Huge Stakes Led U.S. to Take Role in Key Asian Ally’s Election

The last major speech of the Philippine presidential election campaign was delivered before the Manila Rotary Club on Thursday, but the speaker was neither President Ferdinand E. Marcos nor his opponent, Corazon Aquino. It was a visiting U.S. senator, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.

“There are few days in the life of any country that are more important than Feb. 7 will be for this one,” declared Lugar, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We hope . . . that it will be a great day for the Philippines--and for America.”

For the United States, the stakes in today’s voting are enormous: The election is clearly a turning point in the history of a key Asian ally threatened by political and economic disintegration.

As a result, the Reagan Administration and Congress have taken an unusually activist role in the campaign, acting as promoters and would-be guarantors of a return to democracy in this former U.S. colony.

Underpinning the Administration’s concern is a growing Communist insurgency against Marcos’ erratic regime and the threat that it could pose to the Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base, the largest U.S. military facilities in any foreign country.

“Our interests here are far broader than the question of our access to Clark and Subic,” said Stephen W. Bosworth, the U.S. ambassador in Manila. “We have very fundamental interests here going back many, many decades . . . political and strategic interests that are, in my view, permanent.”

Those interests, U.S. diplomats say, center on maintaining the Philippines as one of the largest pro-Western democracies in an Asia that is already divided between Communist and non-communist nations. “A stable Philippines is very much in the interest of its immediate neighbors,” one diplomat said.

U.S. economic interests in the Philippines are also huge. Some 500 U.S. companies operate in the country, part of an estimated $2.5 billion in U.S. investments here.

Many of those interests are also cultural and personal, the result of the Philippines’ five decades as an American colony and ally. At the height of the campaign three weeks ago, Bosworth told journalists in Manila: “We all have to be conscious of the fact that the nature of our historical relationship puts us at the center of a lot of domestic issues in the Philippines.”

U.S. Called for Elections

Over the last 20 years, the United States has backed Marcos with aid, including millions of dollars in “rent” for the bases, even as his rule grew more authoritarian and corrupt. But when a deteriorating economy and public revulsion over the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. increased support for the Communist rebels, the Administration advised Marcos that it was time for new elections.

Marcos responded last November by calling for a quick presidential vote--on a U.S. television talk show.

“It was because of the Americans that he called this election,” said a key Marcos campaign adviser, J.V. Cruz.

Filipinos have long referred to the United States as the “second audience” in their political campaigns, but today’s vote took place under closer U.S. scrutiny than any before. A team of 20 official American observers led by Lugar hopscotched among the 7,107 Philippine islands aboard U.S. military aircraft in hopes of deterring electoral fraud.

More than 400 American reporters and television crewmen were watching, too. U.S. news media coverage about Marcos’ real estate holdings in New York and his cloudy World War II combat record had become important issues in the campaign.

“Our candidates have spent more time on American television than Filipino television,” jibed Nicanor L. Follosco, vice president of the Philippines Chamber of Commerce.

President Reagan has bluntly promised increased U.S. aid to the Philippines if the vote seems fair.

Marcos aides have charged the United States with interfering in the election and with tilting toward opposition candidate Aquino, the widow of the slain leader.

“Whether they set up to deliberately interfere or not, in the end whatever they say will amount to interference,” said Cruz.

He warned that the Americans may “encourage the forces of violence” if they accuse Marcos of stealing the election, an outcome some U.S. officials privately expect.

On the left, the Communist Party of the Philippines has also charged the United States with interfering in the campaign, to maintain Marcos in power.

But Aquino’s supporters and the National Movement for Free Elections, a citizens’ vote-monitoring group, say the active U.S. role is their only hope for a fair count.

“There’s not much the observers can do to deter fraud at this stage, but at least they can see it firsthand,” said Jose Concepcion, chairman of the free election movement. Lugar, in his speech to the Rotary Club on Thursday, acknowledged those limits and said his group has no intention of delivering a quick verdict on the fairness of the vote.

“Our task is not to make those judgments, but to observe the judgments that those of you in the Philippines make . . . what you as a people feel about the credibility of the vote,” he said.

Lugar said he plans to rely largely on the findings of the citizens’ poll-watching group.

The real policy dilemma for the United States will come after the election. If Marcos wins unfairly, as many expect, Congress will almost certainly cut aid to his regime. But the Administration will want to comply somehow without abandoning the Philippines altogether. “We don’t have that luxury,” a U.S. diplomat said.

Even if Marcos wins fairly--a case that diplomats say will be difficult to prove given the widespread expectation of fraud--the problem will be increased disaffection unless he quickly reforms the economy and the ingrown military hierarchy.

And if Aquino wins, she and the Reagan Administration will still face the country’s daunting problem of a moribund economy and a dogged Communist insurgency.

In any case, the U.S. diplomat said, “we’re in for the duration. . . . The abandonment of U.S. interests in the Philippines is not really an option. We are a great power. Our credibility is at stake in a broader sense.”

One thing has come as a pleasant surprise to American officials: The presence of the U.S. military bases did not become a major campaign issue. Aquino announced early in her campaign that she would seek to have the bases removed, but aides said the voters’ reaction--and Ambassador Bosworth’s--were so adverse that she quickly retreated.

And despite the complaints from Marcos lieutenants, the U.S. role in the campaign has aroused relatively little controversy.

Filipinos still seem to prize their country’s “special relationship” with the United States, an amalgam of World War II memories, massive immigration and yen for American-style prosperity.

There have been anti-American demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy on the Manila Bay waterfront, but they have been small and dispirited. Unlike almost every other newly independent state in the Third World, the Filipinos have not changed old street names that glorify colonial era administrators: Manila boasts both a Taft and a McKinley Blvd.