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Imelda Marcos celebrates 80th birthday in style

Imelda Marcos celebrated her 80th birthday in style, but she took time to tell some 1,000 glittering guests that the best gift she will ever get is her family's vindication.

  • By Barbara Mae Dacanay, Bureau Chief
  • Published: 23:26 July 3, 2009
  • Gulf News

  • Imelda Marcos (centre) is escorted by her grandsons during her 80th birthday party in a hotel in suburban Manila on Thursday.
  • Image Credit: AP

Manila: Former First Lady Imelda Marcos celebrated her 80th birthday in style, but she took time to tell some 1,000 glittering guests that the best gift she will ever get is her family's vindication.

Instead, she got a pair of pink stilettos from pro-administration senior official Bayani Fernando, former mayor of suburban Marikina, a shoe-making town.

"Oh thank you, I have one more pair of shoes," Marcos smiled as her well-heeled guests applauded.

Bayani, head of Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (which was Marcos's post in the past), said he wanted his gift to be added to her famous collection of 3,000 pair of shoes.

Feigning innocence of alleged graft, which her infamous shoe collection came to symbolise, Marcos said "my critics and detractors only found shoes" when the former first family was ousted by a people-backed military mutiny in 1986.

At her lavish party at Sofitel, which she claimed was given by her relatives, friends, and supporters, Marcos confessed: "For me, the best gift is for the truth about the Marcoses to surface."

Predicting that all the cases filed against her by the government will be dismissed, she said, "We will be vindicated. I have no case that will lose."

To be cleared of these cases would be like "a perfect gift from heaven", said Mrs. Marcos, adding "the truth about my family" will really be her best gift on the 80th birthday.

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