Still a Thrilla in Manila

For a convicted felon facing 24 years in prison, Imelda Marcos seemed to have not a care in the world. Dressed like a queen, as effervescent as champagne, she laughed and chatted and hardly even noticed that her RV had come to a dead standstill in Manila’s numbing traffic.

At a worktable in the RV this week, she sketched a map of the world, making a point about global power shifts. She spoke about losing Vietnam to the Communists, her concern over China’s growing influence--”the Chinese will boil you in your own fat,” she says--and her admiration for former President Nixon. Her conversation was sprinkled with such phrases as, “As I told Chairman Mao” or “I remember Churchill saying,” as well as biblical references and homilies about love and beauty.

Imelda Marcos, the widow of Ferdinand E. Marcos, who ruled here for 21 years, is 68 now, tall, elegant, outlandish and still very much a celebrity. Though her name has been sullied, her fortune confiscated and her freedom gained only after posting bail, the irrepressible Mrs. Marcos is convinced that rehabilitation and vindication are within reach, if only people would embrace the same history she does.

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The world may remember her primarily as the woman with a lavish lifestyle and 1,200 pairs of shoes, but to Filipinos, she is still the bejeweled, impeccably coiffured lady with waist-length jet-black hair and star qualities that you can love or hate but not ignore.

She mesmerized the American Embassy’s Fourth of July party by singing the American and Philippine national anthems. And when she walked unannounced into a New Orleans restaurant, the American owner, Murray Hertz, recalled: “Conversation just stopped. It was like a movie star had come in.

“She asked for a mike and started singing. She had everyone spellbound, because this was Imelda Marcos. She has tremendous charisma. And I think the Filipinos, who are forgiving people anyway, have a hard time staying mad at someone like that.”

Finally clear of traffic, her RV pulled up to Congress, and Marcos, an elected member of the lower house from distant Leyte island, alighted to the cheers of a hundred supporters. She acted taken aback, surprised, then delighted by an unexpected show of affection.

Schoolchildren gathered around and serenaded her with Christmas carols. Marcos, who suffers from irreversible glaucoma, removed her dark glasses and dabbed at a tear. The crowd grew. Not to worry, she said. She had Christmas presents for everyone. She motioned the crowd to follow her onto the street where three trailer trucks were parked, loaded with 10-pound bags of rice bearing the words, “Merry Christmas, Imelda.”

Later, back in her RV, heading for her 34th-floor apartment in Pacific Plaza, Manila’s best residential address, she used a pocket mirror to add some eye makeup and said, “I take more time dressing up, making myself presentable for the poor than I do for the rich. The poor are looking for symbols, and when you reach a certain level in public life part of your obligation is to provide those symbols.

“You can’t imagine the joy I feel being able to give. It’s helped me come out of this battering by the government unscarred. I’m not bitter or resentful. I’m more in love with life now than I’ve ever been. Sometimes I feel like I’m floating.”

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In 1976, a friend, Sol Vanzi, read Marcos’ palm, and F.L.--as she was then known, for first lady--had three questions: Will I ever be poor again? Will I die violently? Will my family and I be able to stay together forever in the Philippines? Ten years later, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife of 32 years fled to Hawaii in a “People Power” revolution that brought Corazon Aquino to the presidency. Aquino’s first executive order was to set up a commission to track down and reclaim the billions of dollars Ferdinand and Imelda are said to have stolen while in office, he as president, she as an unelected quasi chief executive.

Ferdinand Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989. After a long legal battle, Imelda Marcos was allowed to return to the Philippines in 1991. By then the Marcoses’ 11 homes had been emptied of priceless art and silver collections, which were sold at auction. Several pieces, including a Picasso, were said to have been smuggled back to Mrs. Marcos by former staffers who camouflaged them in fruit baskets.

In 1993, Marcos was convicted of graft, in a relatively minor business transaction in which the court said she did not benefit personally. She is free on $3,000 bail while appealing the conviction, and has received permission from the Supreme Court here to leave the country for the first time since 1993 in order to get treatment for her eye ailment in Boston.

Marcos said claims against the family estate now stand at $70 billion. Still unresolved are the whereabouts and ownership of more than five tons of gold.

“Simple arithmetic tells you the allegations are ludicrous,” said the former first lady, who always refers to her husband by his last name. “Marcos’ total budget for all his years as president was 488 billion pesos [$14 billion at current exchange rates]. You mean he stole every cent and still built thousands of miles of roads, power plants and all he accomplished? Add up the numbers. Something is wrong.”

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Indeed, history has the whole 21 years wrong, she believes. Marcos wasn’t a dictator but one of the world’s great democrats. He wasn’t a thief; he was an astute trader in precious metals who started buying gold when it sold for $32 an ounce. He declared martial law not to perpetuate his own rule but to prevent the Philippines from slipping into political instability, lawlessness and economic ruin. As for her role, she had none, other than as loving supporter.

Imelda Marcos, who gives her $370-a-month congressional salary to charity, says she is broke and living on the generosity of friends. “They’ve been wonderful,” she said. “Doris Duke [the late tobacco heiress] gave $5 million to bail me out and $10 million to pay my lawyers’ bills.” Clearly, whoever is footing the bills has deep pockets, and Mrs. Marcos lives in a style befitting a millionaire, though perhaps no longer that of a billionaire.

Half a dozen staffers, including a nurse / hairdresser, see to her needs and keep her legal documents in order. On the grand piano in her apartment are photographs of the Marcoses with a score of world leaders, including former President Reagan, and on the coffee table are stacked books on the Marcos legacy, one of whose authors is identified as a “dissident cousin.”

“A terrible book,” Marcos said. “Very unfair. But that’s all right. I’m used to that.”

Next to the door were two suitcases. Marcos was preparing to wing her way to the United States for a two-week stay.

On her itinerary were doctors’ appointments in Boston, meetings to discuss her legal wrangles and a stop in Washington to see friends from the times when the world knew no more powerful and wealthy couple than Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.

“I may be seeing the president,” she said casually, although an American diplomat here said that wasn’t in the cards.

An outsider she may now be, but she gave no hint of understanding that anything had changed from the old days.