That day, Imelda Marcos, 92, forgot the wheelchair to which she has been confined since a hip operation: she advanced cautiously, supported by a nephew, towards the lectern of Congress that the elected president, his son, Bongbong Marcos, was called to join with his relatives. There she is on the platform, looking blissful, in a pale pink dress, with butterfly wing shoulder pads typical of the terno, the Filipina dress, nodding in the middle of her people who applaud and congratulate her.
The new president, dressed in a barong, the translucent Filipino tunic, puts his right hand on his heart. As if he couldn’t believe it: “When people wanted to help her with her wheelchair, she refused and insisted she could do it,” he will tell later on his blog. It was May 25, 2022, the day of the official proclamation of the result of the presidential election of May 9 in the Philippines, won by the son of ex-dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who died in 1989, and his wife, Imelda .
fourteen years of dictatorship
At the wine reception that follows, the corpulent matriarch makes a single public statement by showing a crest on her chest: “I have two presidents. » His son, therefore, Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr, then 64 years old, said “Bongbong”, just winner, with a clear score of 58.7% of the vote. And her husband, Ferdinand Marcos, elected twice, in 1965 and 1969, before declaring martial law in 1972.
There followed fourteen years of dictatorship, marked by political assassinations and the siphoning off of national wealth, presented in the Guinness Book of Records as “the biggest hold-up carried out by a government” of history – the reference was removed in March of this year for ” verification “. Passing over this period in silence, Bongbong aims to follow in his father’s footsteps – in his pre-martial law version – and to shape himself as a modern, reformist and pro-Western leader.
Since this official ceremony, public appearances by Imelda Marcos have been rare – but symbolic. Sound 93e birthday, July 2, was celebrated at… Malacañang, the presidential palace, in Manila, a nice revenge for the one who was chased out thirty-six years ago. On September 11, she celebrated with great pomp, alongside her son, her husband’s 105th birthday, at the Heroes’ Cemetery in Manila, where the dictator has been buried since the outgoing president, the populist Rodrigo Duterte, an ally of the Marcos , had him buried there, in 2016. Each ceremony is an opportunity for her to celebrate her thirty years of political struggle, finally rewarded. A unique destiny, wildly romantic, whose repercussions on the tired democracy of the archipelago are far from over.
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