A Message for Marcos

By Pico Iyer

In relatively free elections, opponents make unexpected gains

On the morning of the nationwide elections, Benedictine sisters from the Eucharistic King convent awoke before dawn, attended Mass, then braced themselves for violence. Small wonder: the nuns had signed up to serve as poll watchers in the northern town of Vigan, where for decades local thugs have rigged elections with intimidating tactics that would make a Mafioso blush. But throughout the day, the women stood firm. When the mayor swept up to a polling center with three Jeepfuls of cronies armed with fraudulent ballots, Sister Teresita Felicitas blocked their way. Elsewhere, when a young tough ordered Sister Proxedor to leave her poll-watching center, she stood her ground and prayed. And as soon as the polls closed, a platoon of nuns escorted the ballot boxes to the safety of the provincial treasurer's office. Said Antonio Lahoz, a lay colleague: "The sisters' presence probably gave voters the moral strength to resist any pressure against voting their consciences."

Thanks to such brave efforts around the nation, millions of Filipinos were encouraged last week to speak their minds and vote their consciences for the first time in 15 years. Protected by 150,000 volunteer poll watchers belonging to the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) and prompted by long-pent-up frustration with the autocratic government of President Ferdinand Marcos, voters delivered a stunning message: they were ready for change and prepared to fight for it. Before the election, the President had publicly prophesied a routine landslide victory for his Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (K.B.L.), or New Society Movement. Even the opposition umbrella group known as UNIDO (United Nationalist Democratic Organization) had prudently set its sights no higher than raising the number of opposition seats in the 200-member Batasang Pambansa (National Assembly) from 14 to 30. Final results will not be in until this week, but according to NAMFREL's estimate last Saturday, opposition parties had won 30 seats and were leading in 34 others.

The opposition knew that it would need every ounce of persistence to maintain that gain as the count dragged on. On the day after the election, NAMFREL estimated that the government was losing in 97 constituencies. As the days passed, that figure steadily dwindled. Though the decline was explained in part by late-arriving returns from rural areas where the K.B.L. is strongest, it inevitably aroused suspicions that the government was rectifying its losses by shamelessly altering the returns. Whatever the final tally, Filipinos may now at last have some kind of check on Marcos' one-man, one-party rule. "Despite determined attempts to thwart the popular will," declared NAMFREL Chairman Jose Concepcion, "the Filipino people have proved that democracy is still alive in this country."

That moral and symbolic victory was achieved in the face of seemingly insuperable odds. The shocking, still unsolved assassination of Opposition Leader Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino Jr. in Manila last August awoke almost overnight a vigorous and vociferous opposition to Marcos' government. When Marcos refused to meet demands to guarantee the legitimacy of the elections, which had been previously scheduled, Aquino's younger brother Agapito ("Butz"), together with former Senators Jose Diokno and Lorenzo Tanada, resolved to boycott the voting. Salvador Laurel and other Marcos opponents disagreed. While conceding that they had little hope against the money and machinery of the well-oiled K.B.L., they believed that by winning even a few seats they could begin to challenge Marcos' system from within. Easier said than done. Though Marcos reluctantly liberalized the election code in March, the President's men artfully contrived to cut away at many of his concessions.

On election day, true to form, bottles of acetone, designed to counteract specially ordered indelible ink, appeared in some precincts; officials' relatives were seen voting five times in others. In Quezon City, 23,000 squatters were threatened with relocation unless they voted for the K.B.L.; in Manila some K.B.L. voters were rewarded with envelopes containing around $130. Tragically, the pandemonium of election week also resulted in 109 deaths, mostly caused by clashes involving guerrillas of the Communist New People's Army.

For once, the opposition refused to shrug off such election chicanery. As members of the government-dominated election commission inexplicably dawdled over counting votes, demonstrators conducted a candlelight march on Manila's city hall, waving placards that proclaimed, NINOY, YOU HAVE NOT DIED IN VAIN!, TALLY SHEET, NOT TALLY CHEAT! and ONE VOTE, ONE COUNT! In the capital's commercial center of Makati, a recount took away the victory of UNIDO Candidate Aurora ("Au-Au") Pijuan-Manotoc, 34, the former wife of Sportsman Tommy Manotoc, who is now married to the President's daughter Imee. Au-Au's outraged followers responded by storming the Makati city hall, flinging stones against the building and burning furniture in its courtyard.

Although the boycott movement drew no more than a few million of the nation's 24 million registered voters, Butz Aquino contended that it had indirectly helped the opposition cause by giving the K.B.L. "a false sense of security." Still, the boycotters remained skeptical that anti-Marcos forces could achieve meaningful reforms within the President's system. "Let's wait until the euphoria dies down and the dust settles," said Human Rights Lawyer Joker Arroyo. For its part, the newly elected opposition hoped to team up with disaffected K.B.L. members to steer government policy in a new direction.

Marcos' opponents are up against a formidable adversary. With characteristic craft, the President tried to turn his setback to advantage. While blaming his party's poor showing on the media, he told an American television interviewer, "I would presume that our instructions to our people to allow the opposition to win some seats might have been taken too literally." Marcos also had an answer for his country's international creditors, who have been hesitant to reschedule loans to the debt-ridden Philippines until the democratic process appears to be rehabilitated. "Now we can truthfully say," declared the President, "that we have presented to the world ... a free democracy." But the canny President is well aware that too free a democracy can prove very limiting.

--By Pico Iyer.

Reported by Sandra Burton and Nelly Sindayen/Manila

With reporting by Sandra Burton, Nelly Sindayen