Marcos Clan Win Big In Philippine Elections: Wife Of Former Dictator Leads Clan’s Political Push, Wins Second Term In Congress

The family of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos enjoyed easy wins in Philippine elections, official data showed Tuesday, with the former strongman’s unrepentant 83-year-old wife leading the clan’s political charge, reports the AFP.

Imelda Marcos captured more than 88 percent of the votes cast on Monday to win her second consecutive term in the country’s lower house representing the family’s northern provincial stronghold, based on the Commission of Election’s official tally.

Election aides told the AFP that they expected Imelda Marcos to be proclaimed winner on Tuesday. Her daughter, Imee Marcos, was elected unopposed in the mid-term elections to get a second-term as governor of the province, Ilocos Norte.

The main rival of Mrs. Marcos, local lawyer Ferdinand Ignacio, conceded the race after only capturing ten percent of the vote.

Ignacio told the AFP that he “will congratulate her. There’s no point in sour-graping at this point. This is the essence of democracy.”

The cousin of Imee Marcos, Angelo Barba, completed the family sweep, as an uncontested candidate for provincial vice-governor, according to the Commission on Election’s website.

Meanwhile, the son of the late dictator and his namesake, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is half-way through a six-year term in the Philippine Senate and widely expected to run for president in 2016.

The Marcoses fled to the US in exile when a military-backed but peaceful uprising ended Ferdinand Marcos’s 20-year rule in 1986.

The dictator, his wife and their cronies were accused of stealing billions of dollars from state coffers and murdering or jailing thousands of critics, while living in extravagance as the majority of Filipinos endured crushing poverty.

Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection, jet-setting lifestyle and other extravagances, including closed-door shopping sprees in some of the world’s most expensive retailers, symbolize the excesses of her husband’s rule.

The government has so far recovered $4 billion from ill-gotten Marco assets, but Imelda and her family has maintained her stance that her family did nothing wrong. She has beaten all corruption charges against her.

After the family patriarch died in Hawaii in 1989, Marcos’s wife and children returned to the Philippines to begin rebuilding the family brand from Ilocos Norte.

Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., widely known in the country as Bong Bong, won support from one in three voters during the 2010 elections, giving hope to his mother’s publicly stated aspiration of returning to the presidential palace as “first mother.”