Fighting Back

It was just before midnight when, weary from four hours of intense debate, Homobono Adaza, an opposition member in the Batasan, the Filipino national assembly, made an impassioned final speech. "In the ultimate analysis, it is not the Batasan that will render judgment here," he told the members of the assembly's Committee on Justice, Human Rights and Good Government. "It is the people who will render the ultimate judgment, and when that moment comes, we--in the silences of our room--must square ourselves with our conscience." Then Adaza and the seven other defeated opposition members of the committee stood up and walked out of the meeting, vowing to take their cause to the Filipino people.

That cause was an unprecedented resolution to impeach President Ferdinand Marcos on charges that he and his family and friends have enriched themselves at the country's expense. The action was sparked by a report in the San Jose Mercury-News, a California daily newspaper, that the Marcos clan has invested some $766 million in real estate in the U.S. and Europe. Marcos' party, which controls the Batasan, easily defeated the motion before the committee. But the President was not relishing his victory. "It's hard to just laugh off these things when you're hurt," he said. "It makes you want to box someone."

When a draft of the resolution first began to circulate last month, Marcos called a late-night caucus at which he told party leaders that he was seriously considering calling snap presidential elections this year, well before his current six-year term ends in May 1987. He also spoke of dissolving the national assembly and seeking a totally fresh mandate. Said one party member who attended the meeting: "I've never seen the President panicked until now."

Marcos is facing a host of problems that have made this the most difficult period in the two decades that he has ruled the Philippines. New infusions of aid, totaling $108 million, from the International Monetary Fund and foreign banks have yet to revive the country's devastated economy. Communist insurgents are gathering strength and undertaking increasingly daring raids. Controversy continues over the murder of Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino Jr., the former senator who was shot and killed as he returned from exile two years ago this week. And last week Jaime Cardinal Sin, long a critic of the President, declared: "The Filipino has had enough of one-man rule. He has had enough of constitutional authoritarianism, of presidential dictatorship masquerading as democracy. The Filipino wants a return to genuine democracy."

The big question being asked in Manila is whether the President, who has already begun to speak of the anti-impeachment vote in the Batasan as a mandate for his policies, will in fact call early elections. Opinion is divided, but leaders of the dozen opposition parties say that in the event of a snap election they are prepared for a showdown at the polls, where their candidates garnered one-third of the vote in the 1984 national assembly elections. Their major challenge will be to unite behind one candidate. Aquino's widow Corazon could pose the most serious threat to Marcos, but she has declined to run. Another possible candidate is Salvador Laurel, a longtime presidential aspirant and the official candidate of the United National Democratic Organization, the country's biggest opposition party.