TWENTY YEARS after Edsa, Imelda is still the country’s foremost drama queen. Her voice breaks and tears well up in her eyes when she remembers her husband, whose corpse remains unburied in a mausoleum in his hometown of Batac, Ilocos Norte since his death in Honolulu in 1989. Imelda has refused to inter him until he is given a hero’s burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. So he lies in state still, waxed and preserved like one of the figures at Madame Tussaud’s.

	IMELDA MARCOS Photo by Lilen Uy

“He is so visited,” gushes Imelda. “When he was alive, he was not as visited as now that he is dead. There are thousands there visiting him. And he is so nicely placed there, like sleeping only. In fact no less than a friend of his, (sugar baron Roberto) Benedicto, said to me, ‘Mrs. Marcos, you have so many projects, but this is the best of all.’”

Ferdinand Marcos’s passing saved him the indignity of undergoing trial in New York for mail fraud, fraudulent misappropriation of property, and obstruction of justice. Instead, the newly widowed Imelda had to face the bar of justice alone in March 1990. With an expensive and colorful American lawyer arguing her defense and the support of high-society friends like tobacco heiress Doris Duke, Imelda stood trial with as much histrionics as she could muster.

She was acquitted in July 1990, largely because there was no evidence linking her directly to the charges (there was evidence against Ferdinand, but he was dead and he took the brunt of the blame). The following year, a triumphant Imelda returned to the Philippines and in 1992 made an audacious try for the presidency. Only six years after their fall, the rehabilitation of the Marcoses was well underway.

They were not alone. The cases filed against Marcos cronies have either been dismissed or snowed under by years of half-hearted litigation. The governments that came after Marcos showed a lack of will and resolve to prosecute the ousted president and his associates; some of those tasked with chasing after ill-gotten wealth have themselves even been accused of corruption.

Over the years, most of the cronies who had followed the Marcoses in exile also returned to the Philippines. Some, like Benedicto and Davao banana magnate Antonio Floirendo, entered into compromise agreements with the Aquino government. Others like coconut and beer tycoon Eduardo ‘Danding’ Cojuangco Jr. are still contesting their ownership of shares in companies. Cojuangco himself is back at the helm of the prized San Miguel Corp. despite pending lawsuits.

And as if to further demonstrate that history runs in circles, the $600 million from the Marcos account in a Swiss bank that had been turned over to the government in 2003 appears to have again been stolen. Last year, farmers’ groups accused the Arroyo government of using funds recovered from the Swiss account to bankroll the current president’s 2004 campaign.

In 1994, a Hawaii court did find Marcos responsible for the executions, disappearances, and torture during his regime, and awarded $2 billion in damages to surviving victims of such human-rights abuses. The victims later agreed to a $150-million settlement but the case remains tied up in litigation, this time with the Philippine government, which is asserting its primary right to the Marcos wealth. Meanwhile, despite the barrage of lawsuits, Imelda has not had a conviction affirmed by the Philippine Supreme Court.

There is therefore reason for her to feel vindicated and to think she can still do something grand for Filipinos, like opening a deuterium mine to solve all our energy problems or building a tunnel that will link the Pacific Ocean to the China Sea. She knows she still holds powerful sway not only on the imagination of Filipinos, but of others as well. Later this year, British DJ Fatboy Slim and Talking Heads singer David Byrne will open a new musical (yet another) on Imelda.

“I don’t know if (Filipinos) love me,” she says, “but they surely do not hate me.”

And her husband? “Marcos,” she says with certainty, “is now being more and more missed.” — Sheila S. Coronel