Father’s joke made Imee Marcos ‘reluctant’ to run for Senate

MANILA, Philippines — Saying she had been reluctant to run for the Senate for years, Sen. Imee Marcos on Monday recalled her late father’s “wicked humor” that senators just conspired to be President and play golf.

Marcos spoke to Senate employees during Monday’s flag-raising ceremony, where she was the guest.

According to her, she had been urged to run for senator for two decades, but she was reluctant to accept, opting instead to run for local office.

“In my mind, I did not want to become a senator,” she said, explaining that this was due to the memory of her father, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who served as senator before he became President.

Mountains of documents

She recalled seeing him behind mountains of documents in his office.

“I am a senator,” she remembered her father as saying. “We don’t go to work. We conspire to be President and we play golf. But mostly we conspire to be President.”

Marcos said this made her wonder what a senator really did.

What convinced her to run for the Senate, she said, was the election of President Rodrigo Duterte.

“There are many changes and there are many new laws needed for the transformation of our society to be exciting. So now I am motivated,” she said.

“For the next six years, I enjoin you, therefore, to be my Senate family, to please be generous with your vision and experience in this [chamber] and guide me through the noise and hysteria, the media blood and gore, to focus more importantly, on the senators’ new task, the real work of genuine lawmaking,” she added.