During campaign sorties through the Bicol provinces last week, Imee Marcos, one of President’s Duterte’s senatorial candidates, was peddling herself as “another Marcos.” She was imploring the Bicolano electorate to give her “a chance to be in the Senate.”

Indeed, she is another Marcos. So Marcos, in fact, she is the same old fraud. Like her father, the unlamented deposed dictator.

Imee is Maria Imelda Josefa Romualdez Marcos, once upon a time Mrs. Tomas Manotoc and currently in a relationship with a Singaporean businessman, Mark Chua. She is the oldest daughter of the notoriously famous Imelda Romualdez Marcos. By President Ferdinand E. Marcos, of course, although she is not the oldest child of her father. The late President is known to have had three older children with an old love with whom he kept home for years, before Imelda. But that is another story.

About Philippine affairs, anyone not napping knows of Imee’s attempt to pass herself off as a graduate of the University of Princeton and of the University of the Philippines. And since you are awake, you also know by now that she has been unmasked as one celebratedly documented fraud.

• VIRAL: Princeton graduate? Imee Marcos dodges question

Her official bio-data/curriculum vitae, while serving an earlier three terms as Congresswoman for the 2nd District of Ilocos Norte, carried claims of academic accomplishments that turned out to be untrue. The same falsehoods were also found in her campaign leaflets and in her official website.

This district was the seat first represented by Ferdinand E. Marcos upon his entry into politics in 1949. It is now occupied by Imelda Marcos, while Imee is still serving as governor of the province. Imelda initially filed for candidacy as governor but withdrew in favor of Imee’s son, Matthew Manotoc.

Of Imee’s fraudulent claims, her academic pretensions stand out. She declared herself to be “one of the first female graduates from an Ivy League school---Princeton University, graduating with honors.” (Princeton in New Jersey is prestige personified, founded in 1746. Said to be fourth oldest in the USA.) Imee did enroll at Princeton, at various times during the 1970s.

Anti-Martial Law researches revealed that Imee was enjoying a US$ 10,000.00 monthly allowance and resided off-campus (by special arrangement with the University) in an 18th century mansion acquired precisely for her Ivy League experience. All these were eventually exposed as parcel of the grand Marcos plunder of the country’s coffers! During all the while she was in the US, Imee was attended by a coterie of Filipino security personnel with salaries and perks all paid for by the Philippine Martial Law government.

Imee flunked out of Princeton, forthwith fabricating a Princeton degree! This factual deception was confirmed both by the University’s deputy spokesperson, Michael Hotchkiss and by the student newspaper, ‘The Daily Princetonian,’ in responses to queries from Manila’s investigative media.

After Princeton, she enrolled at the University of the Philippines Law School (Her official c.v. as Congresswoman stated that she graduated ‘cum laude’ with a bachelor degree from the UP College of Law.) Imee did attend the school of law at the University of the Philippines, without the requisite undergraduate diploma. Her admission was granted on her commitment that her Princeton transcript would eventually follow. She knew that these were non-existent. Although her enrolment was obviously a strong-armed accommodation, her purported graduation at the time when it would have been due, was effectively opposed by morally upright UP law faculty, despite the Marcos dictatorship.

And here arose an egregious example of the bizarre and the lengths of folly, almost forgotten, engaged in by the Marcoses. Would you believe a mock graduation ceremony?

In a display of foolish vainglory, Imee’s followers and defenders posted on social media photographs of her supposed graduation. This was to counter the then burgeoning buzz about Imee’s fakery of being a UP Law graduate! The photos posted on the Internet with Imee clad in graduation ‘toga’ gown were real. The occasion showing a “costumed” Imee was not!

As it turns out, sometime in 1983, the Marcoses staged a televised ‘recognition ceremonies,’ a command performance, of an ersatz graduation at the Meralco Theater along Ortigas Avenue, with the President and the First Lady in attendance, for Imee’s benefit! Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Enrique Fernando, was asked to be in attendance, to witness Imee honored ‘magna cum laude,’ so said the “script.”

At this time, Imee was already an element of her father’s martial law apparatus. She was appointed chair of youth group called “Kabataang Barangay” and subsequently elected (1984) assemblywoman representing Ilocos Norte in the Philippine martial law parliament--Batasang Pambansa.

It was during her stint as chair of Kabataang Barangay that she figured in the torture and the gruesome killing of a student activist, Archimedes Trajano, with whom she had a run-in during an open forum. The circumstances are best described here:

• Remembering Archimedes Trajano

And fairly recently, both as representative and as governor of Ilocos Norte, I guess being a Marcos, Imee had to earn her spurs as heiress to skullduggery. She has yet to absolve herself from serious financial scandal involving irregular purchases with the use of tobacco excise tax collections, all unearthed by the national Commission on Audit.

For quite a long time now, there has been an unkind and unfair canard about Imee and her mother Let us demolish and perish this tall tale, once and for all.

Cutting to the chase, the ugly rumor hawked by gossipmongers says that Imee is Imelda Romualdez’s child by dalliance with then Manila Mayor Arsenio H. Lacson! The ‘proof’ of which were photos, juxtaposed in social media, of Imee and Lacson. The two, coincidentally, have visible mandibular similarity! WTF, am I talking about? Mandibles! Jaws! “Baba” in Filipino. That’s why Imee is teasingly tagged as “Babalina!”

This was supposed to have happened in March of 1953 when a young fresh-off-the-boat Imelda Romualdez, an also ran in a beauty contest for “Miss Manila." She protested and sobbed before Mayor Lacson, after which Imelda was given solace and crowned “Muse of Manila,” an unabashed consolation title! Malicious Manila simply added two and two, when the Marcoses were already Malacanang residents, thence the ‘bamboo telegraph’ never ceased!

Obviously, this canard was spun by the enemies of the Marcoses. But fair is fair and this one is absolutely not. Marcos and Imelda married, some fifteen months after the ‘Miss/Muse’ episode while Imee was born two and half years after. Furthermore, whatever else anyone can add to further pillory and punish an unrepentant Imelda, she has never been sexually loose or lax. Neither any of the Romualdez girls from Leyte.

And speaking about the Romualdezes, I remember an old photo of Imee’s grandfather, Don Vicente Orestes Romualdez, showing a slight protuberance and a downward jut of the jaw. I have also observed this same facial feature with some siblings of Imelda. So, enough about this imbecility of Imee’s Lacsonian jaws! Let us bury this one, for good, for eternity!

Nevertheless, Imee Marcos is a documented fraud and her jaws are genetically authentic. Now, she desires “a chance to be in the Senate!”

By-your-leave, ever by deceit and fakery, would you abide?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tomas 'Buddy' Gomez III began his professional media career in ABS-CBN's (previously Chronicle Broadcasting Network) DZQL-Radio Reloj in 1957, after which he spent 25 years with the Ayala Group.

In 1986, the then Pres. Cory Aquino appointed him Consul General to Hawaii and later served as her Press Secretary.

During the Ramos administration, he was chairman and president of state-owned IBC-13 Network.

After government service, he became an ‘OFW’ in the U.S., working as front-desk clerk and then assistant general manager of a hotel. He also worked as a furniture and antique restoration specialist.

He is now retired and lives in San Antonio, Texas.

His e-mail is: t.gomez@live.com