Philippine Rebels Kidnap Candidates to Foil Election

Daisy Raquiza, a candidate for mayor in this remote town about 250 miles north of Manila, is generally regarded as certain to be elected next Monday--if she is alive.

Nearly a month ago, Raquiza and two other local candidates, along with the acting mayor, were kidnaped by Communist guerrillas. The others were released 10 days later, but the guerrillas have labeled Raquiza, a supporter of ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos, “an enemy of the people,” and she has not reappeared.

Raquiza’s experience is not unique. More than a dozen candidates in the Jan. 18 local elections have been kidnaped by the guerrillas, members of the New People’s Army. Scores of others have been killed.

Rebel sources say the killings and kidnapings reflect an important new strategy in the insurgency, which has gone on now for 19 years. And military officers agree.

Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, the armed forces chief, told reporters Monday that “the emerging pattern” of rebel-sponsored kidnapings and killings of key candidates in the current campaign represents a serious effort to take control of towns and entire provinces by force.

Some of the kidnap victims who have been released say they were lectured for days by rebel leaders in jungle hide-outs. They say the rebels urged them not to bribe or cheat during the campaign and, if elected, to support the goals of the revolution. Others say the rebels demanded large sums of money for “safe-conduct passes.”

Ramos showed one such pass to the press. He said it cost $900 in cash and firearms and that it “guaranteed” the candidate that he could “freely enter and campaign in the barrios of the guerrilla zone.”

Ramos and other government officials cite the kidnapings and the election-related killings--more than 70 of them--as evidence that the rebels will not tolerate the most basic element of democracy: free elections.

But left-leaning political activists blame most of the election violence not on the rebels but on a revival of old-fashioned warlord politics. Historically, the campaign trail in this country is littered with the bodies of candidates; families struggling for power and status look on an election campaign as an opportunity to eliminate rivals and settle blood debts.

Several independent analysts have also concluded that most of the violence can be attributed not to the rebels but to political rivalries.

Yet in almost every case the guerrillas have sought to take responsibility for the candidate kidnapings. A former guerrilla leader in the province of Ilocos Norte, where Raquiza was abducted, said the other day that the kidnapings are intended to tell candidates and voters that the guerrillas will not tolerate the return of the old warlord families that ruled the Philippines for decades.

Few incidents illustrate the situation better than the Dec. 15 kidnaping of Raquiza, 44, whose father ranked among Marcos’ most powerful henchmen. She herself ruled the town of Piddig, in the heart of Marcos’ home province, for nearly a decade before she was removed from office two years ago by President Corazon Aquino.

Then-Mayor Raquiza told a Times correspondent in 1986, shortly before the election in which Aquino challenged Marcos for the presidency, that “we have our own style of doing an election here in Piddig.”

Asked what that style might be, she replied: “Money has not so much to do with it. I simply tell my people, ‘If you are not going to help me, then next time you need help, well, maybe I won’t show my face.’ ”

She conceded that it was the power of her father, Antonio, Marcos’ minister for public works and highways, that ensured her own control over Piddig.

The guerrillas who abducted Daisy Raquiza said the other day in a letter to her father that they are holding her because she is a member of the family that corrupted the country under Marcos.

The Raquiza incident is particularly troubling for Julian Bayag, the acting mayor of Piddig. Bayag, who is running Raquiza’s campaign, was kidnaped along with her. He said Monday in an interview that 10 guerrillas armed with M-16 rifles walked into the barrio where Raquiza had just delivered a speech and shouted, “Down!” He said that she and he and all the others present, including about 100 spectators, threw themselves to the ground.

“Then,” he said, “they politely asked, ‘Miss Daisy Raquiza?’ and Daisy answered, ‘Here.’ ”

He said she was told to identify her fellow candidates, as well as the acting mayor, and that the rebels tied their hands behind their backs and led them away into the mountains.

“Their leader,” he said, “was a woman, a graduate of the University of the Philippines. They told us they wanted to consult with us. We were told that they are tired of politics. They are tired of elections, because once the elections are over, the politicians all become corrupt. So they don’t believe in these elections.”

Asked to describe how they were treated by their abductors, Bayag said: “They were charming, really. They spoke nicely to us. . . . They even apologized for having had to tie our hands.”

Bayag, 70, conceded that the experience left him in a dilemma. He said he fought with the Americans in World War II, spent 10 months in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and in the 1950s served with a government propaganda unit in the campaign to put down an earlier Communist rebellion.

“Generally,” he said, his guerrilla captors “were good, but I would say that was ‘psy-war,’ because I cannot allow myself to be brainwashed.”

Bayag was wearing a 1986 Marcos campaign T-shirt because, he said, it was his only T-shirt. He said his rebel captors were calling him “Comrade Julie” by the time he was released. But he said he is still staunchly anti-Communist and that he made no deals with his captors. He was released, he said, because “they had no case against me like they did against Daisy.”

There are indications, though, that the ordeal did have an effect on Bayag. Last week, 300 members of the guerrilla unit attacked his town in an effort to drive out the soldiers assigned there after the kidnapings. Five of the guerrillas were killed, and Bayag admitted that he borrowed money from relatives to pay for their funerals.

Bayag insisted that the strong-willed Raquiza will not be influenced by the rebels.

“She is so demanding, you know,” he said. “She was actually ordering them around, telling them to bring her coffee and showing them how to boil plants and leaves for food.”

He said he does not think the guerrillas will kill her.

The province’s Roman Catholic bishop, Edmundo Abaya, has been trying to persuade the guerrillas to release her, along with nine other politicians and bureaucrats. He said that he, too, believes she is alive.

“There is just a hang-up in the negotiations,” he said.

Despite the optimism, Bayag conceded that he must, as a politician, be practical.

“If she doesn’t come home before election day,” he said, “she will lose.”

And then what? he was asked.

“If Daisy is found to be dead,” he replied, “I will have to file my own certificate of candidacy and run for mayor myself.”