Philippine Cardinal Urges End to Election Strife; 7 New Killings Bring Total to 62

Philippine Cardinal Jaime Sin, the most powerful religious leader in this Roman Catholic nation, appealed Thursday for an end to political violence as a spate of bombings, assassinations, kidnapings and sniper killings brought to 62 the number of dead since campaigning began for crucial local elections this month.

“Politics should not be divorced from Christian moral principles,” Sin declared in a pastoral letter, released at the same time police were reporting that a candidate’s home in Manila had been bombed and a mayoral candidate in a town north of the capital had been slain by a sniper in broad daylight while making a campaign speech.

In all, police nationwide reported seven new election-related deaths Thursday, and officials of President Corazon Aquino’s government said they expect many more killings before Jan. 18, when voters will cast ballots for more than 16,000 mayors, city councilmen and governors.

Aquino has called the elections the last major step toward restoring democracy in the Philippines after the ouster of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos in February, 1986. Yet the violence already has forced officials to postpone balloting in at least six of the country’s 73 provinces.

Fired Local Officials

Within a month of taking power nearly two years ago, Aquino unilaterally fired all local officials nationwide, many of whom she believed were still loyal to Marcos. She acted on the advice of family friends, who feared that the mayors and governors would subvert her new administration’s policies.

But the firings ranked among the 54-year-old president’s most controversial moves because they eroded all popular government at the grass-roots level in a country where local clans have ruled for centuries.

Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, the armed forces chief, has attributed most of the election-related murders to recent blood vendettas, longstanding political rivalries and an age-old Philippine tradition of settling local power feuds by killing one’s opponent.

After a Cabinet session Wednesday, though, several key Aquino aides blamed the current carnage on the armed forces’ inability to locate and recover the more than 100,000 unlicensed firearms that the military estimates are now in the country.

Rebel Army Blamed

Defense Secretary Rafael Ileto has also publicly blamed much of the killing on the Communist New People’s Army, the 24,000-member armed guerrilla force that has been waging a 19-year nationalist rebellion against the government.

The guerrillas and their political leaders in the Philippine Communist Party, who have been escalating their war since Aquino took power, are for the first time supporting scores of candidates nationwide in regions where they wield more power than the government. In other areas, the Communists have kidnaped leading candidates for as long as 10 days in an effort to persuade them to support their rebellion.

Already, military authorities said, at least 10 candidates have been abducted by armed men believed to be Communist rebels. A total of 27 other candidates and 35 campaign workers or ward leaders have been shot or knifed to death in attacks that police attribute to local vendettas.

In a Christmas message to the nation two weeks ago, President Aquino appealed for a peaceful campaign and an end to the violence, but her plea went unanswered.

Cardinal’s Appeal

The president has made no further public comment on the continuing violence, but aides to Cardinal Sin, one of Aquino’s top supporters and advisers, released Sin’s personal appeal Thursday, three days before it will be delivered as a Sunday sermon by priests throughout the country.

“As Christians, we should not use violence to defeat our opponents or eliminate our political enemies,” Sin said in the pastoral letter, which will be read in nearly 2,000 churches. “As Christians, we should not cheat to win an electoral contest, and we should not cooperate with or tolerate cheating in the elections.”

As Cardinal Sin’s announcement was distributed Thursday, though, police in the town of Porac, near the U.S. Clark Air Base 50 miles north of Manila, were reporting a particularly blatant political murder.

Killed During Speech

Ceferino Lumanlan, 47, an opposition mayoral candidate who had served as the town’s mayor for nearly a decade before Aquino fired him in 1986, was finishing his campaign speech to 1,000 supporters from atop a flatbed truck when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the head.

Local police said the sniper apparently fired from a shanty 40 yards from the makeshift stage and escaped, adding that the bullet passed through Lumanlan, killing him and wounding his vice-mayoral running mate, who was standing behind him.