Word: laban
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...Marcos imposed martial law and rule by decree-his New Society Movement had made what the President himself called "a clean sweep." In Manila, where the election had turned into an emotionally charged referendum on martial law itself, Marcos' stalwarts took all 21 seats over the energetic opposition Laban Party. Marcos' wife Imelda was the biggest vote getter, but even the last-place Marcos partisan ran 300,000 votes better than Laban Leader Benigno Aquino Jr., an archfoe of Marcos, who had to campaign from the military detention center where he has been held on charges of murder...
Still, Marcos was unhappy, not so much over the returns but because of events surrounding them. Laban followers protested noisily about election fraud, while many others were angry over the government's claims of total victory. At a Malacañang Palace press conference with visiting foreign journalists last week, he accused reporters of egging on the Labanites. He has also charged unnamed Western organizations and the CIA with "meddling" in the 45-day campaign. Marcos even blamed himself for having relaxed martial law and restrained his police. Affecting a kind of no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy grimness...
...opposition, however, charged that ballot-box rigging rather than hard campaigning was responsible for the Marcos sweep. Laban poll watchers had been harassed in many cases on voting day itself; in monitoring a suspiciously slow canvass of the returns, which at week's end was less than half finished, Laban claimed such irregularities as completely fictitious tally sheets. Even many people who were not Laban activists were disturbed. One group of 17 Jesuit priests petitioned the Philippine Conference of Catholic Bishops to conduct an investigation, saying there were mounting indications that a "deliberate, systematic and therefore widespread dishonesty...
Marcos announced the results of a government poll purportedly showing that all 21 K.B.L. candidates are favored to win, with the weakest K.B.L. candidate likely to poll 300,000 votes more than the strongest Laban candidate. But many political observers doubt those findings, arguing that Aquino, for one, should surely be among the top vote getters. Various straw polls taken at such institutions as the University of the Philippines and the Central Bank, moreover, show that Laban may even have an overall lead...
...hold a rally against martial law. Now ten such rallies take place every night. Clearly, in agreeing to make a contest of the election at all, Marcos encouraged expectations that the process of restoring democracy to Philippine political life will continue. As Jerry Barican, a law professor and Laban candidate, said last week: "For the first time in five years, we have been able to put our message across to the people. In that sense, we have already...