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.