Aquino Cheered by Crowd in First Lady’s Province

About 40,000 people cheered Corazon Aquino on Saturday as she took her presidential campaign to First Lady Imelda Marcos’ home province and repeated her charge that President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered her husband killed.

Aquino renewed the accusation in reply to Marcos’ campaign speeches earlier Saturday attacking Benigno S. Aquino Jr. as an organizer of Communist guerrillas and a man who ordered the deaths of people who testified against him.

Corazon Aquino, who is challenging Marcos in the Feb. 7 special presidential election, said at a rally in this provincial capital, “Marcos is really merciless. Why does he still have to make accusations against a man who already is dead?”

Benigno Aquino, a former senator and Marcos’ chief rival, was assassinated at Manila airport in August, 1983, upon his return from three years of voluntary exile in the United States. The government said a Communist agent, Rolando Galman, killed Aquino and then was immediately killed himself.

Flies to Leyte

Corazon Aquino flew on a private plane to Leyte Island, 300 miles southeast of Manila, and then rode on rough country roads through half a dozen towns.

Marcos campaigned for reelection in Laguna and Quezon provinces near Manila.

In Manila, more than a dozen opposition lawyers, computer specialists and ordinary laymen opposed a plan by the Commission on Elections to computerize the counting of votes, citing lack of time and the $2.2 million it would cost taxpayers in a financially strapped country.

Crowds estimated by reporters at between 4,000 and 10,000 greeted Aquino and her vice presidential running mate, former Sen. Salvador Laurel, at each town they visited on an island that has been called “Imelda’s country.”

In Tacloban, a crowd estimated by reporters at about 40,000 listened intently as Aquino, speaking in Tagalog, told how her husband was jailed by Marcos for eight years and was assassinated while under military guard when he returned from America.

“I have always said that Marcos is my No. 1 suspect in the assassination,” she said. Her listeners burst into applause.

Denies Courting Communists

Aquino denied accusations by Marcos that she has been seeking the support of Communists.

“How can a widow whose husband allegedly was killed by a Communist now seek help from Communists? I think Marcos is already a confused man,” she said. “He must be a very tired man, and I think it is time that we give him a rest.”

Marcos, speaking to thousands in San Pablo City and Lucena on the island of Luzon, said Aquino is backed by Communist guerrillas and is “playing with revolution.”

Marcos denied that he ordered Benigno Aquino’s death, and repeated assertions that he was killed by a Communist in a plot to discredit the government.

“Why would I have him killed at the airport if he already had a death sentence which was legal and legitimate?” Marcos asked, recalling that a military court sentenced Aquino to death in 1977 on murder and subversion charges.

Speaking in the coconut-growing province of Quezon, where the opposition won all National Assembly seats in 1984 parliamentary elections, Marcos ordered the release of $18.3 million in funds for a port, road construction and a public market.

In neighboring Laguna, he ordered funding for roads and other projects.