Reagan blunders over Marcos election

There was a moment in Manila last Wednesday of almost theatrical irony, the sort of incident that becomes a compulsory anecdote in the history books a hundred years later.

President Marcos received a new ambassador and he had from him a note of congratulation on his election. Now, everybody knows that whatever genuine support Marcos has had from the Filipinos in the 20 years of his dictatorship, and increasingly, in the later years, has come from the fear of Communism and the rise of a powerful force of Communist guerrillas. In fact, Marcos's hold, not by any means on the Reagan administration alone, but on successive American administrations from Johnson, through Nixon, Ford and Carter, has been his determined, his unflagging anti-Communism.

As in several other parts of the world where the United States had strategic interests – in the Persian Gulf, in Central America, here, in south-east Asia – the presiding dictator might be bad news for a democratic ally, but he was the best of a bad lot.

Well, last Wednesday Mr Marcos received a new Soviet ambassador who, a lonely voice among the diplomatic corps, congratulated him on his election. Mr Marcos responded by praising the Soviet Union for its showing respect for the Philippines' sovereignty and for non-interference in internal affairs. Mr Marcos went on to talk hopefully about expanding trade with his old, his most useful, devil.

Meanwhile, the new devil, Mr Reagan was, as I speak anyway, biding his time pending the return to Washington of the veteran fact-finder, Mr Philip Habib who, in his time, has spent months stretching into years negotiating against the worst odds, in Lebanon in particular, in the Middle East in general, and is a man who, as you could see from his brief appearances on the television news, where he would say nothing at all. A man who has a face which combines, in the rarest way, a look of uncommunicative kindness, certainly a lovable first-rate poker player, is a rarity.

He was seen greeting President Marcos courteously but without effusion, same way with Mrs Aquino. I must say that in all the thrashing emotions and the political uncertainty of the Philippines turmoil, the presence of Mr Habib is one guarantee that the facts will be gathered and sifted and judged about as objectively as humanly possible, which, considering the nauseating weight of evidence of fraud and crookery from just about every other source, is a feat in itself.

When I talked about the Philippines last time and gave a sketch of its history, I held off saying anything about the election whose result was not yet known. Even then, President Reagan's chief observer, Senator Lugar, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, was saying that it was a mockery of a free election.

Then Senator Lugar and his team – bipartisan, both Republicans and Democrats – came home and told the president that they had seen and had had reports from impeccable sources that there had been massive fraud and corruption on the side of Mr Marcos and his supporters – wholesale buying of votes, the suppression by his poll watchers of probably millions of votes, pretty certain proof of actual murder – the upshot of which was Senator Lugar's guess that if Mrs Aquino had been credited with all the votes cast for her, she would have had anywhere between 60 and 75 per cent of the whole tally.

Mr Reagan had been given this report when he found himself standing in front of a press conference, which is always a nervous experience for his aides because, as we've seen many times, he does tend to say what comes to mind, even when it's tactless or provably false. He means no harm. There never was a less malicious or devious president.

When he said, as he did once, during his first presidential campaign that trees produce more pollution than automobile exhausts, the gasp of disbelief from his aides was suppressed for an hour or so and then the aides whipped out an explanation saying that the president didn't really mean what he appeared to have said. Not to worry. At his next appearance, the president waves and produces his infectious grin and all is forgiven.

He has never, so far as I can recall, adopted the useful and even more engaging tactic of our long-gone but never forgotten Mayor LaGuardia of New York who once said, and thereby assured the loyalty of millions of New Yorkers, 'I don't often make a mistake but when I do, it's a beaut!' Well, it's true that when President Reagan appeared before the press, the Philippine National Assembly, a so-called legislative body controlled by Mr Marcos, had not yet declared the result.

But Mr Reagan had had the report of the Lugar observers. It must have been at the back of his mind, where it evidently stayed, for he said to the press that there had been fraud very likely on both sides and then recommended that Mrs Aquino and President Marcos should get together and make up to – I'm quoting him – 'to make sure the government works', which is rather like someone suggesting during the Second World War that to save more bloodshed and to make Europe once again a peaceful continent, Churchill and Hitler should get together.

Well, the groans were heard, genteel groans from Senator Lugar and his staff and from the State Department, thunderous groans from the media and a cry of anger from Mrs Aquino. The most temperate of the American news magazines wrote, 'The blunder was enormous. It seemed to give Marcos a green light to complete his theft and left a fragile opposition to conclude that it had been betrayed'.

It looked very bad here for a day or two as if the president, for one, hadn't the lightest grasp of the realities of politics and power in a country that's been under the same dictator for 20 years, a regime about which any president should have done some elementary homework any time he had a couple of days to spare.

My own guess is that from the outbreak of the present mess in the Philippines, at the front of the president's mind has been the fact, the necessity if you like, of Clark Field and Subic Bay, the two main American bases situated in the Philippines of south-east Asia. Certainly they've been the main reason why no president in the past 20 years has tried to break with Marcos. Though – another contradiction – it has been under the Reagan administration that the United States has done the most nudging and begging for drastic reforms.

Well, the president recoiled and recovered and by the time the Philippines National Assembly had given Mr Marcos the election with a comfortable million and a half majority, Mr Reagan listened again, now, not only to the Lugar team, but to the chairman of committees in both Houses that have to do with south-east Asian affairs. He heard from the State Department, not least from Secretary Shultz, and from scores of senators and congressmen from both parties. Yes, there was now no doubt about it, the fraud had been massive and it had been on Marcos's side.

In marvelling at the slowness, almost the reluctance, of Mr Reagan to accept and proclaim the unvarnished truth about this appalling election, you have to remember that the Reagan administration, from its start, proclaimed a new doctrine which was inspired or publicised by the conservative consensus that put Mr Reagan in. It was a radical amendment to the American policy on human rights.

It said that there was a difference – never, I must say, made too clear – between the authoritarian governments the United States, in its own interests, could support with a good conscience and the totalitarian governments it would like to see brought down. In practice, this turned out to mean that in what the State Department calls 'sensitive areas of the world' – that is places where American security might be threatened – we had better put up with right-wing dictators, authoritarian or totalitarian, because the only visible alternative would be a Communist dictatorship.

This doctrine was known to unkind critics of the administration as the 'hold the nose' doctrine. Such a critic crowed with unusual joy the other morning in recognising a new consensus in this country on human rights in foreign policy. The reaction to events in the Philippines has taught us something extremely important about the United States. Americans across the political spectrum are no longer prepared to tolerate crude abuses of power by tyrants simply because they call themselves pro-American. Well, maybe.

Certainly, I think the power of right-wing conservatives on President Reagan has been, for the time being anyway, badly sapped.

The surest sign that Mr Reagan and his White House team had swung way over to renounce Marcos and, off-stage, urge him to go and soon, was given by the appearance, the day Mr Marcos and the Soviet ambassador were exchanging compliments, the appearance of Mr Shultz, the secretary of state, before the Senate Budget Committee. He said first that there had been fraud and violence on a systematic and widespread scale but it would be a mistake to do what two committees of Congress are preparing to do, namely, to suspend all military aid to the Philippines.

There's no contradiction in this. What he was saying is that to withhold military aid while Marcos is still holding on, and perhaps preparing to reinstitute martial law, might throw the initiative for the opposition to Marcos to the Communist guerrillas, leaving Mrs Aquino a marooned Kerensky or Dollfuss, the betrayed, lonely democrat we would all like to see in power. As Mr Shultz put it, 'The fraud and the violence only provide fuel for the insurgency. We have a stake in freedom. Let's put that first, over and above the bases, but we have on our hands a very difficult and delicate situation and we don't want to jump at it with some precipitous action here.'

In other, unspoken words, to suspend all military aid now and prescribe, as a House committee is doing, that all economic aid should be filtered through the Roman Catholic church, could give Marcos the cue to proclaim an emergency, declare martial law and spark a bloody revolt in which, for the time being, the army would stay on his side.

Put it simply: how to hold and strengthen the centre, as long as Marcos is in power. That is the root of the present American problem.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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