Machinery in Disarray : Fragile Bonds of Aquino’s Ticket Evident in Key City

Corazon Aquino blew into this coastal capital in the central Philippines like a typhoon in early January. The crowds were enormous and ecstatic.

In the weeks since, the 53-year-old housewife and widow of a political martyr has swept on to equally tumultuous welcomes in a barnstorming tour that has taken her to most of the country’s 74 provinces.

For voters looking for change, her sincere appeal has struck a chord. And in the past few weeks, Aquino has heartened her practical political backers by taking a tougher line against her opponent, President Ferdinand E. Marcos, and his ruling KBL party.

“I concede that I cannot match Mr. Marcos when it comes to experience,” she told a Manila forum recently. “I admit that I have no experience in cheating, stealing, lying or assassinating political opponents.”

“People power” will carry her to victory in the Feb. 7 polling, Aquino says. And if crowds and enthusiasm alone are the measure of momentum, the widow of assassinated opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. is on a roll.

Threatening Signs

But veteran politicians here, on both sides of the fence, keep reminding that big turnouts do not necessarily turn into landslide votes. With rare exceptions, machines have won Philippine elections--and Aquino’s campaign staff is showing signs of dissension that may threaten its ability to deliver the vote.

“The fields are golden and the grains are ready for harvest,” said Aquino supporter Homobono Adaza, a member of Parliament from Mindanao. “But there are not enough (hands) to gather the harvest, and in some areas they are harvesting each other’s heads.”

Cebu City is a key in the opposition strategy to win big in Manila, the southern provinces of Luzon and in the cities of the south, to pile up enough of a lead to overcome the KBL’s traditional heavy vote in its own strongholds and in rural areas.

Aquino says Marcos will have to cheat to win, and her backers say she will need 70% of the popular vote as a hedge against fraud.

Marcos, too, says he is worried about fraud, that he will win by such a margin in a fair election that the people will suspect the result is tainted. But his schedule shows no such confidence. He is pushing hard, to the lengths of his physical endurance.

Cebu City provides the example that fraud alone might not prove the opposition’s undoing. The fear here is that the delicately crafted unity of the opposition ticket will shatter, robbing Aquino of what little machine she has.

Cracks Are Evident

According to opposition politicians, cracks are evident across the country between Aquino’s backers and those of her running mate, Salvador Laurel--she representing the new politics and he the old.

“In the beginning, I told Marcos it’s an uphill battle. Expect a loss” in this city, said Ronald Duterte, Cebu’s mayor and a member of the KBL. “I figured the odds at 5 to 1 against the president at that point.”

Now, he says, Marcos “at worst” might lose by 30,000 votes of the total 310,000.

Duterte’s optimism, questioned by opposition workers here, is based on a comparison of the two machines.

“We have been going to small groups, asking them what the mayor can do for them,” said Duterte. “And we have been working on the issues,” particularly the Marcos charges that Aquino is inexperienced and soft on communism.

Meanwhile, the opposition machinery in Cebu is in disarray, largely the victim of an intrafamily struggle for influence.

Lost to Marcos

The predominant political family of Cebu are the Osmenas. Sergio Osmena was president of the commonwealth from 1944 to 1946. His son, Sergio Jr., hugely popular here, lost to Marcos in the 1969 presidential elections and died two years ago in Los Angeles.

Contenders for the family legacy are John (Sonny) Osmena, a senator before martial law and a nephew of Sergio Jr., and Maria Victoria (Minnie) Osmena-Stuart, daughter of the 1969 opposition nominee and, until recently, a resident of Beverly Hills.

On the day Aquino came here seeking the national presidency, the two cousins clearly had their eyes on another contest, the mayoralty of Cebu, to be decided in local elections tentatively slated later this year.

At issue was who would designate the opposition’s poll inspectors for the presidential voting, an important building block in putting together a local organization for the mayoral vote.

Opposition Chairman

Aquino and Laurel are campaigning under the banner of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO), Laurel’s party. UNIDO had designated Osmena-Stuart as opposition chairman in Cebu.

Her cousin John heads Panaghuisa, a local opposition group more closely identified with Aquino. Panaghuisa candidates won two seats from Cebu in the 1984 parliamentary elections, and Osmena insists that victory proves he has the machine and should handle the Aquino campaign here.

The Minnie-Sonny dispute, he said, means that “all the time, effort and resources that otherwise would be devoted to maximize (the Aquino margin in Cebu City) is being dissipated.”

Divided over the campaign chairmanship, Osmena and his cousin staged separate rallies for Aquino, a test of strength. Aquino, on a tight schedule, was obliged to go to both.

And on a day when opposition inspectors were needed to oversee voting registration, “we were literally arguing over who would sit in the chair,” Osmena said. He estimates the dispute cost the opposition 17,000 new registrants.

Aquino’s solution, not yet accepted, is to divide inspectors among Osmena, his cousin and the two opposition members of Parliament elected in 1984.

‘Toothless and Feeble’

Osmena, who left for the United States during martial law, said he returned in 1983 to find the family organization “toothless and feeble.”

The next year, he said, Laurel proposed a grand coalition, setting aside the old parties. “I told him I didn’t agree,” Osmena said in a candid interview. “I would like to remain in the Liberal Party (his family’s vehicle) and build it up.”

“In the days of feudal politics, my grandfather presided over all this,” Osmena said, harking to a time when regional power bases meant even more than today. “Ours is the only family to elect three to the Senate. Aquinos, Laurels, Roxases--they had only two each.”

When his cousin Minnie returned from California last year, he said, she asked him to step aside and let her rebuild the family machine. “I’m not going to do it,” he said.

Politicians outside the oligarchy are not necessarily the answer, Osmena insisted. “These guys who get elected very quickly (acquire) the perks of power, the Mercedeses and the mistresses,” he said.

In her home, not far from her cousin’s, Minnie Osmena sounded equally determined.

“Sonny was made by my dad,” she said. “The problem with Sonny was that he never performed. . . . If he doesn’t make a mess he’s never in the papers.”

‘Take the Power’

Osmena-Stuart, fashionably dressed and coiffed, said that when she brought her father home for burial “the rumor started that I should take his place, to take the power.”

She founded a political organization she calls Bando Minnie, after her father’s old Bando Osmena. “If you’re going to run you should run with machinery,” she noted.

“I will run for mayor if my party cannot win without me,” she said. “Sonny will run for sure.”

Osmena-Stuart was slated as Laurel’s running mate in December, before Laurel agreed to run as Aquino’s vice presidential candidate on a unity ticket. Relations between the two women are strained. “I kept the people at the rally for two hours after she left just to prove that she’s not the focus of attention,” said Osmena-Stuart.

While the Osmena sideshow distracts from the effort for Aquino, the people here are watching it with relish.

“Cebuanos have politics for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They dream it,” said Manuel Satorre, a local columnist.

There is mixed opinion on the effect the Osmena feud will have on Aquino’s fortunes. Said Francisco Tatad, a columnist and leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party:

“After 17 years of not having had a real opportunity to take part in a seriously contested presidential contest, are the Filipino voters ready to pull a surprise? . . . Are they capable of seeing themselves as the real candidates in the election, and Cory Aquino only as their surrogate?”

‘They Will Finally Eat

“If they are, then the opposition can commit all the mistakes it does not need to make, Cory need not assure the hungry that after Feb. 7 they will finally eat, and the KBL can oil its machine to the hilt, and not all of these can prevent a change. . . . We will only know after it happens.”

Recent dinner parties buzzed with reports of the Osmena tiff and jokes about the Marcos family, whose members are not popular here.

According to the latest story, twice in one week Imelda Marcos woke her husband and said: “Ferdinand, I’ve just had a terrible nightmare. I dreamed we lost the election.” When it happened a third time, the president reassured her and said, “Imelda, when have we ever won?”

In Cebu, the Roman Catholic Church is making a determined effort to assure a turnout. Cardinal Ricardo Vidal has approved the distribution of pledge cards to parishioners that ask them to “vote honestly, according to conscience, to reject violence, cheating and vote-buying and selling.”

The cardinal’s private secretary said that 500,000 cards have been printed so far. The pledges to the Christ child, Santo Nino, the object of veneration in Cebu, are to be signed and turned into the basilica. In a religious country, it is thought that the pledge will carry great weight.

In Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin has made a similar appeal to the voters, though without the pledge cards.

“Do not sell your vote,” Sin wrote in a pastoral letter read at parishes throughout the country. “The acceptance of money to vote for a candidate does not bind you to vote for that candidate.”

While the cardinal’s letter mentioned no parties, voters interpreted the message to mean it was all right to take KBL money and vote for Aquino.

“And why not?” goes a now-popular line in the barrios. “It’s our money.”