Pink-diamond blues

An official from the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) shows a tiara, seized from a a set of jewellery collection of former first lady Imelda Marcos, at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.  MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

It was 1975, the fourth year of martial law, and Ferdinand Marcos was at the zenith of his power. All his opponents were in jail, Congress had been padlocked, and media offices were either shuttered or under new management by his cronies. He was the absolute ruler of the Philippines, and beside him was his wife Imelda, whose charisma and indefatigable glad-handing skills had been instrumental in getting him elected, twice, and securing Malacañang for their conjugal political ambitions.

In December of that year, Imelda was named one of the 10 richest women in the world by Cosmopolitan magazine. None of the Marcos-controlled papers carried the news; in fact, according to a January 1976 cable from the US Embassy that would come to light decades later via Wikileaks, the Marcoses’ “sudden rise to riches is not a story they want to advertise in the Philippines. They didn’t want to censure Cosmopolitan magazine. That would only have attracted attention to the story, and would have led to bad, world-wide publicity. So, the Marcos’ [sic] quietly arranged with their rich friends to buy up all the copies of Cosmopolitan as fast as they hit the Philippine newsstands. Thus, the magazine disappeared from the newsstands overnight…”

While Imelda reveled in her powerful position as one-half of the Marcos dictatorship, she and her husband had reason to be fearful of letting the country know just how big a jackpot she had hit. It was only the fourth year of martial law, and already she had amassed riches beyond what her husband’s annual salary (the equivalent of around $5,700) could have afforded. At that time she had no official government function yet, and earned no salary of her own. While belonging to a distinguished clan, her family was not known to be particularly wealthy. Where did all that fabulous new wealth come from?

There could only be one logical explanation: The Marcoses were using the Philippine treasury as their private account, and on such a scale that they would, in time, be estimated to have looted a staggering $10 billion (they are enshrined in the Guinness records), leaving the Philippines impoverished in the process.

In 1986, after the Marcoses had been deposed by the Edsa People Power Revolution, People magazine in the United States reported: “Her (Imelda’s) shopping flings are legendary. For one of them, in 1982, she arrived in New York with 40 assistants and 300 suitcases. According to an associate of a New York antiques dealer, in 1981 Imelda bought a Park Avenue apartment and its contents for $9.5 million, but the building’s board refused to let her move in. So she gave away the furnishings and instead took over an East Side property that was owned by the Philippine government. That was on a Monday. Imelda announced that by Friday the building, which was in poor repair, must be totally refurbished for a Halloween party the next day. She imported laborers from the Philippines who worked around the clock to install everything from pink silk wallpaper in her bedroom to a hot tub in the maid’s bath. By Friday she had bought and arranged $1.5 million in furniture and paintings to adorn the place and had her party. Imelda still wasn’t satisfied. She decided security at the building was not good. She stayed instead at the Waldorf Towers, ordering $5,000 in flowers for her arrival and $1,000 in fresh bouquets every day.”

These stories are hardly mentioned nowadays. Imelda is back in power, unrepentant and reeking of glitz and wealth (her declared worth in 2012 was $22 million, making her the second richest Filipino lawmaker after Manny Pacquiao), and her son is also gunning for the vice presidency, a heartbeat away from his old party grounds in Malacañang. But there’s news that a rare 25-carat, barrel-shaped pink diamond, said to be worth $5 million, has been found in Imelda’s jewelry collection that had been seized by the government and appraised by London auction house Christie’s. It’s a rude reminder of the historic unfinished business that this country still has with the family that ran it to the ground.

The reappearance of the pink diamond, which is but a small fraction of Imelda’s fabled jewelry and art hoard, prompts yet again some questions: Why is this woman at large? And why have Filipinos let her and her family get away with murder?