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.