will give my heart as the mother of the nation,” she said, as supporters wept, chanted and waved placards. “I am appealing on bended knees for us to be united.”

How Marcos’ portrayal of herself as an aggrieved underdog, seeking reconciliation despite persecution by her enemies, will play in coming weeks is hard to gauge. Marcos, who claims that many of her expenses now are covered by her friends, has invited reporters to join her on a hectic itinerary this week, including trips to her late husband’s home province of Ilocos Norte, her own province of Leyte and evacuation centers to give donations and medical aid to victims of the Mt. Pinatubo volcano.

For now, government spokesman Horacio Paredes said, the administration is prepared to let Imelda be Imelda.

“Her behavior, because it’s the Imelda of old, brings back a lot of memories of the excess and extravagance of the Marcoses of old,” he said. “We think it will bring a backlash.

“All this playing up to the foreign press is not doing her much good locally,” he added.

Indeed, Marcos seemed to take every chance to let herself be mobbed for cameras. Rather than leave the airport by a side door for her motorcade, for example, she insisted on departing through the main entrance, where a crush of photographers almost trampled her.

“I just wanted to be treated like an ordinary passenger or tourist,” she explained later.

Paredes said Marcos has 48 hours to post bail of $7,000 or so for criminal charges of graft and tax evasion or face arrest. He added that President Corazon Aquino will not agree to meet with Marcos unless she is prepared to return her “ill-gotten wealth.”

“The only way we can talk about reconciliation is, really, if there is a return of most of the money to the Philippine treasury,” he said.

Unlike her years in power, when opposition newspapers were silenced, Marcos returns to a generally hostile press. A front page editorial in the Chronicle, for example, called her return “a day of national shame for Filipinos.”

But not everyone agreed. Aquino’s support has ebbed sharply in the wake of a faltering economy, growing unemployment and savage natural disasters. Many people are disillusioned with Aquino and willing to forgive and forget the excesses and greed of the Marcos reign.

“Filipino culture lets bygones be bygones,” explained Ernie Ortiz, 34, a driver who cheered her motorcade. Anna Achas, 31, a shopkeeper, agreed, saying: “It’s very Filipino. We love fiestas and cockfights. We love theater and circuses.”

And if Marcos provided no new answers for reporters on her first day home, she did show some of that old Imelda magic. She ended her news conference by crooning a Leyte love song called “Our Motherland.”