Alert called in Manila

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 10

Alert called in Manila

NZPA-Reuter Manila

The Philippines’ military has declared a red alert and called out special anti-guerrilla teams, saying Communist death squads were roaming Manila to wreck next month’s Presidential election.

Major-General Prospero Olivas, in charge of the capital’s security, told a hastily summoned meeting of commanders on Monday night that 200 to 300 urban guerrillas of the Communist New People’s Army had fanned out across the city. General Olivas ordered check-points to be set up in a search for rebels and arms but there was no sign of a big increase in security in the centre of Manila yesterday. The Opposition has repeatedly said that the President, Mr Ferdinand Marcos, might reimpose martial law, clamped on the country from 1972 to 1981, and call off the pbll of February 7 if he thought he was going to lose.

Western diplomats said the decision to put the capital’s paramilitary police on the highest level of combat readiness in the last 11 days of campaigning was not unexpected. “It’s all very disconcerting but it could be part of the atmospherics surrounding the election,” one diplomat said. Military officials in the last few days have spoken of “sparrow units” of Communist rebels infiltrating Manila. Another

diplomat said, “There is more than a grain of truth in all this.” Mr Marcos told leaders of his New Society Movement at the week-end to clamp down on election fraud and violence.

Concern is increasing in the United States — his main backer during his 20 years in power — that he might win by cheating. In Washington the Associated Press reported that the Reagan Administration had formally announced the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as head of an official delegation of American observers to the election. He is Senator Richard Lugar, who said on Saturday that despite what he called significant reservations about the fairness of the election, he was willing to serve on the American delegation. A.P. also quoted a State Department spokesman, Bernard Kalb, as disputing reports that the United States favoured a victory by the Opposition candidate, Corazon Aquino.

“The United States Government is neutral in the Philippines election campaign. We do not support any individual candidate or party. We have not been and will not be partisan,” Mr Kalb said-

“The New York Times” reported at the week-end that a consensus had developed in the Administration that Mr Marcos’s departure was critical to a non-Communist future for the Philippines.