Friday, Jan. 24. 1986
Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan
9
Marcos calls his detractors crazy
The Associated Press
|MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand E. Marcos said yesterday that he would ignore the crazy individuals who question the war record on which he built his political career.
[He made the comment in a campaign speech to a crowd that included many World War II veterans, after The New York Times published an article citing U.S. Army investigations that found his claims of leading guerrillas against the Japanese to be fraudulent.]
In its Thursday editions, the Times cited 400 pages of Army reports on Marcos' military career. The reports said that Ang Mag Maharlika, the guerrilla group he says he led, never existed as a fighting organization and was not controlled adequately because of the desertion of its commanding officer. Marcos
The president, now 88 years old, is said to have won 28, 32 or 33 medals, depending on the Philippine government report accepted. He is described as the most decorated soldier of the war and claims more honors than Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who directed the Allied war in the Pacific.
] His war record is so important to Marcos that he talks about it in nearly every interview and speech and in 1982 closed down a newspaper that printed articles challenging it.
He says he suffered five war wounds and tells
war stories in his campaign speeches for the Feb. 7 election, in which he is opposed by Corazon Aquino, widow of assassinated opposition leader Benigno Aquino.
Controversy over his military record is not new. During a visit by Marcos to Washington in September 1983, Defense Secretary 'Caspar Weinberger gave him a case containing replicas of U.S. medals supposedly awarded to him, including two Silver Ships and a Distinguished Service Cross
Three months later, the Washington Post published an article in which it said an 18-month effort to verify Marcos' claims to high American decorations raised serious doubts about whether he actually was awarded them.
The paper said its investigation included searches of U.S. military archives, official military histories, personal memoirs and portions of Marcos' personal file at the U.S. military records center in St. Louis, and conversations with Filipino and American veterans.
A Filipino editor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said yesterday. "It is his most sensitive issue, the one that really hurts him as a macho man."
Marcos blamed his opponents for The New York Times article.
"Those who collaborated with the enemy have no right to question the role of the country's guerrillas during the war," he said.
After his usual reference to the five wounds, he told the campaign crowd: "My opponents now say that Marcos is not a genuine guerrilla, that he did not really fight.
"I don't know where they get such foolishness. You who . . . fought under me, you be the ones to answer these crazy individuals, especially the foreign press."
He said he would ignore his detractors because they were all going crazy.
A book on Marcos that the government produced in 1978, during an eight-year period in which he ruled by martial law, said, "The young Marcos' feats of skill, endurance and courage in battle are the very stuff of legend."
Some American war veterans came here as Marcos' guests to testify against the newspaper We Forum when he shut it down. The closure later was reversed by the Supreme Court.
The book describes many exploits, including one in which Marcos, then a lieutenant, led three young recruits in a raid behind Japanese lines in which they killed 50 enemy soldiers.
It said he was captured but escaped to perform other acts of heroism for which he was recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor.
United Press International
Aquino denounces Marcos in speech
MANILA, Phillippines — Opposition presidential candidate Corazon Aquino yesterday unleashed her strongest attack yet against President Ferdinand Marcos, calling him an evil genius who ripped the heart from democracy.
Interrupted 33 times by applause from 1,500 businessmen and civic leaders packed in a ballroom of the posh Manila Hotel, Aquino outlined a political program focusing on constitutional reforms she intends to start if she topples Marcos in the Feb. 7 election.
Aquino warned Marcos that if he cheated to win the election, she would issue and lead nationwide appeals for protests.
"I hate to think what an angry people can do if you frustrate their will in the coming elections," said the 52-year-old widow of slain opposition leader Benigno Aquino.
Aquino said the parliamentary-style constitution Marcos approved after the declaration of martial law in 1972 was a joke built on deceit and manipulation.
"I am the first to admit that the Marcos dictatorship has been cleverly crafted by an evil genius. And I am the first to admit that that evil genius, allowed to run amok for 20 years, succeeded in foisting upon the nation a grim constitutional joke.
"He succeeded in ripping out the heart and soul of our old democratic system."
Aquino accused Marcos of twisting her policy platforms and lambasted him as an overgrown child.
She said a charge by Marcos that a member of the Aquino family agreed to create an independent Muslim state in Mindanao in return for election support was fabricated.
Senators say election in Philippines a fraud
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The administration is leaning toward sending an official team to observe balloting in the Philippines, despite the objections of two Senate Democrats who yesterday branded the presidential election next month a fraud.
"Clearly, the administration is leaning toward having a delegation." said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after a hearing on the Feb. 7 election between President Ferdinand Marcos and challenger Corazon Aquino.
Lugar said that the only question was whether there should be a strong congressional contingent in the team to observe the balloting.
But, he said, "I see many arguments in favor of sending observers."
Paul Wolfowitz, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, told Lugar's panel the decision on observers is up to President Reagan.
Lugar said he would decide today whether to recommend the United States send a delegation and whether he wished to participate.
Lugar aides said the White House wanted him to head an official delegation, but Lugar said he had not made a final decision and members of Congress were not knocking the doors down to sign up.
Press secretary Mark Helmke made Lugar thought that despite all the problems with the election, sending observers would send a signal that the United States was on the side of democratic reform.
Lugar met yesterday with acting Philippine Foreign Minister Pacifico Castro to discuss the election. Lugar said Castro had conveyed "a number of insights, technical details, which I
found to be reassuring" about the election.
Aides said he was seeking assurances that the delegation could monitor the balloting in a way that would determine whether the election had been fraudulent.
Marcos has issued an open-ended invitation for everybody to come to his country to monitor the voting. But a Philippines election commission ruled this week that foreign observers and press would not be allowed within 50 feet of the 90,000 polling stations on the country's more than 7,000 islands.
Committee members expressed mixed sentiment on whether to
Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R I., the topranking Democrat, said, "It would be very difficult to engage in an observer operation without giving a seal of approval to the results."
But two Democrats indicated their minds about the elections already are made up.
Ticking off a list of Marcos advantages, including domination of the media and suspicious vote-counting procedures, Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., said, "I don't think we can call the travesty in the Philippines an election. I call it a fraud."
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., cited National Archives documents showing the Army concluded after World War II that Marcos's claim of heading a guerrilla resistance against the Japanese occupation was fraudulent and absurd.
"In the end, Mr. Chairman, I think Marcos, the hero, is much as a fraud as Marcos, the democrat," Dodd said. "I don't see how in any way we can expect anything but a fraud, widespread fraud in this election."
"I think if Mrs. Aquino emerges victorious in the process, it will be nothing more than a miracle."
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