Word: lugar
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Pressure on Marcos was also building in the U.S. Congress. Senator Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who headed an official American team of poll watchers that observed the elections, concluded that there had been many instances of fraud, vote tampering, violence and intimidation by Marcos partisans. In a telephone conversation with Marcos just after the voting, Laxalt observed that certain aspects of the elections had been "rather strange," such as reports that Marcos had carried one province by a vote of 13,000 to 0. That was not a province, it was a precinct...
Marcos' critics on Capitol Hill were equally outspoken. "Marcos has lost whatever shred of legitimacy he had," said Congressman Stephen Solarz, a New York Democrat. Republican Senator Richard Lugar, leader of the 20-member team of U.S. observers that monitored the Philippine election, was even more ominous. Said he: "President Marcos has lost the church, he has lost the middle class, and clearly he is now in the process of losing military support...
...Reagan-Lugar meeting was an ambiguous exercise. Sitting in on the session were Poindexter, Regan, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz. Lugar spent much of his energy at the meeting trying to convince the skeptical majority of his Executive Branch audience that they should not give up too soon on support for the unobstructed democratic process in the Philippines. The normally terse Senator spoke movingly of brave souls like an ordinary Filipino housewife who confronted armed thugs in order to defend her ballot. He urged the White House not to resign itself to a Marcos victory...
Less than five hours later, the President stunned Senator Lugar and most of the other election observers with his casual but devastating news-conference remarks. Reagan said Lugar's delegation had briefed him on the "appearance of fraud" during the voting. Then he said the observers had told him that "they didn't have any hard evidence beyond that general appearance." At this point he got in real trouble by adding that it was also possible that fraud "was occurring on both sides...
...statement turned out to be a painfully important mistake. Senator Lugar, for one, quickly bridled at the President's observation. Claiming that Reagan "was not well informed," Lugar asserted that the predominance of fraud "was by the government." Later the Senator said he would probably consider curtailment of U.S. aid to the Philippines if the balloting was discredited by an obviously orchestrated Marcos declaration of victory...