Claim: Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and his family calmly left Malacañang palace during the EDSA revolution.
Rating: FALSE
The Facts: A scene in the film Maid in Malacañang shows the Marcos family taking their time leaving the palace during the EDSA People Power Revolution. The dictator Marcos Sr. and his daughter Imee also supposedly checked if their outfits looked good. The film made it appear as if the Marcoses had all the time in the world to leave Malacañang and were in no rush to leave.
Several accounts state that the Marcoses left Malacañang in a hurry.
A Business Day report wrote an article entitled “Signs of Hasty Departure” on 27 February 1986 that the Marcos family had fled and that “they abandoned scores of precious family mementos as well as a lavish half-eaten meal in their silver service.” In the bedroom beside Imelda Marcos’s 12-foot-wide-bed was a half-eaten banana.
The Manila Times also wrote an article on the same day entitled “Palace Shows Signs of Frantic Escape”, which details how “scrawled notes were on the presidential desk, and a pile of bullets and guns lay on the floor, among others.” There are also more details on the half-eaten meal, it looked like curry in aluminum foil containers.
Marcos’ military aide for 21 years, Arturo C. Aruiza writes in his book “Ferdinand E. Marcos: Malacañang to Makiki” how the Presidential Palace became very busy before the Marcos family fleeing. He recounts how different kinds of luggage were transported to the Heroes Hall on the lower level of the Palace from the bedrooms upstairs.
“The traffic between the bedroom upstairs and Heroes Hall below grew more frenzied as all kinds of luggage made their way down. There were carton boxes, garment bags, duffel bags, travel bags, leather bags, attaché cases, Louis Vuitton bags, suitcases, and just plain boxes packed but their flaps left unsealed.”
“Back in the Palace that last night, things were in an uproar, all of us running around, grabbing at possessions, shouting last-minute instructions, trying to remember admonitions.”
Aruiza, A. C. (1991). Ferdinand E. Marcos: Malacañang to Makiki. ACA Enterprises.
This was also fact-checked by Rappler.
WHY WE FACT-CHECKED THIS:
This is historical distortion.
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