A corrupted election

Press, 18 February 1986, Page 12

A corrupted election

Corruption pervades the whole of the Philippines. That does not make it acceptable as a way of life and does not excuse what happened in the election that has just been held. President Marcos has been declared the winner in an election in which there was evidence of widespread corruption through vote-buying, let alone some highly suspect tallying of the votes. Few doubted for a moment that he would not be declared the winner, whatever the outcome of the voting. The Opposition party led by Mrs Corazon Aquino expected fraud. The real question was the extent of the fraud. Aquino party strategists were reported to have assumed a level of 10 per cent. This presented problems because they were counting on a vote 60:40 in favour of Mrs Aquino and the fraud level would have brought the votes to close to being even. If American estimates are accepted, the Aquino party strategists may have got their figures too low, because United States Government sources said that as many as 30 per cent of the voters had been disenfranchised by fraud and manipulation and this could have cost Mrs Aquino three million or more votes.

The Communist Party of the Philippines was as accurate as anyone in predicting the outcome of the election. Some captured Communist Party documents outlined four policies towards the election. They were: an official boycott of the election; the use of propaganda to support the boycott; increased raids against the military to keep them away from the polls; and the avoidance of the

snatching of ballot boxes. In brief, the Communist Party strategy was to allow the election to go ahead and, assuming a Marcos win by fair means or more probably foul, to use the election to prove to the Opposition that it is useless to fight President Marcos through the ballot box. The fearsome prospect is that the Opposition would become increasingly irrelevant in the politics of the Philippines, and that political power would grow out of the barrels of the guns either of the Philippines military or those of the New People’s Army, the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines. For the United States, the prospect of the only political forces in the Philippines being President Marcos and the military who support him, and the New People’s Army is appalling. Other countries will find it appalling too, but the United States is more directly concerned because of Clark air base and the Subic Bay naval base. At the moment, the Opposition is committed to nonviolent protest. President Marcos tried throughout the election campaign to say that the Opposition was under the influence of the Communists. That has been a catch-cry which has helped various leaders of doubtful legitimacy in the past to win the support of the United States; but because of the presence of American observers in the election, and because they did not find the election to have been conducted fairly, President Marcos may find that it does not work this time.