ON Tuesday, former First Lady Imelda Romualdez-Marcos quietly celebrated her 90th birthday, and on this occasion, I recalled my exclusive interview with her in the book Imelda, which I wrote and published exclusively before her birthday in June 2012 by Amazon, one of the world’s largest publishing companies in the US.
Here’s an extract of that interview:
Where are the Blue Ladies now?
Many of them are still around, but I can count only a few of them because of what happened to us when our political enemies treated us as evils and continued to persecute us. Many of them chose to exercise the doctrine of self-preservation rather than endure with us, and I could not really blame them.
Not one of them helped you?
I don’t want to be disrespectful, but they cannot even help themselves, so how can they help me? I was just lucky that for my trial in New York, Doris Duke, the tobacco heiress, was there. She paid my $5- million bail. Libyan President Muammar Khadafi offered to pay my bail as well, but I didn’t have to take it because Doris was there. She was a real friend. I missed her and I will always miss her.
What about admirers?
There were some high-ranking officials in government and rich people who offered to take care of me.
After President Marcos’s death, was there ever a time when you thought of considering anyone of your admirers?
None. Because more than anything what I needed most was my motherland. Besides, I know I’ll never find someone as perfect as Ferdinand was. The longer he’s gone, the more perfect he becomes in my mind.
Having gone through these excruciating experiences in your life, are you not mad at anyone?
No. I have no bitterness against anyone. Besides, I am always consoled by that passage in the Bible, which says, “there is a special place in hell for those who oppressed widows and orphans.”
I am intrigued by what you call real friends. Who are they?
To cite a few, they are Muammar Khadafi, Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse-tung, Deng Xiaoping, Richard Nixon, Andrei Gromyko, Fidel Castro and Doris Duke.
What have you read in the press and seen on television about them? Except for Doris, haven’t they all been pictured at one time or another as ugly creatures, to be avoided as “monsters?”
How did they become your real friends?
As a First Lady and one of the President’s diplomats, I applied the simple drawing of one world where we all share the common element of life. And since life should not be taken as a struggle, neither should we struggle with one another in order to be friends.
It is all very simple if you hold sacred what is constant in your heart.
I offered nothing more than the true, the good and the beautiful. I offered what was in my heart for our country and our people. I offered peace.
In return, Muammar Khadafi gave us the Koran with passages underlined and annotated in his own handwriting. He gave us the Tripoli Agreement granting autonomy to our Muslim citizens and entry to the labor needs of the Middle Eastern and North African countries. He gave us oil concessions. He gave peace.
Saddam Hussein gave us support in the Islamic Conference. He gave us access to the labor requirements of his country. He gave us an affirmation of biblical history by showing us the “Mother of all civilizations” that began along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. He gave peace.
Mao Tse-tung reopened the same ancestral routes that our brothers had traveled in the ancient and modern times. He reminded me of the importance of a country strategically located between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. “You can change ideology, religion and politics, anytime,” he said. “But you can never change geography.” He gave peace.
Deng Xiaoping gave us trade and economic agreements. He gave us favorable agreements on oil and rice and other important products. He gave us opportunities to open business within China. He gave us his personal friendship by taking us on a tour of the major cities of China. He gave peace.
Andrei Gromyko, foreign minister for 42 years, and all the leaders of the Supreme Soviet that he had served gave us the highest honor bestowed upon a foreigner: Friend of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And more than the agreements that we signed between our two countries, they gave us the blessed opportunity to consecrate the image of Our Lady of Fatima in the city of Moscow, opening the doors of the churches for the celebration of the Mass and the Holy Eucharist. He gave peace.
Richard Nixon was president of the United States when our Cultural Center was inaugurated as the sanctuary of the Filipino spirit. He sent the governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who also became president 11 years later, in affirmation of a kindred belief to hold sacred what is beautiful in us.
When martial law was proclaimed in 1972 to unify our country and prevent a civil war, he gave us the strength to pursue the formation of a New Society, true to the Lincolnian spirit of decisive action in the face of anarchy. At his hour of defamation, we personally delivered to him the message of China’s leadership acknowledging him as a man of vision, way ahead of his time. Nixon gave us true friendship.
Doris Duke gave from a heart whose goodness the world did not understand because, in a greedy and grasping environment, she shielded it in the sanctuary of her soul. She was a woman whose grace remained untouched by hatred’s envy. Her spirit was as pure as the world she sought all her life to preserve for the children she never had, so that one day she may walk into her garden and see the mother she has always been. From her unfathomable depths, she gave us love.
There is no power stronger than the power within the heart of man.
It is not measured by the tonnage of weaponry or gold. It is measured by the invisible weight of a spirit that lives in us.
The privilege of mothering we extended meant making friends with all nations, regardless of ideology or system of the government.
It was therefore natural that I extended the Filipino hand of friendship with ease and sincerity as the Marcos government parted open the Iron Curtain, the Bamboo Curtain and the veils that shrouded the Islamic World.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.