With presidential elections only six months away, Imelda’s homecoming was timed to wreak maximum political havoc. “She could be a kingmaker and unite everybody,” her nephew Jose Manuel Romualdez told NEWSWEEK’S Criselda Yabes. “Or she might run herself” Marcos, 35 pounds lighter than she was at her chubbiest, played it coy, insisting she sought simply to have her husband’s remains brought back to Manila. “I have no political agenda,” she assured the crowds of chanting, squealing supporters who managed to appear everywhere she did. But her handlers’ carefully scripted roadshow was no itinerary for a widow in search of a burial plot: flurries of interviews beamed by satellite to U.S. stations, as well as trips to various ancestral homes. In areas demolished last June by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Imelda tossed coins and bags of rice to refugees. “It’s the same old tricks, but they still work,” sighed a Western diplomat in Manila. “Imelda’s back, and she’s going to be a political force.”
She already is. Opposition candidates are mauling each other to win her blessing–and some of the $37 million necessary to wage a presidential campaign. Nacionalista Party president Salvador (Doy) Laurel–Corazon Aquino’s renegade vice president–began by greeting Imelda at the airport. Then he turned on rivals Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco Jr. and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile by declaring that they’d been banned from the party. Cojuangco, who is godfather to Imelda’s son “Bong Bong,” was asked to meet her at the airport; he declined but later tried to curry favor with her in a meeting last week that turned out to be “cool and brief,” according to one witness. Enrile, who sided with Aquino at one of the most critical moments in 1986, stands even less of a chance. “You know what J.E. stands for,” Imelda reportedly told friends recently, her passion overriding her spelling ability, “Judas Escariot.”
Meanwhile, President Aquino worked hard at seeming uninterested, refusing to read the daily papers and ignoring Imelda’s pleas for a tete-a-tete to discuss the fate of Ferdinand’s corpse. “I will ask her what it is she is angry about,” Imelda told a talkshow host, ignoring the assassination of Aquino’s husband, Benigno Jr., by his military escorts in 1983. “If I’ve done something wrong, I’ll say I’m sorry.” Aquino remained unmoved. However, her spokesman issued an invitation to tour the Malacanang museum and reclaim the 1,220 pairs of Marcos shoes on display. “Before, I had 3,000 pairs,” Imelda huffed. Aquino said she didn’t take the missing footwear: they were too big, she said.
They are in another sense, too. Swept into office by People Power, Aquino now presides over a grumbling rabble. In almost six years, she has been battered by seven coup attempts and defections within her cabinet and the military. “She knows that the job is no longer for her,” said a source close to Aquino who insists she will not seek a second term. The population is growing faster than the economy, which has been further hampered by natural disasters-earthquakes, a volcanic eruption and now Typhoon Thelma, which claimed more than 4,000 lives last week. Omnipresent corruption has allegedly touched even the Presidential Commission on Good Government, which was set up to recover the Marcos billions. Despite considerable effort-including a search for buried gold that unearthed only a septic tank-it has bagged under $500 million.
In order to collect the $356 million in Swiss accounts, the Aquino government must convict Imelda on Philippine soil. That won’t be easy. She has already beaten the rap on a $200 million-plus fraud and racketeering charge in a U.S. district court in Manhattan and reached an out-of-court settlement in Los Angeles. Given the glacial pace of the Philippine judicial process, a verdict may be impossible before next May’s elections. In the meantime, what Filipinos are calling “the war of the widows” could get lively-and nasty.
