The compassionate society and other selected speeches of Imelda Romualdez Marcos ; edited by Ilena Maramag
(This book collects the speeches of the former First Lady ...)
This book collects the speeches of the former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, who was married to the Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos.
Imelda Marcos (née Romuáldez) is the widow of Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the 10th president of the Philippines.
Background
Born on July 2, 1929, in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos is best known as the former first lady of the Philippines. (Some references have cited Leyte province as her birthplace. ) First, however, she was Imelda Remedios Visitacion Romualdez, the oldest daughter of a lawyer and a homemaker. Her parents were Vicente Orestes Romuáldez, a lawyer, and his second wife, Remedios Romuáldez. Vicente's first wife, Juanita, had allegedly died of leukaemia on August 3, 1926. Imelda is the sixth of Vicente's eleven children, and Remedios' firstborn. She grew up with her five younger siblings and several older half-siblings from her father's first marriage.
Marcos experienced a number of hardships at a young age. She lost her mother to pneumonia when she was 8, and her father's law practice fizzled out around the same time. He then moved to the family to Tacloban in Leyte, his home province. The family continued to struggle financially.
Education
A skilled vocalist, Marcos attended an all-girls school called Holy Infant Academy in Tacloban.
Career
After winning a nation-wide beauty contest she married Ferdinand Marcos, a rising political leader who later became president of the Philippines. Imelda Romualdez Marcos became one of the most influential leaders of the Philippines. Much of her power came from her position as First Lady.
On her own, however, she cultivated an influential entourage who were loyal to her personally. This entourage included important economic, military, and political leaders of the country. Years as First Lady After becoming First Lady, Marcos was appointed to a number of significant positions.
In 1975 she became the governor of Metro Manila, giving her far-reaching power to determine the policies affecting ten percent of the Filipinos. As governor, Marcos became famous for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build luxury hotels and a cultural center. These buildings were erected for tourists and the upper classes of the capital city and later lost a great deal of money.
In 1978 she was elected to the Interim National Assembly of the Philippines, although her election (from Manila) was tainted by accusations of massive voting fraud. In the same year she was named to the cabinet as minister of human settlements, a post which gave her access to virtually unlimited resources. In that position she was able to allocate funds for countless projects, all of which gave her increased political clout throughout the country.
Following the assassination of Senator Benigno Aquino in August 1983 and the deterioration of the president's health during the same period, Imelda Marcos emerged as a major spokeswoman for the government. Her prominence led many analysts to assume that she was preparing to succeed her husband in the event of his death or resignation.
Early in 1986, however, a "snap" election called by President Marcos backfired. Vote fraud and pro-Marcos violence on election day inflamed the general public, which refused to believe the Marcos' claim of victory. When the people rallied behind the "defeated" candidate Corazon Aquino, Imelda Marcos fled with her husband and about a hundred family and friends, settling in Hawaii.
She left behind evidence of being a compulsive shopper for several items of apparel including a thousand pairs of shoes. Thus in the matter of a few weeks the image of Imelda Marcos changed from a haughty, imperial first lady of the Philippines to that of an almost ludicrous figure obsessed with material possessions Life for Imelda After the Fall Imelda Marcos lived in exile with her husband in Hawaii until his death in 1989, with the Philippine government demanding compensation for money the Marcos' allegedly stole from the country.
In 1990 she went to trial on racketeering charges in New York City, with the government alleging she and her husband had stolen some $200 million from the Philippines National Bank and invested it in America; she was eventually acquitted. Marcos returned to the Philippines in 1991 and the next year ran for president on the New Society Movement. She ultimately came in fifth in a field of seven, receiving only eight percent of the vote.
In 1993 Marcos went on trial in that country for graft and was found guilty in September as reported in the New York Times. She was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in jail, but was released pending appeal. A comeback of sorts was in store for Marcos when she was elected to the country's house of representative by a large majority in November of 1995.
According to Emily Mitchell and Andrea Pawlyna in People, Imelda Marcos was still battling the government over the Marcos fortune, estimated to be as much as ten billion dollars, and could not sell her family's real estate holdings or get the estimated $500 million she and her husband had placed in Swiss Banks.
According to Marcus Broucher of the Wall Street Journal, Marcos was planning to establish a page on the World Wide Web (http://www. imelda. com) to tell her and her husband's side to interested parties.
Finally in October of 1998, the Philippines' highest court acquitted Marcos of corruption, sparing her a 12-year jail term.
Achievements
She was one of the most influential leaders of the Philippines in the 1970s and early 1980s. She was the wife of President Ferdinand Marcos and a political power in her own right. She served as governor of Metro Manila and controlled considerable government spending.
The president used his wife as a traveling diplomat to nations throughout the world. She was named roving ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China, and she took part in negotiations in Libya over proposed self-government for Mindanao, a southern island in the Philippines where a civil war existed between Muslim and Christian inhabitants.
She became famous for her lavish lifestyle. For example, on 17 October 2013, the attempted sale of two Claude Monet paintings, L'Eglise de Vetheuil and Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, became the subject of a legal case in New York against Vilma Bautista, a one-time aide to Imelda Marcos. Bautista was sentenced in 2014 to 2–6 years in prison for attempting to sell "valuable masterpieces that belonged to her country".
On 13 January 2014, three collections of Imelda Marcos's jewelry: the Malacanang collection, the Roumeliotes collection, and the Hawaii collection; along with paintings by Claude Monet were seized by the Philippine government.
In 2015, a rare pink diamond worth $5 million was discovered in her jewelry collection. On 16 February 2016, the government of the Philippines announced that the three collections, valued at about $21 million, were to be auctioned off before the end of Benigno Aquino III's term on 30 June 2016. In October 2015, Imelda Marcos still faced 10 criminal charges of graft and 25 civil cases in the Philippines.
Connections
She was the wife of President Ferdinand Marcos and a political power in her own right.
