First Lady quits top panel post

Press, 23 November 1983, Page 10

First Lady quits top panel post

NZPA-AP Manila The Philippines’ First Lady, Imelda Marcos, has resigned from the powerful executive committee and renounced any presidential ambitions. And President Ferdinand Marcos’s governing party has proposed the restoration of the vice-presidency it abolished 11 years ago.

Opposition politicians dismissed the moves as ploys to defuse a Government crisis and to satisfy uneasy foreign creditors. Mrs Marcos’s speech in the National Assembly came as an estimated 75,000 anti-Government demonstrators marched through the central Philippine city of Bacolod. In Manila the military and police went on full alert in anticipation of demonstrations to mark the fifty-

first birthday on Sunday of the late opposition leader, Benigno Aquino. His assassination on August 21 has strained the nation’s political and economic stability and triggered

calls for Mr Marcos to resign from the office he has held for 18 years. Mrs Marcos, aged 54, remains a member of Parliament, Governor of Metropolitan Manila, and Minister of Human Settlements. The Opposition has accused her of designs on the presidency. But in her speech she said: “I have no intention of running for President, the post will be filled in Presidential elections in 1987 when Mr Marcos’s term ends.” The proposed amendment also designates the Speaker of the National Assembly, a retired Supreme Court Justice, Querube Makalintal, aged 72, to act as President in the interim if Mr Marcos, who is 66, is unable to complete his term.