Filipino M.P.S to start count today

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 10

Filipino M.P.S to start count today

NZPA-Reuter Manila The Opposition Presidential contender, Corazon Aquino, who has already proclaimed herself the Philippines’ Presidentelect, kept out of sight yesterday while Parliament tried to find a winner from Friday’s election. Mrs Aquino has vowed to lead demonstrations if she is cheated out of victory, and she has appealed to the United States to lever the President, Mr Ferdinand Marcos, out so that she can take over.

But as Parliament prepares to meet today to attempt an official count, the widening gap between polling-day and a firm result defused tension, which had built up during the bruising eight-week campaign. Mrs Aquino’s aides were unable to say yesterday when she would press her demand for a transfer of power. Latest unofficial figures from the Government’s Commission on Elections (Comelec) gave her 4,219,905 votes to 4,627,956 for Mr Marcos.

The volunteer National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel), which has consistently put Mrs Aquino ahead since poll-ing-booths closed, said she had 6,658,838 votes to Mr Marcos’s 5,971,693. Mr Marcos, who is

seeking a fourth term after 20 years in power, insists he is winning and has threatened to crack down on any Opposition attempt to provoke confrontation in the streets. He is riding out a stream of assertions from Namfrel, the Aquino camp, and international observers that his followers committed widespread fraud, intimidation and ballot-rigging.

He denied in a television interview that he would annul the election, and said he would await the verdict of Parliament. Members of Parliament were locked in procedural negotiations before a second session yesterday was intended to count the returns and proclaim the winner.

The vote-count was eventually postponed until 3 p.m. today. The Opposition leader, Mr Aquilino Pimentel, said Parliament had so far received only 60 of the required 140 return sheets. Under the Constitution, the Marcos-controlled Parliament is the final arbiter in the election.

Mrs Aquino told a rally on Monday evening: “We are going to take power. The people have won this election. The only question left is when I shall take power in their name.”

The 53-year-old Opposition leader, who claimed victory nine hours after polling-booths closed, said, “For all our sakes, Mr Marcos, give the Presidency to the people now. The issue is democracy ... If we are denied that we must all fear the consequences.” Unidentified gunmen killed an Opposition provincial campaign leader in San Jose, near Iloilo, officials said. An Armed Forces colonel, Napoleon Diaz, said Mr Evelio Javier, a former Governor of Antique province, was shot while election returns were being collated in the Capitol building. The unidentified gunman fled in a white jeep, he said. A sniper shot and killed a young man and wounded a young woman aboard a truck carrying opposition supporters in a motorcade to the National Assembly here today, eyewitnesses said.

These deaths bring to at least 98 the official count of the number of people who have been killed in violent incidents since the election campaign started on December 6. '

President Reagan said yesterday that in spite of assertions of fraud, the Philippines election had shown there was a “strong two-party system now in the islands.”