Blighted Win

Nobody was there to beat

It was the first presidential election in twelve years, but for most Filipinos the event had an air of unreality. From the beginning there had never been any question about who the winner would be: Ferdinand Marcos, 63, head of state through two elected terms and more than eight years of martial-law rule. After running against only token opposition, Marcos claimed victory last week, with 87% of the vote. The only issue: how many Filipinos had defied a compulsory-voting law by heeding an opposition call for a boycott of the election. Marcos said that 82% of the 25.8 million registered voters had gone to the polls, but two relatively small surveys by foreign news organizations indicated a considerably lower turnout.

In their strenuous efforts to ensure heavy voter participation and thereby give the regime a popular mandate, the Marcos forces had warned Filipinos that if they flouted the electoral law--as nearly 4 million voters did in a national plebiscite last April--they faced up to six months' imprisonment. A week before the election, the warnings were reinforced by television films of two men who had been jailed for failing to vote in April. First Lady Imelda Marcos tried to lure Filipinos to the polls by hinting that amnesty might be granted to April boycotters if they voted this time. In the campaign's closing days, President Marcos even invoked possible religious sanctions, citing a 1948 statement by Pope Pius XII that it was "a grave sin, a mortal offense" not to vote. That provoked a sharp rejoinder from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines that Marcos had taken the Pontiffs remarks out of context.*

Marcos' venture into the realm of the Roman Catholic Church was enough to rouse Jaime Cardinal Sin, 52, the Philippines' leading prelate. From his hospital bed, where he was recovering from major surgery, he issued a pastoral letter assuring Catholics, who constitute 85% of the electorate, that they need not feel morally obligated to vote if their consciences dictated otherwise. Echoing the opposition's boycott plea, Sin spoke of a hypothetical voter who "is convinced that the election process is manipulated to produce predetermined results," and he declared that "the state is bound to respect and not impede the free exercise" of conscience. The letter was distributed in every Catholic church in Manila on the Sunday before the vote; copies, hastily duplicated by the opposition, were handed out by nuns in stores and supermarkets.It was the biggest boost of the entire campaign for the proboycott forces.

While the opposition failed in its effort to persuade half of the voters not to go to the polls, at least one out of three apparently did join the boycott. A selective survey, conducted by TIME and two other news organizations, of six polling places in the Manila area and seven in the provinces found an average turnout of 63%; a similar poll in and around Manila by the Japanese news agency Jiji counted 64.2%. Both figures were considerably below the 82% claimed by Marcos.

Still, the President's mandate was substantial enough to leave him indisputably the Philippines' dominant political figure. U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in Manila to attend a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers, handed Marcos a letter from President Ronald Reagan, who warmly congratulated the Philippine leader and promised that no less a dignitary than Vice President George Bush would represent the U.S. at the inaugural next week, reflecting "the high value my Administration places on its relations with the Philippines."

Armed with his new mandate, Marcos announced on election day that he wants to open a dialogue with his opponents, including those in exile, seeking "not only reunification but reconciliation." He has made such offers before, but opposition leaders have rebuffed him, concluding that the President neither needed nor wanted to share power. Now, with Marcos feeling assured of another six years in power, some of his political foes may be ready to make a deal. Others still vow never to collaborate. One prominent opposition leader ruled himself out of any accommodation last week and tersely summed up his strategy: "We're going to destabilize the s.o.b."

*Concerned that the Communists might win the 1948 Italian parliamentary elections, Pius told Italy's Catholics that they had a duty to support candidates who would safeguard "the rights and laws of God and Christian moral doctrine."

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