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Marcos' opponents are up against a formidable adversary. With characteristic craft, the President tried to turn his setback to advantage. While blaming his party's poor showing on the media, he told an American television interviewer, "I would presume that our instructions to our people to allow the opposition to win some seats might have been taken too literally." Marcos also had an answer for his country's international creditors, who have been hesitant to reschedule loans to the debt-ridden Philippines until the democratic process appears to be rehabilitated. "Now we can truthfully say," declared the President, "that we have presented to the world ... a free democracy." But the canny President is well aware that too free a democracy can prove very limiting.
—By Pico Iyer.
Reported by Sandra Burton and Nelly Sindayen/Manila