Marcos rivals threaten force

Press, 18 May 1984, Page 6

Marcos rivals threaten force

NZPA-AP Manila A Philippines Opposition leader, Salvador Laurel, threatened yesterday to meet “force with force” in the vote-counting process to protect election gains against the President, Mr Ferdinand Marcos.

“We realise this is fraught with danger, but we have no choice but to protect our votes,” said Mr Laurel, president of the United Nationalist Democratic Organisation. He accused Mr Marcos and the military of trying to alter the results in several races.

Mr Laurel told a news conference that his organisation had instructed its leaders, candidates, and workers to make citizens’ arrests if necesary to protect the votes where they still were being counted. “If they resist,” he said, referring to local election officials caught cheating, “we have instructed (our men) to meet force with force.”

Mr Laurel said that the election was meant to bring political stability to the Government, but if cheating persisted, “it may impel political instability.”

Mr Marcos acknowledged on Wednesday that a faster vote-count was needed to ease “tension” over the election.

Military officials said yesterday that a clash between security forces and communist rebels on Monday had taken the death toll in election violence to 121.

They told reporters that nine members of the New People’s Army had been killed in an ambush in the central province of Negros Occidental. But their account was disputed by Bishop Antonio Fortich, an outspoken

human rights campaigner, who said that those killed had been innocent farmworkers.

In another election-day incident, nine people were killed when supporters of a political party in the central Srovince of Antique amushed members of a rival party. The Philippines Constabulary chief, Major-General Fidel Ramos, told reporters on Wednesday that the party members had been among 112 people, most of them Government soldiers, killed in clashes last weekend and on Monday.