No hero's burial for Marcos: Ramos

No hero's burial for Marcos: Ramos

MANILA (AFP): Philippine President Fidel Ramos ruled out yesterday a hero's burial for the remains of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, his distant cousin, the presidential palace said here.

Ramos, winding up a three-day visit to Dhaka, told a Bangladeshi journalist a proposal by the former president's widow, Imelda Marcos, to have the body interred at the Heroes' Cemetery "is still a largely divisive issue."

Marcos died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, three years after a bloodless popular revolt led by Ramos brought down his 20-year regime. The dictator's body was only allowed back into the Philippines in 1993, on condition that it be kept outside Manila.

A fresh controversy over the Marcos corpse broke out this week when the local electric utility in his northern home town pulled the plug on his ancestral home, which features his refrigerated crypt, after the family failed to pay 5.6 million pesos ($215,000) in arrears.