The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos
Chapter II ‘Manila-Gate’ “For a foreign head of state to attempt to bribe a congressional witness is unprecedented. The amazing story began a few months ago when Mijares walked out of Malacanang, the presidential palace, after three years as Marcos’ confidant and propagandist.” Thus read a key portion of the widely-syndicated “Washington Merry-GoRound” column of July 2, 1975.*1 (*1. Washington Post, Page F-ll. The New York Daily Post published in its July 3, 1975, issue an editorial on the same subject, entitled “Manila-Gate.”)
How true it is that Washington, D.C. has always been a situs for airing, and even violent settlement, of disputes between opposing factions of certain foreign governments. It is a favorite hunting ground for foreign governments in their recruitment of American senators and congressmen who might be willing to make trips to their countries where the special guests could be wooed with wine, women and whatever. The general idea is to improve the attitude of U.S. solons towards a beleaguered foreign government which might be having a bad image in official Washington or in the U.S. mass media. One of those established by Washington, D.C. observers as notorious for his massive lobbying campaign in the U.S. capital was Dominican Dictator Rafael Trujillo who had earned such a bad image of corruption and repression in his country at one time. However, it has been reported that Trujillo’s bribery and entertainment in the homeland, and the highly effective representation made by his ambassador have also succeeded in bringing about an improvement of the Trujillo image in Washington, D.C. In another area of counter-lobbying in the U.S. capital, agents of opposing foreign interests have resorted to assassinations in pursuit of their objectives. One victim of such assassinations was Colonel Yosef Alon, military attache of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., who was gunned down on July 1, 1973, by a group of assailants who escaped by car in the Maryland area. The Voice of Palestine Radio in Cairo subsequently claimed that Alon had been executed by their agents in reprisal for an assassination a few days earlier of an alleged Palestinian Black September representative in Paris. Philippine lobbying in Washington, D.C. as well as its Trujillo-like penchant for wooing visiting American officials has not received much denunciatory notices from the U.S. press. Obviously, much more attention has been concentrated on the authoritarian government which President Marcos imposed in Manila on the eve of the conclusion of his constitutionallyallowable eight-year hold on the Philippine presidency. It is a fact that the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda in the Primitivo Mijares
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