‘We live with dual standards of morality, condemning Imelda and others we don’t like but looking away when those involved are those people on our side of the fence.’
OF all places, I was in Cebu when thoughts of former First Lady Imelda Marcos crossed my mind.
I say “of all places” because one doesn’t associate Cebu with Imelda or Imelda with Cebu.
Cebu was, during the Marcos years, an opposition country: the 1965 Presidential race was between Marcos and a Cebuano favorite son, Sergio Osmeña Jr.; in the Batasan elections, Cebu elected an opposition slate with the likes of the future Chief Justice Hilarion Davide; and it was in Cebu City where opposition leader Corazon Aquino took refuge during the EDSA Revolution.
But why did I think of Imelda Marcos while I was in Cebu?
Because from a hotel room, I looked out the window and saw the tattered remains of a convention center built for an ASEAN Summit not so very long ago.
It is tattered, in the way the Colosseum of Rome is tattered. But unlike the Italian counterpart, no tourists can be lured to Cebu to marvel at this product of human ingenuity.
It is, I suspect, the product of human greed, for which no one has been sent to jail, built as it is clear by now with substandard materials that couldn’t withstand the forces of human nature.
Shame.
But then, why did I think of Imelda?
Because looking at the tattered remains of the convention center in Cebu made me think of the Philippine International Convention Center, built in 1977 as part of Imelda Marcos’ so-called “edifice complex” for which she has been much maligned and subjected to lawsuits left and right. Yet the PICC still stands, in all its brutalist glory, used by hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of people, local and foreign alike, for the last 40-plus years. Despite storms and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and yellow confetti rallies and all.
Come to think of it, so many other “Imeldific” monuments still stand: the regal Cultural Center of the Philippines; the Folk Arts Theater; the Heart Center and the Lung Center and the Kidney Center, oh, and even the San Juanico Bridge.
Of course, for the Film Center, Imelda was again subjected to such opprobrium that has been par for the course coming from anti-Marcos forces. But think about it: who has been subjected to the same attacks for the tattered remains of a convention center in Cebu?
No one.
That’s how we are and that’s why nothing much has changed. We live with dual standards of morality, condemning Imelda and others we don’t like but looking away when those involved are those people on our side of the fence.
We must grow up, mature, and appreciate the Imeldific when properly deserved.
