By TESSA JAMANDRE
BATAC, Ilocos Norte.—The sun was at its fiercest heat that Friday noon. everyone in the van was almost drained except for the oldest among them. Instead she asked for her powder, compact mirror and lipstick to retouch her makeup. Then the van came to a stop; she was ready to alight. In her signature look, a casual but elegant outfit, the door of the van slid open and a shrieking chorus welcomed her.
Former First Lady Imelda Marcos, so known to the world for her 3,000 pairs of shoes, now in her blue-strapped Happy Feet bakya (a local brand of wooden clog), walked down the cracked plateau in the village of Gernale. She shook hands of the young and old who waited for her that day to listen to what the widow of their beloved “Apo Marcos” can do for them.
A native not of this province, but a “Waray” from Leyte, Mrs. Marcos admitted she can’t speak their dialect, but can understand Ilocano. “My tongue may not be good in speaking Ilocano, but my heart only sings for an Ilocano,” she said and began to serenade the local folks with a famous Ilocano ballad.
In this year’s election, the Aquinos and the Marcoses have resurrected a political saga as Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III runs for the presidency and the Marcos family decided to return to the political stage. Ferdinand “Bongbon” Jr. is passing on his seat to his mother as he bids for a seat in the Senate, while elder sister Imee is running for governor in this province.
Mrs. Marcos has been in and out of political races in the past. In 1992, she ran and finished fifth in the seven-way presidential race. In 1995, she was elected congresswoman of Leyte, representing the first district of her home province. In 1998, she made another bid for the presidency but later backed out to support the candidacy of then Vice President Joseph Ejercito Estrada. Marcos finished ninth among 11 candidates vying for the Philippine government’s top post.
As she went around to campaign in her luxury van, she remembered riding a cart pulled by a carabao to campaign in the same barangay she visited that day. She recalled tagging along her husband’s campaign for the same seat she is running for now to visit the same villages.
Her memory of the past both the glorious episode and the humble beginnings, she can narrate in precise details. In her speech before a crowd gathered in a barangay hall that day, she told of a story how she swallowed a mosquito while singing in one campaign rally of her husband who was still starting out a political career. That story was enough for the people to remember her husband who rose to the Presidency from a congressman of their province and gratitude to a man who gave them roads, bridges and electricity and above all pride as Ilocano.
But this time around, in her husband’s home province, the loyalty of the people for the Marcoses will be gauged anew. Much has changed since 1986, but not Imelda. Her passion for “the true, good and beautiful” may have been subdued with her jewelries up for auction by the government and as she now adorns herself with accessories made of resin. But at 80 and still campaigning up to 18 barangays in a day, the quest for power, or to serve the people as she put it, remained unchanged.
