The ailing mother of deposed President Ferdinand Marcos on Tuesday slipped into semiconscious-ness after asking President Corazon Aquino to allow her son to return as "my dying wish."
There was no reaction from Aquino to the request of 95-year-old Josefa Edralin-Marcos, who was hospitalized Sunday with pneumonia and diabetes. The military chief hinted the armed forces command opposed a Marcos return.Dr. Sergio Brillantes, director of the Veterans Medical Center, said Edralin-Marcos' condition had worsened. He said her kidneys were failing but that her blood pressure was too low for dialysis.
"Dona Josefa Marcos has deteriorated quite rapidly since yesterday," Brillantes told The Associated Press. "Her level of consciousness is deteriorating. She is semicomatose."
Later, Brillantes told radio station DZXL that Edralin-Marcos' condition was "very, very bad and the prognosis is very poor at the moment."
Edralin-Marcos stayed behind in February 1986 when a military-civilian uprising drove her son to exile in Hawaii and brought President Aquino to power. Aquino has refused to allow Marcos to come back.
Aquino's staff said the presidential palace received a letter Tuesday from Edralin-Marcos asking that her son be allowed to return to be with her in her final hours.
"My end beckons me," said the letter, the text of which was released by the presidential palace. "I know I am about to render my own accounting with my maker. I leave our world content.
"My dying wish is to see my Ferdinand by my bedside, as I say goodbye to all of you who have been part of my mundane existence."