Aquino, at Huge Rally, Calls for Honest Ballot

In a boisterous rally Tuesday at a bayside park, Corazon Aquino wound up her Manila campaign to oust President Ferdinand E. Marcos, drawing the largest Philippine crowd since the 1983 funeral of her assassinated husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr.

Corazon Aquino closed the six-hour rally on a temperate note, saying, “Let us pray that we will have peaceful and honest elections so, like Christ, we will be able to forgive our enemies.”

Earlier in the 20-minute address, she was more aggressive, noting: “Mr. Marcos himself said that Mr. Marcos is the issue” in Friday’s presidential election. “I am convinced that Mr. Marcos and his regime are evil, truly evil, to have deliberately and systematically plundered a country and its people for their benefit.”

The crowd had begun gathering in Luneta Park eight hours before Aquino spoke. Her supporters paraded in columns from 18 points around the capital, through showers of confetti-shredded telephone yellow pages as they neared the park. The lawn and the surrounding streets were a yellow sea of shirts and posters, the color of Aquino’s campaign to end Marcos’ 20-year rule.

Salute to Missing Man

When the rally began in late afternoon, most of the leading political figures opposed to Marcos were on stage. Aquino’s vice presidential running mate, Salvador Laurel, made note of the man who was missing, Benigno Aquino. Aquino, whose nickname was Ninoy, was killed at Manila’s airport in August, 1983, on his return from three years of exile in the United States.

“Now, Ninoy, the opposition is united,” Laurel declared in a rousing speech.

The crowd’s response, as it was with all the speakers, was uproarious. Voices in the throng yelled “Liberation!” and “The end of the Marcos dynasty!” Spectators cheered when a priest, declaring that clerics cannot be neutral on what he called moral issues, parted his black cassock to reveal a yellow Aquino-Laurel T-shirt.

“As Manila goes, so goes the nation,” Laurel told the opposition supporters.

The rally, which drew at least 500,000 according to some estimates, was designed as a last-minute show of opposition strength to encourage Aquino supporters elsewhere in the country. Today, Marcos will hold a rally in the same park with the same goal.

Today is the last official day of campaigning, and the opposition standard-bearers will stage a long motorcade in Luzon, starting in Tarlac, the hotly contested home province of Aquino. The key campaign issue left unsettled this morning was the possibility of a debate between Marcos and Aquino, who has challenged the president since the early going to meet her face to face.

Debate Issue Reopened

Marcos had turned aside the challenge, saying the Aquino camp had set unacceptable conditions. But Tuesday, in a low-key speech here to business leaders, he suddenly reopened the issue in an almost casual manner.

“I would invite her to a simple dialogue on one of the (television) programs,” he said. “Let’s say tomorrow morning. . . . Let’s say (on) ‘Good Morning Manila.’ ”

Aquino’s camp rebuffed the president’s suggestion.

The president rejected an earlier proposal that the two candidates meet on ABC-TV’s “Nightline” show, although ABC representatives here said he had initially accepted the idea.

“We must insist upon the fact that this is degrading to have a Filipino presidential debate before a foreign audience with a foreign moderator,” said a presidential statement released later.

This morning, Aquino’s advisers were still hoping to work out an appearance on “Nightline.”

Earlier Tuesday, Victorino Savellano, head of the government commission on elections, said that both Marcos and Aquino would be disqualified as candidates if they appeared as proposed on the Wednesday edition of “Nightline.”

The program would be broadcast Wednesday in the United States, he argued, but it would be Thursday in the Philippines, beyond the campaigning deadline.

In New York, “Nightline” spokeswoman Laura Wessner said she has received no indication that the two candidates would not appear on “Nightline”.