Saved in the nick of time

With many witnesses coming forward to deny Juan Ponce Enrile’s revisionist interpretation of Marcos’ martial law, I will join them and tell my story. It is less about cruelties and injustices that others suffered than it is that I was caught in the fight between the Marcoses and the Lopezes. What used to be the story of the Marcos-Lopez partnership turned into a worse Aquino-Lopez partnership. I was one of those caught between the transition for writing The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos.

In an interview with Juan Ponce Enrile for her documentary for Al Jazeera, Imelda and me, my daughter Veronica told him that the military who came to my parents-in-law’s house and the other houses in the compound including the house where we had lived while in Manila, showed that the order for the raid and investigation came from Juan Ponce Enrile. They were apologetic saying, “they were only looking for books” and “obeying the orders.”

When reminded by Veronica, Enrile answered “did I”? He does not remember. That is the problem.

Well, it was the soldiers who said that they were there because of Enrile’s order and showed the paper to my in-laws.

My parents-in-law were terrified. The neighbors were also terrified peeping through their windows at the number of military vehicles surrounding the house. My brother in law Ramon said they might have been looking for Karl Marx books which were in the library.

At the height of the controversy on the Imelda book, the rumor was spread that I had sold out to the Palace and that the books were stocked in the house. But in fact the book was pirated by the Bustamante Press for a print run to show that I had sold the books to them. The truth is that by the time martial law was declared with Enrile on top of the security, we had left for my husband’s assignment abroad on the orders of Eugenio Lopez Jr. because he was too hot to handle.

It is ironic that it should be Geny Lopez to whom we would owe our freedom. He was imprisoned for the alleged assassination plot while we stayed in exile for 20 years. We met Geny and Chita Lopez when they visited London during martial law. We recalled the events of martial law and how he was able to escape visibly moved by his own story. He wiped the tears, seemingly apologetic but he did not need to. We were blessed because of his meanness.

Ninoy’s airport assassination would soon end martial law and the Marcoses would flee to Hawaii. Under the new Lopez-Aquino partnership, Filipinos in London petitioned the new government that my husband be appointed the ambassador to London. But this was denied because the Lopezes primarily Geny, the once contrite offender was against it. The Lopezes were back in power as partners of the Aquinos through the EDSA people power revolution. Up to today, people still think that my husband was appointed ambassador to London where we held fort for the Ninoy Aquino International Movement.

We stayed on in London where the children finished schooling through university. Only then would we decide to return home in 1986.

More of this background can be read in the book “The Verdict” which I wrote on the Imelda Marcos trial in New York.

Here is an excerpt: “The Lopezes, Meralco and The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. It was on those heady days of the Lopez acquisition of Meralco that I began writing The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. My husband worked with the Meralco Securities Corp., the holding company of Meralco, the electric distributor. When I decided to write the book, I had no idea where it would lead to and approached its writing as I would any biography. I did not yet know about the “untold story.” But sources revealed no one would touch the story. If it told the truth it would be a bombshell of a book. I continued writing and expanding my sources and called it The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. When it became known that I was writing such a book, gossip spread that it was the Lopezes who were behind it. Because my husband worked with them, it seemed logical. But it was not true. The book was my personal initiative that came out of the blue. To this day, I am just as puzzled why I wrote the book. As I have narrated it in its foreword, the idea came during a breakfast conversation between my husband and me in 1966. I was completely occupied with family. I was mother to three children with another soon to come. I was pregnant in the most harried part of writing the book – meeting self-imposed deadlines and then getting my copyright. The rumor about the Lopezes’ role is explained partly in the book on the history of Manila Chronicle where I worked before I was married. But it was limited to the question of the role allegedly played by its editor Rodolfo Reyes. He was indignant by talk that the Lopezes were being accused of ordering me to write the book to get concessions from the Marcos government and that he was the conduit of those approaches. As a housewife, I did not know anything about the brewing conflict between the Marcos-Lopez partners and how my book would impinge on their conflict. I had presumed I was writing a book as a free citizen in a free country.”