Philippines’ high court lets poll proceed

Press, 20 December 1985, Page 6

Philippines’ high court lets poll proceed

NZPA-Reuter Manila The Philippines Supreme Court ruled yesterday that legislation for a Presidential election on February 7 was constitutional and that polling could go ahead as planned.

The Court ruled 7-5 for upholding the bill calling for the election, almost 18 months before Ferdinand Marcos’s term of office officially ends. Judge Hugo Gutierrez said that the matter “has become a political question” and was beyond the Court’s jurisdiction. Opposition politicians and lawyers had filed 11 petitions challenging the special election bill, although most seemed prepared to see the polling go ahead despite their objections.

The campaign is already under way between Mr Marcos, aged 68, who has ruled the Philippines for 20 years, and his main opponent, Corazon Aquino, aged 52, widow of the assassi-

nated Opposition leader, Benigno Aquino.

Mr Marcos called the election as a fresh mandate of support for his Government’s policies of staging an economic recovery and combating an increasing Communist insurgency.

The Philippines’ economic and political situation has been worsening since Mr Aquino, Mr Marcos’s main political foe, was shot dead at Manila airport in August, 1983.

The election bill had been challenged on the ground that Mr Marcos would have to relinquish office before an election could be held.

In sending the bill to Parliament, Mr Marcos said that he would' resign when the election winner was declared and officially sworn in.

clared and officially sworn in. The Court’s ruling swept aside the last obstacle to the election, which some commentators have described as the “last chance for democracy” in the Philippines in the face of

the Communist guerrilla warfare and economic uncertainty.

It will be Mr Marcos’s second re-election fight since he ended eight years of martial law in 1981. The post of Vice-Presi-dent has been restored under a constitutional amendment approved in January, 1984. His running mate is a former senator, Arturo Tolentino, aged 75, sacked as Foreign Minister in March for being too outspoken in his criticisms of the Marcos Government. Mrs Aquino’s Vice-Presi-dent would be another former senator, Salvador Laurel, aged 57, head of the United Nationalist Democratic Organisation, the largest opposition group in the National Assembly. It would have needed 10 votes — two-thirds of the full Marcos-appointed 15member Court — to have declared the bill unconstitutional. Two seats are vacant and one justice was absent.