Imelda Marcos may ride off into the sunset any time now, and I may soon follow, so I thought I’d write down my fond recollections of my relationship with her to cheer her on on this journey.  After all, she has provided some of the most memorable political moments of my life.

Our date at the Kennedy Center

My first encounter with Madame was at a concert featuring her protégé Cecile Licad at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC on November 3, 1981.  I was then working with the anti-Martial Law movement in Washington.  It was a most difficult time for us, with then President Ronald Reagan being solidly behind his friend Ferdinand.  We needed to do something to underline to Washington’s political class that the opposition was alive and well in the Philippines.  What better way to do this than by staging a political protest at the Kennedy Center?  Since there had never been a political protest at the sacred watering hole of America’s culturati, our action would surely attract attention, and it did.  The Washington Post carried the following story the next day:

Angry demonstrators staged a brief demonstration in an aisle of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall last night, protesting the presence in the presidential box of Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos. She came to hear Philippine pianist Cecile Licad in her National Symphony debut.

The interruption occurred immediately after the opening number. Four young men and women rushed down the aisle, then turned and faced the box where Marcos was sitting next to pianist Van Cliburn. One of them shouted, “We have an unwelcome guest in the house!” after which the others began chanting, ‘Down with Marcos! Down with Marcos!’

Marcos remained seated throughout the episode. Several ushers quickly grabbed the protesters and wrestled them, still shouting, out of the hall. They were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and released, according to US Park Police.

Kermit and Miss Piggy

To gain media attention during those dark days, we had to experiment with different kinds of protest.  “Protest-cum-comedy” became one of my specialties and one of my partners in crime was the late Charito Planas, who was in exile in the US in the late ’70s and ’80s.  Among our most memorable skits was one where I dressed up as Kermit the Frog and Charito was costumed as Miss Piggy.  Dropped off by a battered VW Beetle at the International Monetary Fund headquarters at 19^th St and Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC, sometime in 1982, Miss Piggy and I strutted regally to the receptionist and asked to see Jacques de Larosiere, the Managing Director, “to arrange for a loan to my bankrupt regime.” Trying her best to maintain a straight face in the presence of two Sesame Street characters, the lady asked who we were, at which point I barked, “Can’t you see I’m Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines, with my wife Imelda.”  By this time, a large crowd of IMF bureaucrats had gathered in the lobby, some bewildered, some in stitches, some urging the receptionist to let us in.  The poor woman was in a quandary and a standoff ensued, until the Washington DC police arrived to spoil the fun and whisk poor Kermit and Miss Piggy off to the precinct.

Imelda as my passport to America

As one can surmise, such deeds, along with more serious ones, like seizing and occupying the Philippine consulate in San Francisco, earned me a not unimpressive arrest record and jail time. This became a problem after the George W. Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11.  The department consolidated all records of arrest and imprisonment from all localities, so that an Immigration officer could simply press a button to see if someone entering the United States had a police record.  So every time I entered the US, the list of my arrests, detentions, and imprisonment in that country would pop up on the officer’s screen, and this would subject me to what Immigration officials call “secondary screening,” where I would be interviewed on why I had such a distinguished record.  For a few years, saying those arrests resulted from acts of civil disobedience against the Marcos dictatorship was enough to get me past secondary screening. Even among hardened US border control agents, Marcos was a bad name in those days.  

After a while, however, my referring to my opposition to the Marcos dictatorship would draw a blank in the faces of younger immigration officers.  After all, Marcos was just one of the many dictators with unfamiliar foreign names that Washington had supported, and it was unreasonable to expect a frontline agent to memorize them all.  At that point I had to devise a new stratagem to get past US immigration, and this was to add after my story about opposing Marcos, “You know, Imelda and her shoes?”  US immigration officers may not have remembered Ferdinand, but how could they forget the story of Imelda’s 3,000 pairs of shoes?   It almost never failed.  I would simply refer to Imelda’s shoes, and the immigration officers would laugh and wave me out of secondary screening.  So, Imelda, thanks for serving as my passport to the United States.

Hot pursuit in Congress

The next phase of my relationship with Imelda was when we both served in the 15^th Congress, which began in late July 2010, she as a representative from the second district of Ilocos Norte and I from the party-list Akbayan.  At one of the plenary sessions, Congressman Raul Daza, one of my colleagues in the anti-Marcos movement in the US, came up to me and warned me not to allow Imelda to corral me to a discussion.  He told me about how one fervent oppositionist in exile who came home post-EDSA Uprising and also served in the House had given Imelda a hearing out of politeness and ended up supporting some wacky proposals of hers.  “I think she’s out to convince key people who opposed them when they were in power that they were really not that bad.  She’s persuasive.  So watch out, you’re on her radar screen.”

I certainly had no intention of giving Imelda an audience, but this was mainly out of concern that someone would snap a photo of us having a chat and this could go viral, giving the impression that we had buried the hatchet and all was forgiven and pfft there went my reputation.  Avoiding her, however, was better said than done.  Several times I saw her making a beeline for me in the plenary session hall, forcing me to make a rude exit from whatever conversation I was having with colleagues.  I had to be on high alert during plenaries at which she was present since she could sneak up at any time.  And I had to avoid at all costs the members’ lounge for that was a trap from which there was no easy exit.

But Imelda being Imelda, she would not be deterred.  We were both members of the House Foreign Relations Committee, and at meetings where she was present, she would sometimes try ingratiating herself with me by saying something favorable about my initiatives.  At one session, there was a proposal to close down the consulate in Barcelona, Spain.  Being the head of the Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs, I objected owing to my fear that this could deprive our OFWs in Spain easy access to our government services.  Suddenly, Imelda boomed out of the blue, “I support Congressman Bello’s opposition to closing the consulate in Barcelona because Barcelona is the gateway to Africa.”  

The room fell silent, stunned, with many of us doubting for a moment what we had learned in our geography lessons in grade school: that Barcelona was in Europe.  It took superhuman effort on my part not to burst out laughing, and a swift survey of the room showed other Committee members trying to contain themselves.  Even the normally nonplussed chairman Congressman Al Francis Bichara was grinning.

Trapped finally

Shortly before leaving Congress in 2015, I congratulated myself at having been able to avoid a handshake with Imelda for five long years.  Or so I thought.   One of my favorite cousins turned 100 that year, and I was invited to a big party in her honor.  As soon as I arrived with my wife, I headed straight for the table of honor to kiss my cousin.  When we neared the table, I felt my wife’s hand on my arm, trying to restrain me.  I didn’t give much thought to it, and continued rushing to kiss my cousin, and just when she embraced me, a hand emerged from beside her that I automatically shook.  I looked up and there was Imelda smiling triumphantly.  She was there because my cousin’s son had been one of her most dedicated subordinates, and where else would she be seated but at the table of honor!  Luckily, no cameras were there to record the historic event — at least, none that I was aware of.  After the event, my wife could not stop laughing at how, despite my best efforts, Imelda had gotten the better of me.

‘Who’s Imelda?’

I said earlier that referring to Imelda and her shoes was the formula that would release me from secondary screening by US immigration officials.  The last time I entered the US, however, which was last year, my explanation drew a blank from the young border control agent, who proceeded to ask, “Who’s Imelda?  And what’s this about shoes?”  

Let that be a warning to Madame and all, that notoriety, like fame, is fleeting. – Rappler.com

Walden Bello worked in exile to bring down the Marcos regime and later served as a member of the House of Representatives along with Imelda Marcos.