Philippines Election Rigged, Members of Senate Committee Charge

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, citing numerous campaign irregularities, charged Thursday that the Feb. 7 election in the Philippines is openly being rigged to reelect President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

“The Philippine elections are looking more and more like the kind of elections they have in the Kremlin,” declared Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.). “I don’t think we can call the travesty in the Philippines an election. I call it a fraud.”

Cranston’s judgment was echoed by virtually every other member of the committee during a hearing into election practices in the Philippines, where Marcos is being challenged by Corazon Aquino, widow of slain opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr.

Sen. Lugar May Go

Nevertheless, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said he will probably head an official U.S. delegation to Manila to observe the balloting. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) indicated that he might accompany Lugar.

But Lugar and others admitted they fear that the presence of a U.S. delegation might be interpreted as condoning election fraud. Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) cautioned that “an observer group could easily backfire.”

Also on Capitol Hill, a New York lawyer and investment counselor told a House subcommittee that he met three times with Philippines First Lady Imelda Marcos to discuss her purchase of four Manhattan buildings valued at $350 million. Imelda Marcos denies owning the buildings.

Committee Testimony

In testimony before the House Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asian and Pacific affairs, New York investment adviser Barry Knox said he was hired in 1983 by Glyceria Tancoco, a friend of the Marcos family, to help manage and finance the buildings. He said Tancoco sometimes represented herself as the owner.

But Knox said that after he negotiated loans for the buildings with the Security Pacific Mortgage Co., a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Security Pacific Corp., he was told by Joseph Bernstein, a New York property manager, that Imelda Marcos was the real owner.

He said he met three times with Mrs. Marcos to discuss the property. Asked if he believed she was the owner, he replied: “I think it’s a possibility.”