The bold Imelda is back. Or as her daughter, Congresswoman Imee Marcos, puts it, Mom has ““gone ballistic.’’ For years after husband’s fall in the People Power revolt of 1986, Imelda had tried to lie low, but discretion never suited the flamboyant former First Lady. Her brash side has flourished anew since the May election of President Joseph Estrada, a longtime Marcos pal. Just last week Estrada said the government should give up its 12-year-old campaign to recover the Marcos treasure, arguing that it has only weak evidence that the money was plundered. Now Imelda is not only acknowledging that she and Ferdinand amassed a fortune and hid it under the names of associates–she’s also preparing lawsuits to get it all back. With that, the Philippines faces the spectacle of Marcos’s widow and his old friends battling openly over his once secret billions. ““It’s part hubris, part insanity,’’ a Manila judge told NEWSWEEK, adding that Imelda Marcos is ““an ambulant reminder of our tragedy.''
The sweep of Imelda Marcos’s claims is breathtaking, particularly for a woman who once said that if you can count your money, you’re not truly rich. She recently told The Philippine Daily Inquirer that her husband had entrusted to his associates shares in blue-chip Philippine companies worth a total of $12.8 billion. She intends to lay claim to the whole bundle, including stakes in Manila Electric Company, Philippine Airlines and the nation’s largest brewery and food conglomerate, the San Miguel Corp. Her first target: the family business of an old Marcos crony, Eduardo Cojuangco, which recently sold shares of Philippine Long Distance Telephone to a Hong Kong corporation for $781 million. Mrs. Marcos claims those shares are her husband’s, and many political analysts say she is acting now to prevent any further sale and dispersal of family assets.
She’s in for a battle, in part because her husband’s old cronies are also powerful pals of the new president. Estrada reportedly received generous campaign donations not only from Imelda Marcos, but also from San Miguel chairman Cojuangco (who heads Estrada’s political party) and Lucio Tan, a tobacco and airline magnate. Now, these men are among at least a dozen tycoons Imelda has threatened to sue, even as Estrada’s administration eases their legal burdens. Some graft charges have been dropped against Cojuangco and Tan, and Estrada has expressed support for Tan’s efforts to fend off tax-evasion charges and save his foundering Philippine Airlines. To critics, all this smacks of Marcos-style infighting and backscratching. ““I think the average citizen would be saddened,’’ says former president Fidel Ramos, adding that these dealings could also scare off ““foreign investors looking for a level playing field.''
Estrada and his supporters say the best way to get a significant piece of the Marcos fortune is to work with Imelda, not against her. Since its founding in 1986, the commission set up to hunt down the ““ill-gotten wealth’’ of Marcos and his cronies has recovered about $2 billion in stocks, real estate, cash in Swiss bank accounts and jewelry–or only a small fraction of the total. The problem is that Marcos was a ““brilliant lawyer’’ who hid his assets under layers of dummy corporations, front men and pseudonyms, says political analyst and lawyer Alex Magno. (Ferdinand went by ““William Saunders’’ and Imelda by ““Jane Ryan’’.) Rather than try to untangle the mess, Estrada is pushing for a deal, which could involve dropping charges in exchange for a massive donation to the federal coffers.
Imelda Marcos is already pushing for the donation to go to her major supporters: the poor. This adds fuel to talk of a Marcos ““comeback,’’ which has already begun on the local level. Imelda was elected to Congress in 1995 from her home district in Leyte. The Marcos Loyalist Movement continues to draw fervent recruits, mainly among middle-aged poor and working-class women. They talk with awe about her clothes and beauty, and some threatened mass suicide when she pulled out of the presidential race last May. But when Imelda gave her endorsement to Estrada–a former B-movie actor who shares her flair for drama–they soon followed. ““The masses for Estrada are also the masses for the Marcoses,’’ says Cherry Cobarrubias, national coordinator of the Marcos loyalists. After a decade of persecution, she adds, Marcos loyalists finally believe that under Estrada, ““we can get justice.’’ The former First Lady seems to agree. After her last Senate grilling, she said it was ““fun’’ to be taken seriously again–particularly since she hadn’t been seen that way in a long time.
