‘It’s Better Than We Ever Imagined’ : Aquino’s Candidates Are Winners, Aide Says

At 4:10 Tuesday afternoon, the telephone rang in Paul Aquino’s private office. It was his sister-in-law, Corazon Aquino, the president of the Philippines.

The president asked Aquino, her national campaign manager, how her candidates were doing in the tallying of Monday’s crucial legislative election--especially Paul’s sister, Tessie Aquino Oreta, a pro-government candidate for Congress from a slum suburb of Manila.

“The thing is already won,” he assured the president as independent, unofficial returns showed the president’s candidates headed for a near-sweep nationwide. “Tessie is leading by a mile.”

The president then asked about her own brother, Jose Cojuangco Jr., a congressional candidate in the family’s home province of Tarlac.

“Peping is OK,” he said, using Cojuangco’s widely known nickname.

Encouraging Reports

For the next 10 minutes, the president threw out name after name of her congressional candidates and heard similarly encouraging reports.

“It’s better than we ever imagined,” Paul Aquino concluded in assessing the showing of the pro-administration candidates in the powerful, 200-member House of Representatives. “We may even cross the 145 barrier.”

The showing in the Senate was even better, he told the president. Her candidates, he said, were expected to win at least 22 of the 24 seats.

“Oh, gee,” the president said. “That’s nice.”

Moments later, in explaining to several foreign journalists a victory margin so enormous that opposition coalitions from both the political right and left already have condemned the election as “fraudulent” and “a farce,” the president’s brother-in-law said simply, “Cory said, ‘I want these people,’ and the people said, ‘Yes, you can have it.’ ”

Paul Aquino’s computer projections were far from the last word, and final, official results are not expected to be known for several days. Ballots are being tabulated manually in thousands of centers scattered across the 7,100 islands that make up the Philippines.

But the candidates loyal to the 53-year-old housewife-turned-politician were clearly piling up victory after victory. Independent tabulations based on unofficial, incomplete returns showed that at least 20 of her Senate candidates were virtually certain to win and that 48 of her House candidates had been all but elected.

In a press release to the nation on behalf of Aquino’s “people power” ruling coalition late Tuesday, Paul Aquino said, “We ask the opposition to be gracious in recognizing the will of the people and to keep in mind previous electoral exercises that we all know--and which they cannot deny--were characterized by massive fraud and terrorism.”

But Juan Ponce Enrile, leader of the opposition Grand Alliance for Democracy, replied with a charge that the vote count was being tampered with, as it often was under former President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who was driven from office in February of last year.

Enrile, the former defense minister who was dismissed by Aquino last November amid rumors that his military supporters were planning a coup d’etat, said in a statement:

“The minds of the people are being systematically conditioned to accept a fraudulent claim of a total or near-total opposition shutout.”

Enrile, who still has considerable support in the military, warned that the election will be “the beginning of an instability of unimaginable proportions.”

He said his alliance will refuse to take any seats in the Senate even if the official returns show its candidates to have won.

The alliance has scheduled a protest rally at the offices of the National Election Commission this afternoon. Party leaders said they will present proof of electoral fraud.

Actually, few instances of fraud were seen by reporters, foreign or domestic, and few voters reported irregularities to the Election Commission or to a citizens’ poll-watching group, the National Movement for Free Elections.

Christian Monsod, chairman of the citizens’ group, told a reporter that complaints were “a tiny fraction” of the massive allegations reported in the presidential election of February, 1986.

Only one race, that involving President Aquino’s sister-in-law Tessie in the suburbs of Novotas and Malabon, appeared to have been severely tainted.

“Our people say that the elections in Novotas and Malabon are as dirty as they were in 1984,” Monsod said, referring to a legislative election that Marcos is widely believed to have stolen.

Some of the founders of the citizens’ group are serving in the Aquino government, and others are running for the Senate with her support, but Monsod denied opposition charges that the group is biased in reporting election returns. He said the group will disband if the opposition can prove its charges.

No Conspiracy

“There’s no way this can be manipulated in a conspiracy,” Monsod said. “I think they just jumped the gun.”

Ramon Felipe of the National Election Commission also denied the fraud charge.

“There was no failure,” Felipe told reporters. “I think that some losers will not want to accept defeat.”

The defeats, however, were not confined to the opposition. One of the House races pitted Nenita Daluz, one of Aquino’s close friends and a former undersecretary in her Cabinet, against Ramon Durano III, the son of a regional boss on the island of Cebu who is so powerful he is often referred to as a political warlord.

Daluz was one of those candidates about whom the president asked her brother-in-law during the phone call. He flatly told her the truth. “Inday Nita lost,” he said, using Daluz’s nickname.

It was the only time on Wednesday, he recalled later, that his sister-in-law expressed disappointment.