She has been all over Mindanao trying to convince Mindanaoans she’s on their side. In many of the campaign sorties VP Sara was with her. In a press meeting in Davao last Wednesday, Sen. Imee Marcos made no bones about her being a president’s sister. And she condemned those behind the plot to kidnap former President Rodrigo Duterte whom she described as frail yet was forcibly abducted, flown to The Hague, and incarcerated.

Imee insists the Philippines has a functioning judiciary and being a Filipino, Duterte should be tried in a Philippine court. She said the arrest of the former President was illegal, an insult to Filipino justices and lawyers. She recommended that criminal charges be filed against the conspirators, adding that she would give her all to indict them.

She admitted that not a few were doubtful of her stand against the kidnapping of Duterte because she is a Marcos. She was challenged by Sara to change her family name. But then Sara said that if she did that, it would be worse because her middle name is Romualdez.

At that point, Imee said rumors were running wild that there was a plan to replace Speaker Martin Romualdez. (The rumor was denied by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin in a memorandum issued by the Palace information office).

Senator Imee also called the Commission on Elections to the scheme of the administration to sell rice at P20 per kilo. She claimed it’s tantamount to vote buying since it’s being done on the eve of the 12 May elections. Furthermore, she questioned the motive behind selling the cheap rice only in Cebu.

Imee revealed that she has not been on talking terms with her brother, the President, since 2021. “Napakaraming ambisyosong tao sa (There are too many ambitious people in) Malacañang,” she said.

She said she was out of the administration circle and was running for reelection as an Independent. It is important that with the impeachment of Vice President Sara, she said, pro-Duterte candidates must be elected as they will be the senator-judges during the trial.

She also said she has the distinction of standing against various issues raised against Duterte.

Come to think of it, she is right.

She appealed to Dabawenyos and Mindanoans to vote for her. There were important historical issues that she obviously missed in the course of her campaign. While she painstakingly, I must say, put across her position against what the government did to former President Duterte, she forgot vital facts that could boost her candidacy.

That it was her father who energized 85 percent of Mindanao by tapping the Maria Cristina falls as a source of hydropower. It was the late President Marcos Sr. who declared Mindanao the next food basket of the country and thereafter supported this with the massive construction of irrigation systems in the undivided Cotabato. It was her dad who emancipated the tenants from the bondage of tenancy.

It was her father too who put up the National Grains Authority (NGA) which freed the farmers from the unscrupulous rice traders. NGA bought fresh harvests of palay at twice the price of the traders, resulting in an unprecedented bonanza for farmers. The NGA was later renamed the National Food Authority with an adjunct agency, the Food Terminal Inc., to include perishable products, especially from Mindanao. Among these were poultry products, vegetables, fruits and fish. NFA rice buying stations were equipped with solar dryers, silos and rice mills.

The Millennials are not aware of the legacy of Imee’s father in Mindanao. I cannot blame them because the NFA for one, including the FTI in Taguig, was mothballed by the Cory Aquino administration. The multi-billion-peso facilities were left to rot and rust and be cannibalized. The valuable FTI real estate in Taguig was sold to the mestizos of Makati who had helped oust the dictatorship in the Edsa revolt.

It’s strange that in today’s much ballyhooed programs to address the rice and other food shortages, Marcos Jr. seems oblivious to the legacy of his father, which included the blueprints for the NFA which at one time made the Philippines a rice exporting country.

Time and events might have expunged these important chapters from the national consciousness even as we elected Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Today, with the advent of the midterm elections, we are a nation divided due to what the President’s sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, termed as the “kidnapping” of former President Rodrigo Duterte, the leader who buried her father in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Last Wednesday, during a hurriedly assembled presscon, she appealed to Mindanaoans to support her bid for reelection. “Just write Imee.”