Opposition Still Divided in Philippines : Laurel Cites a Vague Pact With Aquino ‘to Work Together’

Former Philippine Sen. Salvador Laurel leaned back in his chair Tuesday, contemplating a question about the presidential candidacy of Corazon Aquino, which had been announced an hour before.

“Now we are on the same level,” he said. “Cory has accepted the draft of her group. I was drafted by mine--earlier than her.”

The two opposition candidates favored to face President Ferdinand E. Marcos in snap elections on Feb. 7 may be equal in that sense, but they are different personalities, and they are still divided on the question of a unified ticket. And without a unified opposition, both agree, there is little chance of unseating Marcos.

“The whole country is divided between Cory and me,” Laurel said. “We’ve both got very loyal supporters.”

The two candidates have met privately four times since Marcos called for early presidential elections a month ago. They will meet again this afternoon.

“We have agreed to join forces,” Laurel said. But they have not agreed on who should be the presidential contender and who should run for vice president. That decision is a rock on which the unity efforts may founder.

Laurel, 58, has singlemindedly pursued the top spot since the election was announced. “I am a candidate for president,” he said three weeks ago. “I seek no other office.”

Aquino, 52, the widow of assassinated opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., had been reluctant to run for any office. Even in announcing her candidacy Tuesday, she seemed humble, perhaps deceptively so.

Wearing a yellow shirtwaist dress, she described herself as “just a housewife.” She said she has had “really hardly any experience at all except being the wife of Ninoy.”

That all changed Tuesday. As an announced candidate, she has been thrust into the turmoil of Philippine politics.

Laurel said his talks with Aquino have been on two planes. On a personal level, he said, he has urged her not to run. “Politics is like a boxing ring,” he said. “You cannot get in without expecting to be hit.”

Aquino has accepted that challenge, and their talks now center on the second level--their political strategy and the need for unity.

Aquino said she had offered Laurel the vice presidency on a ticket she would head. “He has not given me his answer,” she said.

‘Own Sincere Mission’

Her advisers say she is not interested in the second spot herself, that the moral appeal she hopes to bring to the campaign and the presidency would only be effective in the top spot.

“She has her own sincere mission,” Laurel observed. But the former senator said he has the experience to run a government.

Will they get together?

“I’m an optimist,” Laurel said.

Dec. 11 is the deadline for individual candidates to file for the election. Political parties must file by Dec. 21. Opposition strategists say it is possible for both Aquino and Laurel to file for president Dec. 11, yet end up on the same ticket when the party slates are filed.

Aquino’s announcement sparked a march and rally in the financial district of Makati. Black carbon paper, shredded like confetti, fell from some office windows, a protest against Monday’s acquittal of the armed forces chief, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, and 25 others in the 1983 assassination of Benigno Aquino.

At nightfall, a “noise barrage” was staged in several Manila neighborhoods protesting the verdict.

Meanwhile, a group of opposition members of the National Assembly filed with the Supreme Court a constitutional challenge to the law authorizing the special elections.

Laurel said the plaintiffs, several of them members of his United Nationalist Democratic Organization, or UNIDO, were not trying to derail the elections, but were concerned about their constitutionality.

Similar petitions were filed by former Sen. Jovito Salonga, an Aquino supporter, the Concerned Women of the Philippines and a group of local officials from Batangas province. Both argue that Marcos under law has to relinquish his office before special elections can be held.

Meanwhile, wire services reported that the U.S. ambassador, Stephen Bosworth, called on President Marcos Tuesday, apparently to emphasize Washington’s concern over Ver’s acquittal and reinstatement. The embassy gave no details of the meeting, which followed a State Department statement Monday expressing disappointment in the Aquino murder-case verdict.

Also Tuesday, Marcos announced a promised reorganization of the Philippine military. Commodore Brillante Ochoco, reportedly an enthusiastic supporter of both the president and Ver, will head the navy, but 50 other senior officers will be retired or reassigned. Six new battalions will be created to battle the increasingly worrisome New People’s Army insurgency.