Republican Party Reptile(22)

Now they’re giving each other bipartisan backslaps for their brilliant handling of a delicate foreign-policy crisis. But all the Filipinos saw was three weeks of President Reagan taking every position on the opinion compass about whether Marcos was a cool dude or what. The administration didn’t get around to “throw the bum out” until Ferdinand and Imelda were practically unpacking their underwear in Guam. I don’t think there’s a way to exaggerate the true love we could have had in the Philippines if we’d gotten on the side of the angels and stayed there. But, I was quick to point out to my Philippine friends, it could have been worse. We could have lent B-52s to Marcos the way we did to Nguyen Van Thieu.





DOWN FOR THE COUNT


First thing in the morning on the day after the election, Tony Suau and I went to watch votes being counted at the city hall in Makati, Manila’s central business district. It was clear, even before the polls closed, that Marcos would have to cheat before, during, and after the balloting. Cory Aquino had shaken up a warm six-pack of indignation, and the pop tops were off.

The ballot boxes, aluminum cubes about the size of milk crates, had been brought from Makati’s polling places and stored in a warehouse behind the city hall. A couple thousand Aquino supporters surrounded the two buildings. The NAMFREL volunteers linked arms and formed a human corridor from the warehouse, across a plaza, through the city hall basement, up three flights of stairs, and down a hall to an assembly room. Every ballot box was carried through this double file by a flying wedge of a half-dozen people, each keeping at least one hand on that box.

Tony and I were on the second floor with one flying wedge that had obligingly stopped in midrun so we could interview them. Then we heard screaming and yelling in the lobby below.

One of the city hall policemen had taken issue with the NAMFREL human chain, a shoving match had followed, and a teenage girl had been thumped on the head.

The crowd went wild. Tony and I came downstairs just in time to get caught at the front of this nascent riot and squashed against the lobby’s inner doors, which had been barred by retreating police. The crowd fell back to make a second rush, and the policemen came charging out. A club went whistling under my nose. Tony got truncheoned on the shoulder.

This was great! Just like taking over the dean’s office in the sixties. It was all I could do to keep from leaping on a drinking fountain and screaming, “Stop the war!” A pretty inappropriate sentiment, since this wasn’t a war and if it had been the crowd would have been all for it.

The police charged again, acting fairly restrained, if I have to tell the truth. Mostly they rushed at the mob with cross-body blocks and only used a little bit of clubbing every now and then. I looked over and saw Tony being shoved back by four or five policemen while behind him a dozen members of the crowd were pushing him forward, yelling: “Foreign press! Cover this!”

Eventually a NAMFREL leader, a police sergeant, and a Makati vice-mayor appeared with bullhorns and got everything settled down. The police would promise to stop hitting people if people would promise not to block public employees from going about their business, although it was Saturday and the only public employees going about their business were police.

Peace lasted five minutes. Tony and I were in the lobby with some policemen and some Aquino supporters who had obligingly stopped hollering at each other so we could interview them. Then we heard screaming and yelling at the back of the building.

A Mercedes had tried to pull into the city hall parking lot.

The crowd went wild. First they blocked its entry. Then the driver tried to leave. Then they blocked its exit. The police finally had to wade in and collect the car’s two occupants and hustle them into the city hall.

“Who was in the car?” I shouted to the crowd.

“We don’t know.”

This sounded pretty dopey.

“No, no,” yelled the crowd. “Maybe they are delivering something!” “It looked like envelopes!” “Envelopes the size of votetally sheets!”

“They are delivering fake vote-tally sheets!” the crowd concluded triumphantly and began rocking the car back and forth.

I went over and pressed my nose against the tinted windows. Inside, on the floor, were a pair of M-16 rifles. Whoever these guys were, they probably weren’t goodwill ambassadors from the Little Sisters of the Poor. The police hustled them back out of the building and into the Mercedes. I never got a good look at the pair. The crowd pressed on the car. The driver pressed on the accelerator. The crowd began pounding on the fenders and hood. The police began pounding on the crowd. Somebody’s head got busted and blood ran down his face. For a moment it was a standoff, but horsepower won out. Somehow no one was smeared under the wheels. The car tore through the crowd. People were heaved right and left. They picked themselves up and took off after the Mercedes, throwing stones and chunks of Manila’s crummy pavement. These folks were worked up.