Twenty years after Ferdinand Marcos and his wife fled Manila, Imelda Marcos is back fighting superpowers, she tells David McNeill, as the country once again faces unrest.
It is now 20 years to the day since Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda fled Manila's Malacañang Palace for Hawaii with the jeers of a million Filipinos ringing in their ears. Today, Imelda is back in Manila and active in Philippine politics as protesters riot and the country again falls under a state of emergency. Close your eyes and it could be February 25th, 1986 all over again.
Many believe the beautiful young country girl who caught the eye of the ambitious Marcos and helped him win a million votes in 1965 was the real power behind the throne by the end of their reign, when Ferdinand was desperately ill.
The former first lady seldom gives interviews because she is invariably skewered by incredulous journalists when she brandishes her innocence and new poverty. She was, after all, once one of the 10 richest women in the world.
"I am poor not only in material things but in the truth. But I believe the truth will prevail. The truth is God and if you are on the side of truth and God who can stand against you?" We are sitting in the 34th-floor suite where the former first lady of the Philippines lives in one of Manila's most exclusive apartment blocks. The walls groan with original art works: a Picasso here, a Gauguin there. A Michelangelo bust peers over photographs on the piano showing Imelda with the great and the good: disgraced US president Richard Nixon plays the piano, Chairman Mao kisses her hand; Japan's Emperor Hirohito stands stiff and helpless beside her retina-burning allure. Oil paintings even hang in the toilet.
"I LOVE BEAUTY and I am allergic to ugliness," she sniffs, as a half-dozen servants in white coats scurry around ministering to her needs. Her lawyer Robert Sison explains: "You have to realise that when Mrs Marcos talks about being poor, she does not mean poor like you or I. She is being relative, compared to the life she used to lead." The woman once dubbed the steel butterfly, half of the sticky-fingered conjugal dictatorship that ruled the Philippines for two decades of chaos and plunder is now a doughy 76. Although the famous jet-black bouffant is still stubbornly in place, the beauty that charmed everyone from Henry Kissinger to Pope John Paul II has faded, replaced by a flinty, hard-worked glamour; the once sultry topaz eyes now rheumy and guarded.
Imelda, though, remains enraged at her subsequent treatment. "We found ourselves in Hawaii, penniless, homeless and nameless," she says, slapping the table. US customs records showed the family arrived with nearly $9 million (€7.5 million) in cash, jewellery and bonds.
When Ferdinand died in 1989, Imelda found herself alone fighting corruption charges in New York. After enjoying the backing of five US presidents and the close friendship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the shock of America turning on her was profound. "They did this to me when I was alone, widowed and orphaned," she says, on the verge of tears. "Even the bible says there are special places reserved in hell for those who persecute widows and orphans." Though acquitted, few expected her to survive the humiliation of being ditched by the White House, lampooned in the media and chased across the world by prosecutors who accused the pair of plundering the Philippines of $10 billion (€8.36 billion) or more. But with the irrepressible brazenness that made her a legendary force in Philippine politics, Imelda bounced back, returning to Manila in 1992 and winning a senator's seat in 1995 after a failed bid for the presidency.
TODAY, SHE IS again the matriarch of a minor political dynasty. Her son and daughter both hold political office, her nephew sits in the congressional seat she vacated and her brother is mayor of Tacloban City. She has been acquitted several times on domestic charges of corruption and extortion and, of the 901 separate cases she claims were filed against her family, she is now down to the last three. "I am still standing up at 76, fighting superpowers," she says.
Still, there remains the question of that mind-boggling wealth in a country where eight out of 10 people live in grinding, $2-a-day (€1.67-a-day) poverty. Tales of Imelda's bacchanalian extravagance are legion: her $5 million 1983 shopping spree in New York, Rome and Copenhagen, or the time she dispatched a plane to pick up Australian white sand for the opening of a beach resort, or her reputation as the world's largest collector of gems. And then the final Marie Antoinette moment, when Filipinos raided her palace closets to find 3,000 pairs of shoes.
Imelda is adamant her wealth was honestly gained. "My husband was rich before I met him," she protests, dismissing claims that she raided the treasury and pilfered World Bank loans to finance their lifestyle. "He was a gold trader. He had a mountain of gold when he entered politics in 1949."
By the late 1950s, Marcos had a personal fortune of 7,500 tons of gold, she claims. "This is the first time I'm telling anyone this." In the 1970s, after gold went up, she says the Marcos family was worth a staggering €35 billion.
WHY DID THE man who professed to love his countryman "like a father loves his children" not give this wealth to the people he ruled? "You can't just give money, you know," explains his wife. "Henry Ford II told me it is hard to make money properly, but harder still to spend money properly. First, he had to make institutions and introduce freedom, justice and democracy."
Marcos's contribution to freedom, justice and democracy was to declare martial law, lock up opponents and close the few newspapers not already run by his cronies. "The Communists were in the streets and in the gateway of the palace," cries Imelda. But martial law made radicals out of thousands of ordinary Filipinos. Washington looked the other way, content that Marcos protected US bases and businesses; in 1981, the then US vice-president George Bush toasted Marcos at a reception, saying: "We love you, sir, we love your adherence to democratic principles."
In the 1980s, Marcos took over the country's mines, a decision taken, claims his wife, for the sake of "the people".
"He said to me, 'All of these mines I am not entrusting to anyone except a foundation that will ensure it belongs to the Filipino people to serve as a guarantee for all development programs unto infinity,' " says Imelda, displaying the curious blurring of the public and private that was a hallmark of their regime. "When he was president there was no distinction between him and the country and the world in general because he had three visions: [ for him], for his people, for his country."
Sitting atop his mighty mountain of gold, Ferdinand sent Imelda shopping for New York real estate in the 1980s. After rejecting the Empire State Building (which was going for $750 million) as "too ostentatious", Imelda bought four prime slabs of Manhattan. All were subsequently seized and sold, as were much of her jewels and the bulk of her art. She still has a glossy catalogue of what was taken - 175 pieces; more Michelangelos and Botticellis, Canalettos.
"They sold them for a song," she laments, flicking through the catalogue pages, eyes again brimming with tears. "They took it all, including my shoes. But that was my number one defence because when they went to my closet they found no skeletons."
Many of her famous shoes are now on display in the Marikina City Footwear Museum in Manila, which she opened in 2001 in another example of her breathless chutzpah. "The shoe industry of Marikina was worth about half a million dollars, it is now worth 100 or more million. The shoe industry I supported is a symbol of gratitude."
Has she cut down on her shoe consumption? "I probably have more now. Everywhere I go, the people give me shoes. I'll end up having more than what they stole from me."