The priest who helped kick off the Philippine presidential race at an election rally last week summed up the climate in one short prayer:
”Dear Lord, protect us against guns and goons and gold, and do not allow us to sell our votes to the highest bidder.”
His petition to the Almighty might have come a little late for this nation of 7,100 islands. Police estimate that at least 129 private armies, nearly all of them on the payroll of politicians, are being supplemented by communist and Islamic guerrillas who supply men and arms to provincial candidates campaigning for congressional seats.
The armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Lisandro Abadia, maintains that communism`s collapse in Eastern Europe left financial support for the Filipino Marxist faction at ”the rock-bottom of the barrel,” and they`re now charging $4,000 and up for a permit to campaign in the 60-odd municipalities they control.
While political hopefuls made their rounds last week, the ”guns and goons” made theirs, too, with a wave of robberies, murders and about 16 kidnappings. Among those held for ransom are two Americans, Michael Barnes, a businessmen, and Avery Duane Drown, 63, a retired army officer.
As for the presidential candidates, it`s a lineup of mostly familiar faces with a fresh coat of makeup.
Filipinos tend to forgive and forget. No one laughs-out loud, at least-when Imelda Marcos or her late husband`s chief crony, millionaire
businessman Eduardo Cojuangco, pledge faith in democracy, a better life for the poor, and a national economic turnaround based on their financial acumen. ”To those who lost hope, I say keep the faith. I will be a father to all regions and provinces. I will help the weak,” promises Cojuangco, considered the front-runner to succeed Corazon Aquino in the May 11 elections.
One of his first commitments as president would be to repatriate the corpse of his mentor and Imelda`s husband, Ferdinand Marcos. The body has been in Hawaii since 1989. Aquino has refused to allow the exiled dictator home dead or alive.
Cojuangco is campaigning for the presidency of a country from which he remains officially banned. After flying into exile with Marcos in 1986, he returned clandestinely in 1989. Since then the courts have found him innocent of 38 corruption charges, and he has managed to reclaim much of an industrial empire based on a Marcos-era concession on coconuts, the nation`s main agrarian product.
Yet for most of the 35 million voters-25 million of them under 30 and often unemployed-the reward for supporting a candidate is often no more than a campaign T-shirt, free travel to rallies, and a daily food handout until election day.
Long before the speeches were over in the big sports stadium where Cojuangco`s kickoff rally was held last Wednesday, 10,000 of his supporters were heading home with free box lunches.
Inside the stadium was an unemployed young man named Eddy Bautista who was working the crowd as a cheerleader.
A little earlier, he had been wearing a T-shirt supporting the candidacy of Fidel Ramos, the former defense minister who has been endorsed by the Aquino administration. Now he was wearing a T-shirt for ”Danding”
(Cojuangco`s nickname, which has no literal translation).
”We get a free T-shirt, food and free transport from all the candidates we support,” Bautista said. ”I like the T-shirts of both Ramos and Cojuangco, but the food is definitely better here.
”I don`t know yet who I will vote for, but it will probably be Miriam, even though she has no T-shirts.”
Miriam Defensor Santiago, a fiery 46-year-old attorney and former immigration commissioner, has promised her first act as president will be to build detention cells for corrupt officials.
A University of Michigan law school graduate, she lacks the financial clout of her competitors, but her passionate crusade against institutionalized graft and corruption has won her popularity among the poor.
”Our country has one of the most corrupt governments in Southeast Asia,” she cried. ”I shall run or die in the attempt to be president.”
For all the bombast, her performance was relatively mild. Unlike in some of her earlier appearances, Santiago did not pull her hair or kick over the speaker`s stand. Critics call her brilliant but ”quite crazy.”
Not that eccentricity is a handicap in the Philippines.
A 67-year-old housewife named Monica Siap Hegna Abarina is campaigning on a platform of amnesty for all prisoners, promotion by one rank for all military personnel except the chief of staff and creation of a foundation to give spiritual assistance to the dead.
And Hadji Insam Digadong Janggayan, a reformed Islamic guerrilla fighter, canvasses for votes mainly on his claim that he is the nephew of the Sultan of Brunei, one of the world`s wealthiest men.
No one is ruling out the prospects of Imelda Marcos, who remains under indictment on 54 charges generally associated with accusations that she and her husband stole $5 billion during the dictator`s two decades in power.
Last week Marcos rejected an offer that she could bring home her husband`s body if she retired from the race.
She said he had had no need to plunder the national treasury since he had discovered, while still a young man, the hidden treasure of Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita.
The legendary hoard of gold, coins and gems, valued at anywhere from $20 billion to $100 billion, was collected by the general`s occupation forces in China and Korea.
It is said to have been buried somewhere in the southern Philippines by his soldiers after U.S. forces cut off their retreat in the closing stages of World War II.
Yamashita later was executed as a war criminal.
The Filipino army has been digging up sites for years in search of the treasure.
”You and I will make this nation great again,” the former first lady told her fans last Thursday at the opening of her new Marcos Party
headquarters at a Spanish restaurant in Makati, Manila`s financial district.
It was the first time the party was back in official quarters since Marcos was overthrown 1986.
Through the sound of a brass band, the firecrackers and the dutiful shouts of Marcos loyalists, Imelda Marcos portrayed herself a victim of vindictive persecution by Corazon Aquino and as a lifelong advocate of democracy.
But material opportunism is never far from the campaign trail.
Outside, a retired truck driver named Ernesto Angeles, summed up his feelings: ”I just hope Imelda pays us some money for our support. It`s money she took from us, isn`t it? So we can take it without guilt and still vote for someone else.”
