Imelda Marcos BORN TO RULE
Perched on a Louis XIV sofa, beneath a gilt-framed Picasso, Imelda Marcos is explaining how tough the job used to be. “When I became First Lady, it was very demanding,” she says. “I had to dress up and make myself more beautiful because the poor are always looking for a star in the dark of the night.”
With a perceptible creak of her pink silk gown, Imelda, 90, rises, adjusts her raven perm, and is soon speeding into Manila, the down-at-heel capital of the Philippines, which she once used as a gigantic shopping trolley for all the finest things in the world. The poor are waiting, and at traffic lights she hands out crisp banknotes to children. “See how they love me,” she says.
These are among the opening scenes of a new documentary film about the infamous ‘Steel Butterfly’, which has caused outrage and apprehension in a country that still hasn’t recovered from the consequences of Imelda’s two-decade spending spree. Investigators estimate that around US$10 billion was plundered from the state’s coffers by Imelda and her husband, the late President Ferdinand Marcos, a substantial portion
