Imee Marcos

Maria Imelda Josefa Remedios "Imee" Romualdez Marcos (born November 12, 1955) is a Filipina politician and former actress serving as a Senator since 2019.

She is the daughter of Ferdinand Marcos and former first lady Imelda Marcos and the older sister of the current president, Bongbong Marcos.

Imee Marcos was born on November 12, 1955, in Mandaluyong (then a municipality in Rizal) as the eldest child of former president Ferdinand Marcos, and former first lady Imelda Marcos, both of whom exercised autocratic rule over the Philippines from December 1965 to February 1986.

She has three other siblings: Bongbong Marcos, a former senator and currently president; Irene Marcos-Araneta,; and Aimee Marcos, who was adopted.

She turned ten years old the day after her father was elected in 1965.

In 1973, Imee Marcos enrolled at Princeton University, where she took a variety of courses in religion and politics though she did not declare an academic major.

Marcos's stay at Princeton was marred with controversy with black and Asian students (Asian-American Students Association - AASA) protesting her admission for allowing the daughter of a dictator to study at the university and as a potential threat to students who opposed the Marcos regime.

With her interest in media, she helped establish the Metro Manila Popular Music Festival in 1978, and was made director general of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines in 1982.

She was already 30 years old by the time her family was ousted from power in the People Power Revolution of 1986, after which she and her husband Tommy Manotoc were exiled in Morocco.

After the death of Ferdinand Marcos in 1989, President Corazon Aquino allowed the Marcoses to return to the Philippines in 1991.

Imee soon ran for political office, and won three terms in the House of Representatives and three terms as governor of Ilocos Norte.

Imee Marcos's conviction in the 1993 Trajano v. Marcos case (978 F 2d 493) before the U.S. district court in Honolulu is noted in U.S. legal circles for exposing the weaknesses of the act of state doctrine, allowing for similar suits to be filed.

She has been linked to the stolen wealth of her family, identified as a beneficiary of various Marcos offshore holdings as revealed in the Panama Papers and the findings in the court convictions of her mother Imelda Marcos.

These holdings were defined as "ill-gotten wealth" by the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and are the subject of repatriation efforts by the Presidential Commission on Good Government.

In an interview with her family-backed Filipinas Magazine in 1999, she admitted that she was uncomfortable living in the palace because it was too confining, very formal, and fixed.

She also added that it is "not necessarily the most appropriate place to bring up a kid but it was quite nice".

While residing at the palace, Marcos asserted that she attended 'regular' schools in Manila.

However, she had to discontinue her education due to the challenges faced by the First Family in going out caused by protest rallies outside Malacañang.

These rallies, met with military assaults resulting in numerous Filipino deaths, were a response to her family's enduring conjugal dictatorship that spanned over two decades.

She previously served as governor of Ilocos Norte from 2010 to 2019 and as representative of Ilocos Norte's 2nd district from 1998 to 2007.

Imee Marcos's political career began during her father's martial law regime.

She turned 18—the age of majority in the Philippines—just fourteen months after her father's declaration of Martial Law, and later became Chairperson of the Kabataang Barangay (KB) and a member of the Batasang Pambansa.

It was during her KB term that activist Archimedes Trajano was abducted, tortured, and murdered shortly after publicly questioning her appointment to the office.

In the book Some Are Smarter Than Others, author Ricardo Manapat reveals that after the EDSA revolution, investigators from the Presidential Commission on Good Government found out that Marcos's tuition, US$10,000 monthly allowance, and the 18th-century estate she stayed in while studying at Princeton was paid for using taxpayer money that could be traced partly to the intelligence funds of the Office of the President, and partly to some of the 15 bank accounts that the Marcoses had secretly opened in the US under assumed names.

Imee Marcos's time as a student at Princeton became a public issue once again in 2018, when she filed her candidacy for the Philippine Senate in the 2019 elections.

Marcos claimed in numerous venues, including a campaign leaflet and her official website, that she had graduated from Princeton.

This resulted in social media uproar which brought up old news articles to show that Imee Marcos had not.

On her campaign website, Marcos uploaded an official biography that claimed that she was "one of the first female graduates from an Ivy League School—Princeton University, graduating with honors," but this claim was quickly disproved by news reports and on social media.

In addition, she had stated in her curriculum vitae during her stay in the House of Representatives that she had graduated with honors from Princeton with an "Independent Major in Religion and Politics".

In a later interview with news anchor Tina Marasigan on DZMM TeleRadyo, she was asked whether she really graduated from Princeton or not, and whether her status as a Princeton graduate could be proven.

She evaded the question and answered:

"Yes, correct: it really is the season -- it's election season even though it hasn't been declared by COMELEC. This was also done to Bongbong and to others we know. My record speaks for itself. I think, performance-wise, we can see that we know what we are doing and we were able to help many. Most of all, we have many solutions that can help the multitude. I believe that this is the first generation in which we can really end hunger and poverty. The science is already there for agriculture, the medicine is also there so that no one will die from infections and other diseases. So we really have no excuse. There is also big data and technology so we can monitor each and every poor person in the Philippines. Let us end poverty in this decade."

The ABS-CBN News network noted that the video went viral as Marcos opted not to answer the question.

This was seconded by InterAksyon, pointing out that Marcos "avoided answering the question and instead diverted the topic to the scholastic records of her brother Bongbong Marcos."

After her stay at Princeton, she then enrolled at the University of the Philippines College of Law.

She was elected to the Senate in the 2019 elections.

During the 2019 elections, Marcos's educational background has been steeped in controversy.

Under her parents' conjugal dictatorship, Marcos graduated from at least four schools (including three universities), she graduated as "Cum Laude" and "class valedictorian" in two public occasions.

Marcos claimed that she graduated as class valedictorian from Santa Catalina Convent (now called Santa Catalina School) in Monterey, California.

On 21 March 2019, the assistant head of the Santa Catalina school, John Aimé, stated the following: "'(Imee Marcos) attended our school for a brief period in the fall of 1972 — she is not a graduate.' "