ost Filipinos, including those living outside the Philippines heaved a collective sigh of relief at the news that Imelda Marcos has decided to bury the remains of her late husband, former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in Ilocos Norte; in effect, giving-up her seventeen-year quest of a Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery) burial. The remains of the late strongman who passed away in September, 1989, while exiled in Hawaii, has been embalmed in a refrigerated crypt awaiting burial ever since.

Despite the Marcos clan's yearning to put a positive "spin" on the former president's legacy, for most Filipinos, Ferdinand Marcos will always be remembered as the ruthless dictator whose unbridled greed and ambition plunged the country into a cultural, moral, and economic morass that it has yet to extract itself from today—twenty years after he was driven from power.

Libingan ng mga Bayani remains one of the few sacrosanct "institutions" in today's Philippines, uncorrupted by the blatant commercialism that seems to pervade all levels of Philippine Society. For the majority of Filipinos, the damage that Ferdinand Marcos single-handedly wrought on the country will never be forgotten and thus a burial with honors at Libingan will never be allowed to take place.