Deconstructing Imelda

Foreigners often wonder how we could have allowed Imelda Marcos to have her way with us. But the people wanted a star, and she gave them what they wanted. Maybe we conjured her out of our collective unconscious: a mother figure for a nation shaped, in that famous phrase, by 300 years of Spanish rule and 50 years of Hollywood.

There will be no Marcos comeback, for they never really left. The cronies of Ferdinand Marcos have remained in power. Other politicians' wives have attempted to become the new Imelda Marcos, but they lacked that something. In 1996, during the 15th anniversary of the disaster at the Manila Film Center, I joined a group of university students in a ""spirit quest'' or seance at the film center, reputedly the most haunted building in the city. I wasn't particularly interested in contacting the spirits of the buried workers, but Imelda was supposed to be coming, and I wanted to see what would happen. On our way to the film center a journalist asked, ""What if there really are ghosts, and Imelda starts to levitate? How are we supposed to report that without sounding like wackos?'' In fact Imelda Marcos didn't show up, but if she had flown in on air, I don't think I would've been too surprised.

ZAFRA is a newspaper columnist and radio-TV talk-show host based in Manila.

© 1999