Imelda is right this time: Those priceless jewels of the Czar and Shah of Persia must not be sold

Do you know what the PCGG – which ought to have been scrapped as a government agency at least four years ago – is trying desperately to auction off in fire-sale fashion through Christie’s, the international "quick fix" but glittering pawn shop of worldwide repute? A priceless and irreplaceable collection collected by the ex-Superma’am, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, at the height of the Marcos hegemony.

The Presidential Commission on Good Government, which was created by the government of Cory C. Aquino just after the Macoy dictatorship was toppled in 1986 to make sure the stolen "loot" was recovered and the stolen banks and corporations "sequestered" from Macoy, his family, and his cronies, and kept secure for their true stockholders and owners, is amazingly still in the bank and corporation control, and the "selling" business, nineteen years later.

By golly, the PCGG’s writ should have expired five or six years ago really. I say this even though its last chairperson, as I’ve written often enough, was our much-admired, longtime friend, the indomitable Haydee Yorac. It was not Haydee’s fault, and she did her job with her usual integrity, courage and chutzpah even when she was being wracked by what turned out to be her fatal illness.

Now, a new PCGG chairman, Ricardo Abcede has suddenly decided to take the Imeldific collection from its repository in the Bangko Sentral and get the London auction house to rush its sale because he argues the "government needs the money." That’s always the excuse: the government needs the money, or "the people are starving and need the money"! The PCGG claims the sequestered Imelda jewellery hoard and that of Greek national Demetrious Roumeliotes would fetch some $10 million or so.

My response to this is: STOP! Those collections should belong to our National Museum, or a National Gallery of Arts and Treasures, to be seen by our people and be an attraction to the non-existent, for the moment, millions of tourists we are seeking to attract to our shores. The Philistines in our government, starting with the completely unimaginative officials (and not-too-secretly voracious bureaucrats who infested even the "saintly" Cory regime) went on a wild selling spree after Marcos fell – but where did the money they earned from selling off the Marcos buildings, plus the Imeldific art collections and fantastic silvers, actually go? Can anybody tell us?

Now comes the fire-sale, again through Christie’s, of the jewellery. In a press conference last week, Abcede admitted the PCGG wants to target a November auction in Geneva, then one in New York next May. Ominously, the brand-new Chairman reportedly added: "We might sell the Malacañang and Honolulu collections first, then the Roumeliotes."

We owe one thing to Abcede: even I did not realize we still had so much left of the original jewellery and other precious items and objets d'art. I thought we had lost almost ALL of the treasures, by the Cory Administration recklessly and foolishly having auctioned them off at stupidly give-away prices – either through Christie’s of London (No. 8 King st., Saint James) or by Sotheby’s of New York. (Sotheby’s is at 1334 York ave., at 72nd st. in my old hometown of New York).

I know Christie’s a bit, having attended auctions there a couple of times – it’s just around the corner from where I pick up some of my lead soldiers for my collection ("soldaditos de plomo", as they’re called in Spanish, the Armory of St. James.

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The televiewing public was awed when it got a rare, first-time glimpse of the portion of the "confiscated" Imelda jewellery, which was flashed on TV.

Yesterday afternoon, the former First Lady herself, Madam Imelda, saw me in the lobby of the Makati Shangri-la Hotel and came over, attired in a stunning blue terno. She sang out: "Max, you’re the one I want to see!" Her first question was: "Why did you put the bust of Ferdie on the front page, looking like a skull (bungo)?" She was referring to the twin photos of the Great Stone Face of the late President Ferdinand Marcos which the STAR ran last Wednesday to portray what the bust looked like today in Tuba, La Union, on the Marcos highway to Baguio after it had been "bombed" by New People’s Army rebels two years ago. The photos – a before-and-after set of pictures had been published to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of martial law last September 21.

The second thing Imelda brought up was: "Please don’t let them sell off the jewellery collection! They belong to the Filipino people and must be enjoyed by our people – put them in a museum where they can be exhibited."

She pointed out that the value of the collection she had accumulated went far beyond their monetary value. "Those are the Romanov jewels – of the Czar; the Fabergés of the Russian Czarist regime which cannot be replaced; part of the jewellery of the late Shah of Iran and other fabulous gems and crown jewels!"

Imelda complained that the Cory government had disposed of all those wonderful buildings in New York City, like the Crown building on New York’s Fifth avenue (just across from the Trump Tower), the building on Wall street, the PAL building in San Francisco’s foremost park, Union Square, facing the Dewey memorial statue commemorating the Battle of Manila Bay, and other structures worth many times more today.

That’s the question I myself have been asking for years: Where did the money go? As usual, the stampede to "sell off" those buildings at a giveaway bargain-price was: "The government needs the money!"

It reminds one of Madam Roland’s cry, as the tumbrils went rolling towards the guillotine: "Oh liberty! How many crimes are committed in thy name!"

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In my estimation, the worst "fire sale" of all was the auctioning off of the marvelous Rennaissance paintings and collections of Italian art which might have been the main attraction of our National Museum – making Manila the site of a mini-Louvre or a tiny equivalent of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. As soon as those paintings collected by Imeldific and her army of art-procurers and "experts" (who must have earned themselves fat commissions) went on the auction block, I hear the Italian government quickly snapped up most of the paintings on offer – attesting to their worth. We’ll never get a chance, nor have the funds, to gather together such a collection again, not in this or the next lifetime! And where did the money go?

Then there were the silvers which also went on the block – and were gone in a flash.

While we still have them: Let’s keep the jewellery, and for once do the right thing. Don’t let the acquisitive Christie’s bunch get their fingers on them – again!

Sure, the auction house founded by James Christie in London on December 5, 1766, is prestigious and has a long, chrome-plated history. It conducted the greatest auctions of the 18th and 19th centuries, including that of conveying Sir Robert Walpole’s collection of paintings to Russia’s Empress Catherine the Great, today one of the stellar displays of the famed Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg – a museum which has more Rembrandts than Holland, and more French Impressionists than France’s Louvre.

But this doesn’t mean that Christie’s should get our own paltry, but still glittering "treasures", too. Let’s keep them as the patrimony of our people – despite the fact that it was the kleptocracy of the martial law hegemony that acquired them for us. It’s true, our people cannot "eat" jewellery. But not by bread alone does man live.

I join Imeldific in her plea. We must save what’s left.

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Speaker Jose de Venecia rang me up last night from the airport in Washington DC. (That’s the advantage of the cellphone, even after the "Hello Garci" imbroglio). In any event, JDV was calling me to reassure me that he would be back in Manila on time to address our Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC) Congressional Dinner at the Inter-Con Ballroom next Monday night, Sept. 26.

"I’m here at the airport now, headed for Los Angeles, then onwards by Philippine Airlines to Manila," the Speaker said.

Joe recounted that he had been very busy, but productively busy during his six days in Washington DC. He had delivered four speeches, he noted: First at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), then the World Bank. During these sessions, he related, the open forum and discussions took two hours each. He also spoke before the Heritage Foundation, the "Republican think-tank" and engaged in earnest discussion and dialogue with its members.

He recalled that along with Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo, he had called on one of the veterans of the US Senate, the World War II hero, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii – and Inouye had been so impressed (according to Joe) with GMA’s "debt for equity" proposal that the Senator had it read into the US Congressional Record. Another important meeting he held was with Ambassador John Negroponte, who’s now Chief of Intelligence for the United States (12 intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, report to him).

JDV said that it is Negroponte who gives American President George W. Bush his daily intelligence briefing. John, who used to be US Ambassador to Manila, is of course not only familiar with our country but has many friends here. (He and Diane used to come to our home for dinner – and when he was assigned as Ambassador to Baghdad had messaged me through Larry Baja to tell me where he was going). We’re glad he got back safely from Baghdad where he was chief of mission of the biggest and most embattled US Embassy in the world, with 3,000 flak-vested staffers, I heard. Negroponte’s stint in the United Nations is what made his reputation as a tough, hardworking, eloquent diplomat – it also aged him ten years in the rundown to the invasion of Iraq in which he crossed swords with so many of his peers in justifying the assault on Fortress Saddam Hussein.

In John’s case, I agree with JDV that we have a true friend of our country and advocate in the White House.

JDV also reports he met with the National Security Council and briefed its members on the situation here, then with the Export-Import Bank. He further met with another former envoy to Manila, Ambassador Richard Solomon, whose agency today handles "conflict situations". It takes a Joe de V. to wander through the maze of Washington’s Byzantine bureaucracy and cut through the Gordian Knot of its decision-making.

Joe was also, by his account, busy in New York. He spoke at the Speakers’ Summit in the United Nations General Assembly, addressed the Prime Ministers’ inter-action forum, and addressed the UNDP session there. One thing is sure: When they call Joe "The Speaker of the House," it is not just a symbolic title. He can really speak – at times, talk your head off.

Truth to tell, I’m proud to have been his professor in the vanished days of youth – but you won’t catch this old curmudgeon of a columnist admitting this too often in public.

Come hear him speak for himself next Monday at our MOPC dinner-forum in the Inter-Con. JDV never runs out of colorful tales to tell.