Out of her father’s shadow (Imee Marcos)

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Out of her father’s shadow
Sunday, 03 12, 2006

Her “second-rate, trying-hard copycat” brickbat against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should stun everyone into awareness. Here is the daughter of a former president, pointing out to us that we have a president under Proclamation 1017 who, try as she might, will never be the president this country would want to have. Coming from Rep. Imee Marcos, the criticism, albeit harsh, does not only ring loud; it also rings true.

Last year, on the day of voting on the impeachment complaint at the House of Representatives, Imee took the proverbial powder, far away enough to avoid being hectored by colleagues or courted by the Administration for her vote. That disappearing act earned her a couple of negative points. But Imee has since acquitted herself considerably well in the fight for truth, justice and decency in our government.

Her tirades against an uncle — that former president who, like a junkie who has become addicted to serendipitous power, is still salivating at the thought of being an accidental hero anew — make every watcher of the ever-shifting political scene wonder whether her father, the quintessential politico, has come back in spirit. Her acute reading of events, even her explanation why she preferred being elsewhere rather than at the Batasan during the voting on the impeachment complaint, makes one pause to ponder: the lady truly has a fine set of brains behind that carefully groomed face.

Imee continues to rail against the pretenders to the Malacañang throne — both present and prospective — without any qualms whether they be her relatives, whether they be her colleagues in the Opposition. And surely it was not malicious mischief that prompted her to point out for us the juveniles in the Opposition who, according to her, are unworthy of our trust and support. Not one to speak out just for the plain hell and orneriness of being heard, she has wisely chosen the issues that she can fling against political knaves, impostors...and Gloria Arroyo.

Her verbal darts have homed straight and true on the festering spots of Arroyo’s cancerous persona, namely, the latter’s cheating, lying and stealing ways. Imee’s father, himself a master of the acerbic word and the damning praise, could not have done better. While others have willingly latched on to issues that only divert attention, forgetting for the nonce that there has been no closure at all to the cheating, lying and stealing accusations against Arroyo, Imee has wisely stuck to a maneuver that is straight out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War: expose Arroyo for her cheating, lying and stealing; wring the issue dry for as long as the traffic could bear until that imperious lady is brought down by the judgment of an enlightened people.

Contrary to what the usual apologists of the Palace claim, the Filipinos have never been fed up with or grown indifferent to this issue involving the woman who claims to be their legitimate president. The only people who think otherwise are the Palace residents and hangers-on who assiduously believe in their own press releases. Imee — a woman herself although she has gonads big enough to take issue against both those in the Administration and many on her side of the political fence — is the visible and audible spokesman of those who have not lost the will to expose the lies behind those press releases, to fight and believe right on that they will triumph eventually, no matter how tortuous the pace may be.

I chanced upon Imee one day at the Kapihan sa Sulo, where she holds court, whenever she has time enough, as one of the visiting political pundits. Of course the things she had to say did not fail to catch our attention: her stand on PP 1017, on the value-added tax, on the film industry; her gently chastising rebuke on FVR whom she calls her “lost” uncle, her conviction that overseas Filipino workers are the true saviors of our country, her ambivalence about the traditional politics and glad-handing of JdV even. A foreign guest of the hotel who was seated beside me, dumbstruck by the ease and authority Imee showed as she ticked off statistics on the economy battered by PP 1017, remarked: “I knew the father once, and now I’m again hearing the daughter show that Marcosian mastery for facts and figures. It’s eerie, if you ask me.”

Imee’s brand of politics, whatever may be said for the good and the bad of the 20 years her father ruled the country, is essentially one that relies on credibility that inspires. She does not mouth inanities; she speaks with a sense and sensibility that puts her apart from her colleagues. Never mind that she exudes a charm all her own — when she moves in circles, the circles move, as the poet said — but don’t forget the weight of her ratiocination or her iron-clad defense of (or offensive on) certain issues.

It’s a crying shame that Imee never got the verve to go for a seat in the Senate of the 13th Congress; she chose to finish a third term in the House of Representatives representing my congressional district in Ilocos Norte, where she has done a splendid job. With the way she is comporting herself right now, rightfully brave to defy her past, her middle name might as well be Phoenix — as in the name of that bird that rises out of the ashes of its self-immolation.

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