Aquino party will run

Press, 28 February 1984, Page 8

Aquino party will run

NZPA-Reuter Manila The party of the murdered opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, decided yesterday to field candidates in Parliamentary elections in May despite calls by many of its leaders for a boycott of the polls. Leaders of the Filipino Democratic party (P.D.P.Laban) said they would take part in the ejections because “the party would lose its meaning and purpose if it refuses to fight political battles.”

They said details of the selection of candidates would be discussed with other opposition groups like the United Nationalist Democratic Organisation (Unido).

Mr Aquino stood for P.D.P.-Laban in 1978 elections for the National Assembly which were won

by an overwhelming majority by the New Society Movement (K.8.L.) of President Ferdinand Marcos. But opposition leaders asserted the election was rigged. Mr Aquino, considered by many as the main political rival of Mr Marcos, was shot at Manila airport last August moments after he stepped off an aircraft that brought him home from three years self-imposed exile in the United States. Before yesterday’s decision, there had been no indication that PD.P.-Laban would take part in the elections. Mr Aquino’s widow, Corazon, a strident critic of Mr Marcos, has yet to say whether she favours participation or boycott. But the former senator's younger brother, Agapito Aquino, has called a boycott