Marcos Aide Offers Flexibility on Election Date

Political Affairs Minister Leonardo B. Perez said Thursday that the ruling KBL Party will be flexible on the date of early presidential elections, suggesting that the KBL will bend to opposition requests to push back the vote from Jan. 17 as proposed by President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Perez, who heads the parliamentary committee on revision of laws, said the date will depend on how soon Parliament passes the election bill. It now calls for filing of candidacies Dec. 2 and a 45-day campaign.

“We (the KBL and the opposition) merely agreed to be flexible on the date, but it should not be later than the first week in February,” Perez said.

Opposition members of Parliament are pushing for a series of changes, including a later election date, to give them more time to prepare to take on Marcos’ formidable political machine.

Setback for Opposition

Most opposition demands involve electoral safeguards. A setback came Wednesday night when the KBL-dominated Parliament, considering a separate electoral code, approved an amendment allowing barangay officials to be named poll watchers or members of election inspection boards.

Barangays are political subdivisions at the local level. The barangay officials are elected on an ostensibly nonpartisan basis, but the vast majority are identified with the KBL. Opposition legislators said their presence in the polling place will be intimidating to many voters.

The KBL and the opposition also continued a closed-door debate on whether the vice presidency should be on the ballot.

Marcos’ party “asked us if we would agree not to include the vice presidency and we said no,” said Jaime Ferrer, an opposition leader.

The vice presidency presents problems for both sides. If Marcos chooses a strong figure for the KBL vice presidential slot, he could face a six-year presidency with an ambitious lieutenant maneuvering for control in the party. If he chooses a political nonentity and were to die in office, the party would be left in weak hands.

Leading Candidates

The problem could be even greater for the opposition, which is coalescing around former Sen. Salvador Laurel and Corazon Aquino, widow of slain opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., as its presidential nominee. If one wins the nomination and the other is slated No. 2, the opposition camp may be divided, political observers say.

A deferral on the date of the election would give Marcos’ foes more time to seek a compromise.

Meanwhile, Marcos and Laurel are already on the campaign trail. The president is scheduled to fly to the city of Cebu today to deliver a speech to a Chamber of Commerce convention. “I will campaign as if I’m an underdog,” he told a television interviewer.

Laurel, in an address to a business group in Manila on Thursday, declared that “any government that consistently denies justice is courting upheaval (and) revolution” and went on to accuse Marcos of having established such a regime over the last 20 years.

It is “alienated from the people by power and plunder and disdain for the people’s needs,” he said.