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Aquino's lackluster speaking style is counterbalanced by her running mate Laurel. He has the kind of folksy, joke-telling manner that Filipino audiences love. The vice-presidential nominee usually serves as Aquino's lead-off speaker, warming up crowds for the less practiced message to follow.
Increasingly, however, the shy Aquino has learned how to use her bare knuckles in political repartee. Last week Marcos accused his opponent of lacking femininity. The ideal woman, he said at a Manila rally, is someone "gentle, who does not challenge a man, but who keeps her criticism to herself and teaches her husband only in the bedroom." The President had been visibly stung by an earlier Aquino remark accusing him of cowardice for declining to campaign on the island of Mindanao, a hotbed of the Communist insurgency. Four days later Aquino told a warmly receptive audience of more than 1,200 Rotarians in Manila that Marcos was an "inveterate liar," and summed up her speech with the line "And may the better woman win!"
Marcos had further reason to be angry and humiliated later in the week, after the New York Times published an article claiming that Marcos' wartime record as a guerrilla fighter against the occupying Japanese, to which he makes frequent and boastful reference, was judged by the U.S. Army back in 1948 to be "fraudulent" and "absurd." Ever since his early political days Marcos has claimed to have played a hero's role as leader of a Philippine guerrilla unit called Ang Mga Maharlika (Free Men) between 1942 and 1944. An Army report squirreled away in U.S. Government archives shows that Marcos had instead deserted his guerrilla unit, eventually to join up with an American force during the 1944 Philippines invasion. Within hours of the article's publication in New York City, the information was being announced in Manila with banner headlines in an opposition newspaper. Marcos called the revelations "crazy" and "laughable."
During the campaign, Aquino has learned how to turn aside with a sharp reply any Marcos attacks on her lack of political experience. As she told the Rotarians, "I concede that I cannot match Mr. Marcos when it comes to experience. I admit that I have no experience in cheating, stealing, lying or assassinating political opponents."
Aquino can draw upon lots of experience in her opposition coalition. Her circle of advisers includes a number of Filipino political figures who have chafed on the sidelines of power for years. Among them: former Senator Jovito Salonga, head of a left-of-center splinter party and one of the country's best lawyers, and Jose Diokno, another former Senator and human rights activist. Aquino can call on economic expertise from the disaffected Philippine business community. She and her advisers have also been cultivating relations with high- and medium-ranking members of the armed forces. The question of whether the military is loyal to Marcos or to the national constitution remains one of the most delicate issues in the country.