Aquino followers on march

Press, 30 January 1984, Page 10

Aquino followers on march

NZPA-AP Meycauayan Followers of the assassinated opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, gathered yesterday on a town plaza outside Manila after hundreds of riot police, soldiers and firemen had stopped them marching on the capital. The stalemate occurred two days after Filipinos, in a nation-wide plebiscite marked by an apparently low turnout, voted to ratify constitutional amendments restoring the Philippine Vice-Presidency which President Ferdinand Marcos had abolished more than a decade ago. The marchers, who numbered several thousand

on Saturday but whose ranks dwindled to about 300 yesterday after troops and the police blocked their path to Manila, were among Filipinos who had boycotted the plebiscite. Mr Aquino’s brother Agapito said they were determined to march to Manila airport, where Mr Marcos’s chief rival was assassinated on August 21 last year, but had not decided how to get through the police lines. Soldiers armed with guns and riot police with truncheons and firehoses stayed throughout the night along the roadside of MacArthur Highway about 3km from

the main body of marchers gathered in Meycauayan 16km north of Manila. The protesters had spent the night in private houses in Meycauayan. Yesterday they reassembled on the town plaza to plan their next move. A private Manila radio station broadcasting reports from its crew in Meycauayan said that the marchers were awaiting the results of talks between their lawyer, Ambrosio Padilla, and the authorities. Mr Padilla was asking for permission to allow the marchers into Manila. On the plaza itself, where the marchers were gathered, march organisers

were broadcasting through loudspeakers taped speeches delivered by Mr Aquino in the United States. The official Philippines news agency said returns from the referendum had shown an “irreversible trend” towards ratification of the proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. They would restore the Vice-Presidency Mr Marcos had abolished under martial law in 1972, reduce the size of legislative districts for May’s Parliamentary elections, and boost Government programmes for urban land reform and low-cost housing.