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Aside from money, he could count on a near monopoly of local political machinery. The K.B.L. controls 73 of 74 provincial governorships and all but a handful of the 1,592 mayors' offices. Virtually every one of 41,615 Filipino barangays (villages) has a K.B.L. ward heeler. Such a network was invaluable for getting supporters to campaign rallies, and even more important in turning out voters on election day.
Marcos' personal supervision of that network was impressive. Every night after 10 o'clock, the President for several hours fielded calls from K.B.L. officials around the country. The party hands reported on the pro-Marcos voting prospects in their locales, the lineup of poll inspectors and campaign issues. Meanwhile, more detailed election data were fed into a newly installed computer system in a presidential office building. According to opposition critics, the high-tech apparatus could be used to estimate the number of false ballots that might be required to win at each location.
Another Marcos source of strength was his hold on the country's news media. Presidential supporters own almost all of the 14 major daily newspapers and four of the five major television networks. The remaining TV outlet is owned outright by the government. Nearly all of the country's 270 radio stations owe allegiance to Marcos. Most presidential forays were covered in detail throughout the campaign, and many Marcos speeches were broadcast from start to finish.
Aquino, the widow of assassinated Opposition Politician Benigno Aquino Jr., was rarely seen on television news and was blocked by a series of bureaucratic ruses whenever she tried to buy political advertising time. The challenger's lawyer finally filed a petition against the government-owned Channel 4 in Manila to force increased coverage of her campaign. In the three days after the lawyer's petition was filed, Aquino's name was mentioned on the government channel only four times, once in a false charge that she had agreed to cede the southern part of the nation to Muslim separatists.
Aquino received some unsolicited television attention from Marcos' department of dirty video tricks. As the campaign wound down, presidential supporters put television footage of the challenger on the air on all Philippine stations. Each spot featured a female voice that sounded like Aquino's and showed the candidate in a montage of foreign war footage and other scenes of chaos. Despite Aquino's strenuous complaints, the offending spots were not removed.
In other times, such tactics might have prevailed, but the mighty Marcos machine was running against a totally unconventional movement. The Aquino campaign, long on enthusiasm and short on organization, sometimes resembled a political Woodstock. As Aquino and her vice-presidential nominee, Salvador ("Doy") Laurel, crisscrossed 68 provinces, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos from all walks of life swarmed to hear the presidential challenger repeat a simple talk. At each stop, Aquino related the alleged suffering her family had endured at the hands of the Marcos government, culminating in her husband's 1983 assassination. She capped each speech with a slogan: "Sobra na, tama na, palitan na!" (Too much, enough, let's change!)