Monday, Feb. 17, 1986
By George Russell.
The contest
could never really have been called fair. On one
side was an ailing but wily autocrat, whose
authority was waning but whose hands remained
firmly clenched around the levers of political
power. On the other was an unassuming but
determined housewife-crusader, whose political
resources were meager but whose brief and
meteoric candidacy had fanned the desire of
millions of her countrymen for political change.
What had kept the mismatched sides in balance
during the course of their 57-day election
battle was a promise as potent in appeal as it
was frail in prospect. The hope was that the
issue would be decided democratically.
In that
uncertain balance, at least for a moment last
week, hung the future of the Philippines, a once
vibrant Asian archipelago that is wallowing in
social and economic stagnation and bedeviled by
a growing Communist insurgency. On foot, by
horse cart, even by boat, upwards of 24 million
Philippine voters went to the polls to do
something they had not done for 16 years: freely
select a President. The choice appeared to be
clear-cut. The candidates were President
Ferdinand Marcos, 68, who has ruled for 20 years
from the Spanish colonial-style Malacanang
Palace, and Challenger Corazon Aquino, 53, who
in the space of just ten weeks had emerged as
the standard- bearer of a new force in the
country, known as "people power."
There was only
one clear-cut thing about the election ritual
that unfolded at some 90,000 polling stations
around the Philippines. Sporadically at first,
then with increasing blatancy, the long-awaited
exercise was marred by unsettling levels of
violence, fraud, vote buying and ballot theft.
More than a day after the polls closed, the
official vote count by the Marcos-dominated
Commission on Elections (COMELEC) had slowed to
a crawl. Communications linking that effort to a
parallel, informal vote count by a volunteer
organization known as the National Citizens
Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) had been
severed. In many parts of the country, private
citizens spent the night after the vote
protecting ballot boxes with their bodies.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman
Richard Lugar, who headed a 20- member
delegation of official U.S. observers at the
election exercise, declared that a "very
disturbing pattern of incidents" had emerged.
Said he: "The count is being shaped to what the
President needs."
Some 18 hours
after the polls closed, Marcos, in a U.S.
television interview, serenely declared himself
the election winner. Citing unofficial vote
counts by the government-controlled Philippine
press, he claimed that he had gained some 13
million votes, vs. 11 million for Aquino, a
margin of roughly 54% to 46%. Marcos blandly
denied any attempt at fraud. An official vote
count, he said, would be available in "a few
days."
Aquino also
declared victory, eight hours after the polls
closed. In a statement, she said that "the trend
is clear and irreversible. The people and I have
won, and we know it." Aquino Spokesman Rene
Saguisag added that the election had been "the
dirtiest we have ever had."
The confused
and contradictory situation was greeted with
gloomy silence by the Reagan Administration,
which had worked hard to try to ensure a free,
fair and, above all, credible outcome to the
balloting. In Washington, State Department
officials said that they would delay any formal
U.S. response to the election until this week.
Nonetheless, Spokesman Bernard Kalb took note of
the reports of fraud and violence and termed
them "regrettable." Privately, one
Administration official disclosed that he and
his colleagues were observing the Philippine
developments with "nausea." Said he: "Marcos is
running scared. He is letting it all hang out,
and doesn't care who sees him. It's a bigger
mess than we expected."
The murky
outcome left the Administration in an
excruciating dilemma. It was American
unhappiness with the drift of Marcos' government
and ensuing social restiveness in the
Philippines that led him to call the surprise
election last November. For months
Administration officials had been publicly
warning that the far-flung country was drifting
toward a dangerous right-left polarization. On
the right stands Marcos. On the left is an
insurgency spearheaded by the estimated 16,500
members of the Communist New People's Army,
which has been steadily gaining in force. As has
happened so often before, the political center
was in danger of disappearing. The
Administration was also worried about the fate
of its two most important military installations
in the Pacific, Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark
Air Base. Both are in the Philippines, and both
are subject to a lease that expires in 1991.
Marcos' call
for elections caught Washington flat-footed. The
strongman, who suffers from a form of systemic
lupus erythematosus, a disease that often
affects the kidneys, had grown increasingly
withdrawn from the country's plight; he had
craftily evaded previous U.S. pressures for
reform. Most experts were skeptical that the
vote would lead to any significant power shift
in Manila. But among many Filipinos, the notion
that the balloting might lead to change seemed
to take on a life of its own. Philippine voters
might even provide the occasion for an all too
rare peaceful transition from authoritarianism
to democracy.
Organizationally, the odds were always stacked
in favor of Marcos and his governing New Society
Movement (K.B.L.). The President's war chest
bulged with about $160 million in campaign
funds, and he also had at his disposal uncounted
millions from the government pork barrel.
As the
campaign wore on, Marcos scattered more and more
giveaways from the stump. At a typical stop in
the economically depressed, sugar-producing
province of Negros Occidental, where anti-Marcos
sentiment is known to be strong, the President
went on just such a vote-getting spree. He
announced the gift of $25 million in additional
credits for a sugar-marketing organization, a
cut in interest rates for sugar planters from
42% to 16%, a reduction in the cost of area
electricity, and the electrification of some
nearby towns. His audience of farmers and
townspeople, many of whom had been paid between
$1.50 and $2.50 to attend the rally, applauded
each announcement fervidly.
Aside from
money, he could count on a near monopoly of
local political machinery. The K.B.L. controls
73 of 74 provincial governorships and all but a
handful of the 1,592 mayors' offices. Virtually
every one of 41,615 Filipino barangays
(villages) has a K.B.L. ward heeler. Such a
network was invaluable for getting supporters to
campaign rallies, and even more important in
turning out voters on election day.
Marcos'
personal supervision of that network was
impressive. Every night after 10 o'clock, the
President for several hours fielded calls from
K.B.L. officials around the country. The party
hands reported on the pro-Marcos voting
prospects in their locales, the lineup of poll
inspectors and campaign issues. Meanwhile, more
detailed election data were fed into a newly
installed computer system in a presidential
office building. According to opposition
critics, the high-tech apparatus could be used
to estimate the number of false ballots that
might be required to win at each location.
Another Marcos
source of strength was his hold on the country's
news media. Presidential supporters own almost
all of the 14 major daily newspapers and four of
the five major television networks. The
remaining TV outlet is owned outright by the
government. Nearly all of the country's 270
radio stations owe allegiance to Marcos. Most
presidential forays were covered in detail
throughout the campaign, and many Marcos
speeches were broadcast from start to finish.
Aquino, the
widow of assassinated Opposition Politician
Benigno Aquino Jr., was rarely seen on
television news and was blocked by a series of
bureaucratic ruses whenever she tried to buy
political advertising time. The challenger's
lawyer finally filed a petition against the
government-owned Channel 4 in Manila to force
increased coverage of her campaign. In the three
days after the lawyer's petition was filed,
Aquino's name was mentioned on the government
channel only four times, once in a false charge
that she had agreed to cede the southern part of
the nation to Muslim separatists.
Aquino
received some unsolicited television attention
from Marcos' department of dirty video tricks.
As the campaign wound down, presidential
supporters put television footage of the
challenger on the air on all Philippine
stations. Each spot featured a female voice that
sounded like Aquino's and showed the candidate
in a montage of foreign war footage and other
scenes of chaos. Despite Aquino's strenuous
complaints, the offending spots were not
removed.
In other
times, such tactics might have prevailed, but
the mighty Marcos machine was running against a
totally unconventional movement. The Aquino
campaign, long on enthusiasm and short on
organization, sometimes resembled a political
Woodstock. As Aquino and her vice-presidential
nominee, Salvador ("Doy") Laurel, crisscrossed
68 provinces, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos
from all walks of life swarmed to hear the
presidential challenger repeat a simple talk. At
each stop, Aquino related the alleged suffering
her family had endured at the hands of the
Marcos government, culminating in her husband's
1983 assassination. She capped each speech with
a slogan: "Sobra na, tama na, palitan na!" (Too
much, enough, let's change!)
As the
campaign progressed, Aquino began to outline her
program in increasing detail. At a speech last
week to a joint meeting in Manila of domestic
and foreign Chambers of Commerce, she put forth
a reform plan for an initial 100 days in office.
She promised that she would attack
Marcos-inspired corruption "with the zeal of a
crusading housewife let loose in a den of
world-class thieves." She said she would break
up the last elements of the sugar and coconut
monopolies run by Marcos cronies, remove taxes
on seeds and fertilizers, and cut taxes on fuel
and electricity. Her audience of at least 2,000
applauded enthusiastically.
Public support
for Aquino reached a spectacular climax three
days before the balloting, at the challenger's
final rally. The gathering easily ranked among
the largest in Philippine history. An enormous
crush of humanity flocked to Manila's Rizal Park
to hear Aquino and Laurel make their concluding
speeches. A sea of yellow T shirts and banners,
reflecting Aquino's campaign color, overflowed
the sprawling harbor-front park. Yellow ticker
tape and confetti rained down from office
buildings surrounding the capacious square. < In
contrast to earlier Aquino rallies, which had
had a decidedly homespun air, an array of
professional singing and television stars held
the throng's attention for three hours before
the opposition candidates arrived. When Aquino
and Laurel finally appeared, a cacophony of auto
horns erupted, fireworks lighted the evening
sky, and the crowd launched into a deafening
welcome chant of "Cory! Cory! Cory!"
Aquino first
led the crowd in singing the Lord's Prayer. She
then castigated the Marcos regime for economic
mismanagement and human-rights violations,
declaring, "I am sure we have won the election."
Said she, surveying the crowd: "Marcos will not
be able to stop this. It's our chance to write
history."
Marcos faced
the same Chambers of Commerce in Manila the day
after Aquino, but his reception was markedly
tepid. The President attacked his opponent for
naively believing that the country's Communist
insurgents would lay down their arms in response
to a six-month cease-fire, which is part of her
campaign platform. But even though Marcos
announced that he would, among other things, cut
sales taxes and reduce domestic oil prices,
applause from the business audience was merely
polite.
Later in the
day, Marcos held his own concluding rally at
Rizal Park. A horde of workers had descended on
the area and replaced yellow-and-green Aquino-Laurel
posters with red-white-and-blue placards
extolling Marcos and his running mate, Arturo
("Turing") Tolentino, 75. Buses and flatbed
trucks full of New Society faithful rolled in
from outlying suburbs. Estimates of the crowd in
the area ranged as high as 500,000. Many of
those gathered for the extravaganza admitted
openly that they had been paid from $2.50 to $5
to attend. As the time approached for the
scheduled appearance of Marcos and his wife
Imelda, helicopters flew overhead trailing
red-white-and-blue smoke. Top- ranking
Philippine show-business figures worked the
crowd into a pleasantly receptive mood.
Red-uniformed marching bands began to blare as
the faithful chanted the President's campaign
slogan, "Marcos pa rin!" (Marcos still!)
Then, just as
Marcos prepared to mount the dais, disaster
struck. It began to rain. As water poured down,
the President's audience fled in all directions,
ignoring loudspeaker pleas to stand fast and
"sacrifice for what we are fighting for." Those
who remained huddled closer to the speaker's
platform. After the ten-minute downpour had
ended, Imelda Marcos took the stage. Supporters
cheered loudly when she urged the country to
stand behind her husband because he was "maka-Diyos,
maka-tao, maka-bayan" (pro-God, pro- people,
pro-nation).
Marcos was
conciliatory and bellicose by turn when he
finally addressed the soggy gathering. For
nearly 40 minutes he attacked his opponent's
political inexperience and pleaded that it was
the desire of the Philippine people, rather than
his own wishes, that kept him in office. Then he
warned that if his opponents took to the
streets, "I will use the whole might and
strength of the armed forces to protect the
people and stop the opposition." Said he: "All
we want is peace, not civil war."
The same day,
Aquino received her strongest boost yet from
Jaime Cardinal Sin, the ranking Roman Catholic
prelate of the Philippines. The Cardinal praised
the presidential challenger as someone who will
"make a good President." He added, "I am tempted
to ask, Is this a presidential election, or is
this a contest between good and the forces of
evil?" Sin's all-but- explicit endorsement
carried considerable weight in a country that is
nominally 84% Catholic.
Any final
doubts about the Cardinal's sympathies were
ended when he turned down an invitation from
President Marcos and his family to pray together
for honest elections. Said the prelate: "I think
they can pray without me. It's better that they
pray and ask the Lord for mercy and compassion."
The day after
Sin's objurgation, Marcos raised the level of
political tension yet again by placing the
230,000-member armed forces on red alert. Under
that status, which was extended indefinitely,
all military leaves and furloughs were canceled.
Marcos' reason: Aquino, he claimed, had said
that his re-election would spark a civil war.
As Filipinos
thronged to their polling stations, problems
with voting registries began to crop up almost
immediately. At the Araullo High School, a
rambling wood- and-concrete structure on United
Nations Avenue in midtown Manila, Policeman
Oligario Remiruta, 46, lined up to cast his
vote. The local poll chairman could not find
Remiruta's name on the voters' list. By noon, 84
people at the school had received the same
treatment.
Other
peculiarities cropped up. In the Manila dockside
slum of Tondo, teachers at the Imelda Marcos
Elementary School complained that they were
being asked to recruit ten voters each for
Marcos. Well before the voting began, Marcos
operatives in northerly Quezon City were openly
offering indigents money to fill out their
ballots in advance.
Nonetheless,
both Marcos and Aquino were ready to declare
victory. As he prepared to fly from Manila to
his hometown of Batac in the northerly province
of Ilocos Norte, the President declared that "if
the difference is only 3 million (votes), I'll
be disappointed." Aquino voted in her hometown
of San Miguel, in the southern province of
Tarlac. Said she: "Today is my day. I hope to
see you all at my inaugural."
She spoke far
too soon. As election day dawned in the village
of Balutu, not far from Aquino's home, the
atmosphere was tense. Difficulties began as soon
as balloting commenced at the local elementary
school, when an opposition poll watcher
discovered that some 20% to 30% of the
barangay's voters were not listed on the rolls
and were therefore disqualified. Then, some 35
minutes before the 3 p.m. close of the polling
station, a red vehicle with MARCOS- TOLENTINO
stickers on the bumper pulled up behind the
school. Six men armed with M-16 rifles that had
MARCOS decals on the barrels jumped out and
headed for the school- yard. Their objective:
the ballot boxes. Terror-stricken poll watchers
huddled around the boxes in a nervous effort to
prevent an obvious theft. At the last moment, a
carload of opposition poll watchers arrived. One
of the newcomers, a former Filipino Minister of
Agriculture, somehow arranged to rescue the
ballot boxes and have them carried by election
officials to the nearby town of Concepcion for
tabulation.
Many similar
scenes were taking place across the country. In
the Manila district of San Andres, a residential
suburb, men wearing military uniforms snatched
an undetermined number of ballot boxes. In the
industrial suburb of Pasig, more than 100 men
armed with knives, pistols and high-powered
rifles ordered everyone present at one station
to lie down on the floor and then walked off
with the voting receptacles.
In some parts
of the country, cheating hardly seemed
necessary. One such place was Danao, a city on
the coast of southerly Cebu island, where a road
sign proclaims WELCOME TO FERDINAND MARCOS
COUNTRY. Danao is the fiefdom of Businessman
Ramon Durano, who owns, among other things,
almost all the local cement, sugar, mining and
banking industries. He may well have control
over most of the 59,000 registered local voters,
an unusually high proportion of the 80,000
population in the area. Not a single volunteer
could be found in & Danao and surrounding
suburbs to act as an opposition poll watcher at
the 147 local polling precincts. Said Voting
Registrar Roque Loro: "New Society Movement,
there are plenty. But opposition, there are
none."
After the
polls closed, the vote counting started slowly
across the Philippines and then almost stopped.
Nearly 48 hours after balloting ended, only
about 28% of the votes had been officially
tabulated. The government's COMELEC tally showed
Marcos ahead with 3 million votes, compared with
Aquino's 2.9 million. The sluggish pace of the
count indicated to many opposition leaders that
COMELEC was having trouble making its totals
come out to the government's satisfaction.
Meanwhile, the volunteer group NAMFREL said that
in its unofficial tally Aquino had 5.3 million
votes, while the President had about 4.5 million
after 46% of precincts had reported.
As the weekend
wore on, the situation in Manila remained
surprisingly calm. Since Marcos had hunkered
down in the presidential Malacanang Palace, it
seemed that it might be up to the opposition to
make the next move to break the election
deadlock. Aquino's first step in that direction
was a mild one. On Saturday she called a press
conference to demand that Marcos concede "in the
best tradition of democratic politics." Three
hours later, the President held a press
conference of his own to reiterate his claim to
victory, by a new margin of 1.5 million votes.
He reminded journalists that the formal naming
of a winner was the responsibility of the
National Assembly, which he controls, and even
raised the vague possibility that he might
declare the whole election invalid.
Sadly, the
vote that many Filipinos had hoped would improve
their country's doleful lot looked as if it
would leave the Philippines more divided, more
dangerous and angrier than ever.
With reporting
by Sandra Burton and
Barry Hillenbrand/
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