Upon receiving the clinical verdict of Dr. Robert Collins that the triumphing circumstance of his fitness does now not warrant, once more, absenting himself from the already re-set agenda of his look earlier than Judge Keenan in New York City, all of Marcos’ plotted felony maneuvers were rendered unable to avoid the inevitable. That is the inevitability of his day in court docket. His most dreaded appointment with the future, his indictment for a quarter-billion-dollar racketeering rate, an insignificant 4 days away.
For twenty years, right here became the chief dictator of a country he had ruthlessly dominated and mercilessly pillaged, now a capability felon already exposed to the decision of public opinion and awaiting the confirming gallows of history! However, it needs to were nerve-wracking and emotionally painful no longer to the factor of mindlessness for a known grasp schemer of political procedures! The devilishly high-quality thoughts of Ferdinand E. Marcos need to have known through that same afternoon that the American judicial machine not afforded him wiggle room to vindicate himself, despite repeated rhetoric to the opposite.
My skeptical thoughts and exactly because of the verified unimpeachable facts I turned into to collect led me to finish that most effective a motel to an unstable gamble is now left available to a mind that would have already been disturbed and annoyed. Ferdie has now not been conversant in no longer being on top of things! No greater wiggle room! It is, indeed, such depths of desperation that demanded a vehement, albeit foolhardy, remaining ditch non-legal subterfuge. Was Marcos, possibly, communing along with his Mephistopheles?
That Faustian good deal ought to best have taken the form and shape of self-induced incapacity. If he should only calculatingly make himself virtually significantly ill, Dr. Weld and Dr. Collins be damned! Marcos may additionally have deemed such gamble became the fastest and handiest method to over again keep away from his arraignment. And so he applied a movement plan he became in no way ever been known to have performed earlier than! Marcos resorted to overloading his digestive gadget, clogging his trachea, and ultimately, expediently priming himself for hospitalization. Innocently and unknowingly? I have my reasonable doubts.
Already a sick man, he changed into gambling with his lifestyle. A chance he deemed really worth taking. Medical brinkmanship! Up to that moment, the gamble paid off. In fact, his January 19 appointment in Judge Keenan’s courthouse turned into cast off one more time. On January 15, an afternoon after Dr. Collins’ visit, Marcos becomes admitted to the St. Francis Medical Center. This, for the final time. He became never again to leave his sickroom alive. Within hours of Dr. Collins’ departure within the afternoon of January 14, Ferdie fed himself with an unexpected meal, most uncommon for a person recognized for his spartan food plan! ‘Pops,’ ‘Tinola,’ and ‘Pinakbet,’ remember? Marcos feasted on “ Big Macs, two massive fries and milkshakes!” He supped on my own in his Makiki Heights residence.
I even have absolutely no cause to disbelieve my supply of statistics. He is journalist Tim Ryan, then reporting for the now-defunct Honolulu Star-Bulletin, an afternoon daily. Tim Ryan had access to the Makiki residence of the Marcoses, having won the friendship of the previous First Lady. In reality, it turned into thru Tim Ryan that Meldy sent me a personal invitation, many weeks later when the affected person turned into already in a precarious situation, to return and see for myself the situation of Ferdie, “even at three o’clock inside the morning” so that no one might recognize! Meldy’s objective becomes presumably that I could record to President Cory what I become to behold–a completely unwell man that “ought to be allowed to die in his own u. S ..” I did not respond to the invitation, but someone else did. That, for any other episode.
I become privileged to have come across this eye-witness ‘burger and fries’ account via Tim Ryan, who shared it with me. His eye-witness source is a local Hawaiian-Portuguese protection detail within the service of the Marcoses. According to Tim, he was a neighbor. I never came to understand his call. He advised Tim Ryan, a day after — as I do not forget, that it turned into the ex-President Marcos himself who despatched him on an errand to buy the hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes. And he saw Ferdie gobble up the goodies! So Tim Ryan mentioned to me.
Neither Tim Ryan, tons much less the Portagee protection element (that’s how Hawaiian-Portuguese mestizos are teasingly cited) may have been aware of the import and impact of that ‘Big Mac’ errand at the time that it took place. Perhaps, days after, I may additionally have shared my skeptical observation with Tim Ryan.
Let me digress a chunk. It is a relevant sidelight of the Marcos Hawaiian exile. While they were visitors at Hickham Airbase, upon fleeing the Philippines and a couple of weeks after but previous to entering into their extra everlasting Makiki quarters, the US authorities provided the exiles with considered necessary safety employees.
Thereafter, they had to lease similar employees, from their own pockets, should such offerings be deemed wanted. The US Government had restricted to the unfastened accommodations granted in advance. In fact, Mayor Frank Fasi of Honolulu turned into very vocal approximately now not expanding City resources for the exiles.
At the advice of Gov. George Ariyoshi, who welcomed the Marcoses upon their February 26, 1986 arrival, the Hawaiian Protective Association (HPA) became hired to relaxed Makiki and their principals. The HPA was owned via an influential and controversial political strength-broking in Hawaii. A sure Mr. Larry Mehau. I don’t forget him to be tender spoken, impressively genial however burly and barrel-chested. I had met him years earlier via my boss in Ayala, Don Enrique Zobel. Larry Mehau changed into a former Police Officer and a cattle rancher on the Big Island. Larry changed into a close accomplice of the Governor and turned into the type who had a non-public range direct line to the Governor. He was known if you want to set up an appointment with the Governor proper instant.
Even granting the absence of malintent and subterfuge on the part of the ill Mr. Marcos, that he partook of an unusual menu definitely alien to what he’s familiar with, is a reality. The reality of that “strange menu” is what caused his go back to St. Francis, inside hours by the sequence of said and known activities and sports. With the moderately credible deduction, I concluded that the proximate motive of Marcos’ final hospitalization become certainly traceable to “two Big Macs, two massive fries and milkshakes.” The irreversible deterioration of his health started, sequentially, almost without delay after he reentered St. Francis.
Marcos efficiently refrained from the judgment of the New York Federal Court, effectively stopping Judge John F. Keenan from attempting him for racketeering. That, too, is the truth. Arguably, both by his very own machinations or may be independent, via his personal illnesses. However, it had become simple to me that if his ultimate hospitalization changed into an aware calculation, via his self-crafted malevolent guile, Marcos then had unwittingly sentenced himself to the lifestyles hereafter, ahead of the Lord’s timetable!
