Marcos Vows Crackdown on Accused Assassins, U.S. Aides Say

President Ferdinand E. Marcos promised U.S. congressional staff members Tuesday that he will crack down on members of his political party who have been accused of a wave of assassinations since the Feb. 7 presidential election, the Americans said.

The Americans, aides to the official U.S. observer delegation led by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), met with Marcos for more than two hours and said they pressed him for action against the violence.

“He finally said: ‘I will control my people,’ ” recounted one of the Americans, who asked not to be identified.

A spokesman for Marcos said he had no immediate comment. About 34 opposition officials and supporters have been killed since Feb. 6, the day before the election, and aides to opposition candidate Corazon Aquino charge that local pro-Marcos bosses are behind the deaths.

The murders include the assassination of a former provincial governor and the rape and murder of three women college students who had acted as opposition poll-watchers on election day.

Marcos did not accept responsibility for the deaths, the Americans said.

A provincial court on Tuesday charged a pro-Marcos member of Parliament and six of his bodyguards with nine political murders linked to elections held in 1984 for the National Assembly. The assemblyman, Arturo Pacificador, is assistant majority leader of Marcos’ New Society Movement in the National Assembly.

He also has been implicated in the Feb. 11 killing of former Gov. Evelino Javier, his rival in the 1984 elections who was Aquino’s campaign manager in Antique province. Pacificador could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but he has previously denied any involvement in the 1984 slayings or in Javier’s death.

In another apparent attempt to improve his U.S. image, Marcos told the aides that he plans to appoint a commission to recommend changes in the Philippines’ constitution, including a controversial article that gives the president decree-making power.

Meanwhile, White House envoy Philip C. Habib met with several Marcos aides, continuing his fact-finding mission for President Reagan. Reagan has asked Habib to make recommendations on future U.S. policy on the Philippines.

Habib met with Prime Minister Cesar E.A. Virata, Labor Minister Blas Ople, Trade Minister Roberto V. Ongpin and members of the national Commission on Elections. He refused to comment on the talks, but Ople, who had a top position in Marcos’ campaign before the election, said he believed that the envoy’s talks would make him more sympathetic to Marcos.

“I trust . . . that he will form a more evenhanded impression of the problems of the country,” Ople said after the meeting. “I emphasized that the Filipino people will find their own way out of this crisis.”

He said Marcos was “legitimately elected” and chided the opposition for “protesting in the streets after losing an election.”

Aquino, who maintains that she would have won the election had Marcos not resorted to fraud, on Tuesday called on President Reagan to pronounce the vote illegitimate.

Aquino’s Appeal

“Why can he not say outright that the past elections were clearly fraudulent?” she asked in an appearance on the CBS Morning News. “The majority of Filipinos believe that I really and truly did win.”

About 1,000 demonstrators marched outside the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday, demanding that the Reagan Administration discontinue its support for Marcos. Another 3,000 leftist students, waving red banners and chanting “Down with imperialism, down with capitalism,” staged a three-hour p1919906917dictatorship.”

An independent poll-watchers’ group said Tuesday that Marcos’ regime has blocked almost 3.3 million Filipinos from voting--more than twice Marcos’ official margin of victory over Aquino.

The detailed estimate of voting patterns, produced by the National Movement for Free Elections after a study of the election returns, indicated that disenfranchisement “affected the margin, if not outcome, of the election,” the group’s chairman, Jose Concepcion Jr., said.

The poll-watchers’ group said past patterns of voter turnout indicated that about 23.4 million votes would have been cast in the bitterly fought election, but the returns showed only 20.2 million, a shortfall of 3.28 million.

The returns, which the opposition has rejected as inflated in Marcos’ favor, showed Marcos defeating Aquino by 10.8 million votes to 9.3 million, a margin of 1.5 million.

Most of the vote shortfall was in pro-Aquino areas where the regime quietly wiped thousands of names off the voters’ lists weeks before the election.

“Never before has a more vigilant populace witnessed a more pervasive travesty upon the sanctity of the ballot in history,” Concepcion said in a speech before the Manila Junior Chamber of Commerce. “The disenfranchisement alone puts into question the validity of the election.”

Concepcion, whose group is officially nonpartisan, noted that it was not clear from the figures that Aquino would have won an election that included the disenfranchised voters.

But he said the shortfall had “a staggering and telling effect on the emergence of the true will of the people.”

The group’s analysis found that several pro-Aquino provinces experienced stunning drops in voter turnout this year. In Ifugao province, 94% of the voters cast ballots in the 1984 congressional election, but only 22% voted this time. In Mountain province, the turnout dropped from 85% in 1984 to 45% on Feb. 7.

By contrast, Marcos’ home province of Ilocos Norte enjoyed a turnout of 96%, and an improbable 98% of those voted for the president’s reelection, according to the official returns.

The congressional consultants who met with Marcos returned to Manila from Washington earlier this week to complete work on a report for Lugar detailing the extent of election fraud.

The group consisted of Prof. Allen Weinstein of Boston University; Charles Andreae, an aide to Lugar; Richard McCall, an assistant to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), and Caleb McCarry, a staff member of Boston University’s Center for Democracy.