Imelda Marcos Pulls Out of Race

MANILA — Former First Lady Imelda Marcos bowed out of the Philippines presidential race Friday, saying that she had put up a good fight but that her votes had not been properly counted.

“Deep in our hearts we know we won, although subsequent events indicate that many of the ballots were not properly credited to me,” the widow of dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos said in a statement.

“It was a good and clean fight we conducted,” she said. “I had no money to spend on a sustained campaign.”

Marcos, who fled with her husband to Hawaii during a popular revolt that swept President Corazon Aquino into office in 1986, returned to the Philippines last November to face charges that she helped her husband to plunder up to $5 billion from the economy in their 20-year rule.