No News Is Bad News

THE PHILIPPINES

Almost a month has passed since the Philippines held a nationwide election for its 200-seat National Assembly, and still there is no final count. The election commission, whose members are appointed by the government of President Ferdinand Marcos, has conceded that the opposition more than quadrupled its representation, from 14 to at least 62 seats, but has yet to give a final tally for eleven seats.

The delay has added fuel to suspicions that the government has engaged in vote fiddling. In the province of Nueva Vizcaya, Opposition Candidate Carlos Padilla was initially reported to have trounced Political Affairs Minister Leonardo Perez by some 19,000 votes. Last week the election commission declared the winner was Perez, who just happened to be its former chairman.

Marcos did not wait for the final results to announce a series of austerity measures last week, including a 28.6% de facto devaluation of the peso, designed to meet International Monetary Fund conditions for a new loan to the heavily indebted nation (total: $25.6 billion). The President also placed Manila on alert and had checkpoints set up in the wake of two fires and the murder of a police general.

ARGENTINA

All in Favor of Unity

"We have inaugurated a new political style in the country," Argentine President Raul Alfonsin declared as he signed a 15-point agreement with former President Maria Estela (Isabelita) Martinez de PerOn and the leaders of 14 other parties last week. The pact was another step in Alfonsin's drive to maintain national unity at a time when the country is facing an annual inflation rate of 568% and growing labor unrest. Some 400,000 miners, bus drivers, waterworks employees and metal-and grain-workers are currently demanding wage increases.

The agreement put both the government and the Peronists on record as favoring eventual repayment of the country's $43.6 billion foreign debt, though its language was so fuzzy as to allow a wide range of interpretations. Still less was said about the austerity program that Alfonsin's six-month-old government will need to introduce soon if it is to persuade the International Monetary Fund to refinance part of the nation's debt.

A day later, as the widow of Juan Peron prepared to return to Spain, where she has lived in exile since her ouster by a military junta in 1976, a bomb was found aboard the plane. Quickly transferring to another aircraft, she told well-wishers, "Nobody dies five minutes before one's time."

BOLIVIA

Win Some, Lose Some

Mixing sports and politics is fashionable, but in Bolivia the combination tends to be downright confusing. Four years ago, Bolivia did not send a team to the 1980 Summer Olympics. Though officials blamed a strapped economy, some accused the government of joining the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games.

Last week Bolivia announced it would not send a team to the 1984 Olympics. Again officials pleaded poverty. This time, however, many suspected that the government, which now counts two Communists in the Cabinet, was bent on following the Soviet lead in boycotting the Los Angeles Games.

The Bolivian team--four marksmen, a fencer and a champion walker named Osvaldo MorejOn--protested. Asked Victor Hugo Campos, one of the marksmen: "How are we to improve our record if we don't attend any major competitions?" The argument won over Bolivian President Hernan Siles Zuazo. On Friday he told the team it could go to Los Angeles.

SOVIET UNION

A Plea for Liberty

Eleven Western reporters, including members of a U.S. television crew, squeezed into a cramped Moscow apartment one day last week for a rare and risky event: a press conference by three Jewish refuseniks, would-be emigrants to Israel. Their message, as delivered by Boris Klotz, 34, a wiry mathematician: "There are thousands of Jews in the Moscow area alone who want to go to Israel. The authorities tell some of these people that they have insufficient motive, and others that East-West relations are too poor."

The three men called the press conference, the first in more than a year, to counter recent propaganda by a government-sponsored organization that disingenuously calls itself the Anti-Zionist Committee. Soviet Army General David Dragunsky, the committee's chairman, boasted to reporters last month that "the Zionist hope to lure Jews out of the Soviet Union has collapsed." According to official figures, Soviet emigration to Israel has indeed slowed to a trickle, from a high of 50,000 in 1979 to just 220 in the first four months of this year. For the many who cannot leave, said Viktor Fulmakt, 39, an underemployed computer programmer, "life has become extraordinarily difficult."

JAPAN

Priestly Tax Evasion

Remain impoverished, or you will end up forgetting your fundamental aspirations for Nirvana.

--Zen Monk Dogen (1200-53)

The Tokyo regional taxation bureau last month accused some of the country's 200,000 Buddhist priests of ignoring that admonition. One, it said, had used unreported income to maintain two mistresses. Another presented his wife with a $95,000 mink coat and a diamond ring worth $43,500.

A Buddhist priest's most lucrative activity is writing kaimyo, posthumous names (example: "Heroic disciple to Buddha residing in ravine full of sunshine and nightingales"), without which deceased Buddhists cannot reach "the better world." A kaimyo can cost between $650 and $1,300; prices for more lavish names reach several million dollars. The fees are taxexempt. Many priests, however, have also turned entrepreneur, running lots, wedding halls and real estate agencies. Although priestly income is taxed at a top rate of 20%, vs. 43.3% for corporations, the bureau charges have been engaging in loose bookkeeping.