Hero's burial sought for Ferdinand Marcos

Hero's burial sought for Ferdinand Marcos

MANILA (AFP): The widow of Ferdinand Marcos yesterday demanded a hero's burial in Manila for the late dictator after the government cut off power to a refrigerated crypt holding his remains because of the family's unpaid electric bills.

A state-run electric cooperative in Marcos' northern hometown of Batac yesterday pulled the plug on a compound and mausoleum where the former president's glass-encased remains have been lying in state since 1993.

"Let them (cut off the power) but please, please let me bury my husband. He is there unburied because this government would not allow his body to leave Batac," Imelda Marcos, now a congresswoman, told reporters.

"This is the ultimate harassment, harassment of the dead, the dead who cannot speak out to defend himself," she said.

"He is the only corpse in our history with a travel ban," she added.

Marcos and his family fled to exile in Hawaii in 1986 at the height of a popular uprising that ended his 20-year regime. He died in Honolulu in 1989 at the age of 72, but his body was allowed to be returned to his northern home province of Ilocos Norte only in 1993.

The government of President Fidel Ramos, Marcos' distant cousin who co-led the revolt that overthrew him, has banned the corpse from being brought to Manila fearing it could be used to fan protests from Marcos loyalists.

It has also rejected requests by the family to give him the proper funeral honors befitting a former soldier, senator, congressman and Philippine president, amid opposition by those who claim that he had plundered the country of billions of dollars during his rule.

The Marcos family has refused to bury the remains underground, building instead the air-conditioned mausoleum in the garden of their sprawling family home in Batac.

Ilocos Norte Electric Cooperative manager Romillas Pascual said the Marcos family owed the state-run cooperative 5.6 million pesos (US$215,384) in unpaid electric bills since 1986.

"The Marcos family ignored the March 3 ultimatum (to settle the bill). We could not help but disconnect it to prove we are not bluffing," Pascual said.

Marcos' eldest daughter, Imee, was in Batac on Sunday and reiterated the family's decision to leave the bills unpaid unless the government returned properties sequestered from the Marcos family.

But Frank Malabed, Marcos' mortician, had earlier said that despite the lack of power, the remains would be preserved until 2002.