Speculations that decades of enmity between the Marcos and Aquino clans may be at an end.
This began when Josh and Bimby Aquino, children of movie actress and TV host Kris Aquino, paid a surprise visit to First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos last week at her office.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said there was nothing wrong with his wife meeting with the two Aquinos, who addressed her as “tita” (Tagalog for aunt) as the pair were related to the First Lady by affinity.
Moreover, the President said his family’s relations with the Aquinos was “good” as the only differences between the two camps were political in nature, not personal.
He described the visit as “personal” and a “human interaction” between the two families.
Josh and Bimby went to the Office of the First Lady in Manila bearing gifts and posing for pictures. They had just returned from the US, where they visited their mother.
Their mother Kris is the youngest sister of the late President Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino lll and daughter of the late President Cory Aquino.
Prior to leaving for the US where she has been in and out of hospitals for the last three years, facing a number of serious auto-immune issues, Kris Aquino was a big movie and TV star, who had become independently wealthy due to her business acumen.
She invested most of her showbiz earnings to a variety of businesses related to food, transportation and real estate. During the presidency of her brother called PNoy, she was the Philippines’ number one taxpayer following a string of hit movies as well as a top-rated talk show on TV in tandem with Boy Abunda.
She had also appeared in a Hollywood film, Crazy Rich Asians.
The First Lady posted on her Facebook page, “Thank you Bimby and Josh. It was so nice to see you guys after all these years.”
One of the three photos she posted was in front of a Philippine flag. She was donning a yellow dress, coincidentally the signature color of Cory Aquino during her presidency.
Political analysts said a rapprochement between the Marcos and Aquino families was not impossible. Former senator Bam Aquino – cousin to Kris and her siblings – said last month that he was mulling a return run to the Senate.
He neither confirmed nor denied the possibility of running under the umbrella of President Marcos.
Kris Aquino herself had announced before she fell ill that she wanted to run for senator.
One probable party in the warming of relations between the two camps is Mar Araneta Roxas, Interior and Local Government secretary under Noynoy Aquino. He is related by blood to the First Lady and last year attended a public function in his home province, seated beside President Marcos.
The last time the Marcos and Aquino families met in public was during the wake of former president Cory in 2009. Then Rep. Bongbong Marcos, his wife Liza, and sister Imee went to the Manila Cathedral to pay their respects to the fallen president.
Since assuming the presidency, the Marcos administration has been sending flowers to the crypts of Ninoy, Cory, and Noynoy Aquino at the Manila Memorial Park every All Saints’ Day.
Decades ago, there was a stage play on an imagined romance between Bongbong Marcos and Kris Aquino. Neither camp contested its being staged.
Liza Marcos is the niece of Rosario Cacho, who married Don Pedro Cojuangco, older brother of Cory. Don Pedro is therefore the uncle-in-law by marriage of Bongbong Marcos.
