Marcos Seeks to Restore Philippine Dynasty
Share with others:
BATAC, the Philippines -- At a mall food court here, where she was sitting with reporters covering her campaign for the House of Representatives, Imelda Marcos inserted iPod earbuds on either side of her bouffant coiffure.
She had gamely accepted an offer to listen for the first time to "Here Lies Love," a new rock opera by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim that chronicles her rise from country girl to the first lady of the Philippines. Removing the earbuds, tilting her head slightly, she said in an exaggerated tone, "I'm flattered; I can't believe it!"
Her life may already have been distilled into pop culture, her name reduced to a punch line about shoes. But a couple of months shy of 81 years, Mrs. Marcos is battling to restore the Marcos dynasty in nationwide elections on Monday, watching over a daughter running for provincial governor and over her only son, who is running for the Senate, a national office that the family hopes will be a stepping-stone back to the presidency.
She herself has been crisscrossing a rural district here in the north, the home of her late husband, Ferdinand E. Marcos, in a campaign that has been violent, even by Philippine standards. On a recent Sunday evening, she attended a fiesta where she was introduced as "still the queen, still the winner." The next day, she comforted the widow of one of her campaign organizers, the fourth one to be assassinated so far.
If there is an urgency to Mrs. Marcos's step, it is because she is leading the family on two battle fronts. Rebellious nephews have, for the first time, split the extended clan here. And, more than anything else, public opinion polls have consistently indicated that the country's next president is likely to be Benigno S. Aquino III, the scion of the family that for three decades fought the Marcoses for control of the Philippines.
More than parties or ideology, family rivalries have always defined Philippine politics. And no feud has shaped the modern Philippines more than the epic fight between the Marcoses and the Aquinos: the standoff between Mr. Marcos, the American-backed autocrat, and Benigno S. Aquino Jr., the opposition leader, which eventually led to Mr. Aquino's assassination, Mr. Marcos's downfall and the rise of Corazon C. Aquino as president in 1986.
First Published May 10, 2010 2:00 am
