Imelda Marcos’ 3,000 Pairs Of Shoes: Monument To Despotism?

Seen as the scope of plunder for those of us on the disadvantaged side of the 20-year long dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, are the 3,000 pairs of the former Philippine First Lady a fitting monument to despotism?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that the rate of extreme poverty more or less remained the same since one of Asia’s most feared dictators by the name of Ferdinand Marcos was booted out on that famed relatively bloodless EDSA Revolution of 1986, the recent BBC coverage of that notorious Imelda Marcos’ 3,000 pairs of shoes falling into disrepair due to recent floods and years of unchecked termite damage since their sequestration by the PCGG only raised more questions about the method of the former Philippine First Lady’s madness when she decides to have a runaway shoe fetish when most working class Filipinos can barely afford an extra emergency pair of shoes, never mind three square meals a day. With all that’s been said and done, will this make Imelda Marcos’ 3,000 pairs of shoes nothing more than an anachronism of the long-gone decade of the economic excesses of the go-go 1980s, or a genuine monument to despotism?

Given the very terrible civil war currently going on in Syria could have happened here in the Philippines if the Marcos Dictatorship had stubbornly clung on to power, the news coverage of the shoes being renovated as just a mere trivial curiosity from a conspicuous consumption at the expense of the poverty stricken from a bygone age only raises painful memories to those who have endured through the Marcos Dictatorship first hand and to the younger generation of Filipinos who had never experienced first hand how it is like to have their whole village secretly massacred by government soldiers under the behest of a bloodthirsty dictator. I just hope that this won’t devolve into some historical footnote written by delusional war criminals that managed to evade prosecution and now has inexplicably managed to acquire their own political constituency.