The contest could never really have been called fair. On one side was an ailing but wily autocrat, whose authority was waning but whose hands remained firmly clenched around the levers of political power. On the other was an unassuming but determined housewife-crusader, whose political resources were meager but whose brief and meteoric candidacy had fanned the desire of millions of her countrymen for political change. What had kept the mismatched sides in balance during the course of their 57-day election battle was a promise as potent in appeal as it was frail in prospect. The hope was that the issue would be decided democratically.
In that uncertain balance, at least for a moment last week, hung the future of the Philippines, a once vibrant Asian archipelago that is wallowing in social and economic stagnation and bedeviled by a growing Communist insurgency. On foot, by horse cart, even by boat, upwards of 24 million Philippine voters went to the polls to do something they had not done for 16 years: freely select a President. The choice appeared to be clear-cut. The candidates were President Ferdinand Marcos, 68, who has ruled for 20 years from the Spanish colonial-style Malacanang Palace, and Challenger Corazon Aquino, 53, who in the space of just ten weeks had emerged as the standard- bearer of a new force in the country, known as "people power."
There was only one clear-cut thing about the election ritual that unfolded at some 90,000 polling stations around the Philippines. Sporadically at first, then with increasing blatancy, the long-awaited exercise was marred by unsettling levels of violence, fraud, vote buying and ballot theft. More than a day after the polls closed, the official vote count by the Marcos-dominated Commission on Elections (COMELEC) had slowed to a crawl. Communications linking that effort to a parallel, informal vote count by a volunteer organization known as the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) had been severed. In many parts of the country, private citizens spent the night after the vote protecting ballot boxes with their bodies. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, who headed a 20- member delegation of official U.S. observers at the election exercise, declared that a "very disturbing pattern of incidents" had emerged. Said he: "The count is being shaped to what the President needs."
Some 18 hours after the polls closed, Marcos, in a U.S. television interview, serenely declared himself the election winner. Citing unofficial vote counts by the government-controlled Philippine press, he claimed that he had gained some 13 million votes, vs. 11 million for Aquino, a margin of roughly 54% to 46%. Marcos blandly denied any attempt at fraud. An official vote count, he said, would be available in "a few days."
Aquino also declared victory, eight hours after the polls closed. In a statement, she said that "the trend is clear and irreversible. The people and I have won, and we know it." Aquino Spokesman Rene Saguisag added that the election had been "the dirtiest we have ever had."