Many believe that Marcos’ body is already buried and the one displayed is only a mannequin.
Twenty-seven years after his death, Former Pres. Ferdinand Edralin Marcos is still a certified newsmaker. One of the unending ‘myths or truths’ about him is his lying body in a museum in Batac City Ilocos Norte which many believe is only a mannequin.
Many suspect that Marcos’ lies and deceptions did not end when he died in 1989 while in exile in Hawaii. A significant number of haters believe that the dictator’s ‘actual’ body is not the one displayed in the Marcos mausoleum but is only a life-sized, lifeless, wax figure being lulled by a Gregorian music playing endlessly.
They believe that the actual body is already buried somewhere, secretly.
But Elena Gaspar, a native of Sarrat, Ilocos Norte wants to prove the non-believers wrong.
Gaspar, who served as an altar girl when Marcos’ corpse was shipped to Ilocos Norte from Hawaii in 1993, said that the man that tourists can see in a refrigerated crypt in the Marcos mausoleum is indeed the dictator, Macoy.
Gaspar surfaced after gossips spread that the body lying on the crypt is not actually the former president. Doubts were aroused after some minds theorized the idea because Marcos still looks the same despite of two decades preservation.
Gaspar reiterated that she was a part of the entourage when the lifeless Marcos was brought home from Honolulu.
The corpse was mourned in a church in Guam before transported to Ilocos Norte.
Marcos preserved body is being maintained by mortician, Frank Malabed.
Malabed insists that the body visitors to the mausoleum see is that of the late dictator.
“Siya pa rin yan. Ang loob niyang mismo ay katawan niya,” Malabed says. “Nasa kanila [Marcos family] naman yan kung ano ang iniisip nila, di ba? Basta [ang] nakikkita nila, eto si ser, ang ating dating presidente.”
It turns out that Malabed was also the one who embalmed the late Ninoy Aquino in 1983.
When Marcos died in Hawaii in 1989, the family immediately called for him.
Malabed recalls that it took him 3 weeks to restore Marcos’ body back to the way Filipinos would recognize.
Ferdinand Marcos has remained unburied for 27 years, and he’s bound to remain so until the nation has decided whether he’s a hero, or a villain in Philippine history.