THE PHILIPPINES: : ANGUISH IN THE ISLANDS

The elections in the Philippines have turned out in the worst possible way. There was massive fraud, coercion and ma nipulation of registration lists and returns, according to a group of international observers that included representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties. All the evidence points to President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his supporters as the perpetrators, rather than to his rival, Corazon Aquino.

The conclusions of the international group, far freer to speak out and much longer on the scene than the official U.S. group headed by Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), will almost certainly be buttressed by the findings of the National Movement for Free Elections--Namfrel--the extraordinary and courageous Filipino civilian watchdog organization that deployed hundreds of thousands of volunteers on election day Feb. 7.

Last week President Reagan twice waffled on the question of the scale of fraud and its source, apparently on the advice of the official observer group that to speak out frankly on the subject could somehow cause more trouble.

No such inhibitions need apply to the American people or Congress. For purposes of judging the situation and the Administration’s response in terms of action, massive fraud is the starting point--as indeed I devoutly hope it is in the private Administration deliberations.

Meanwhile, Marcos’ strategy is clear. A master of timing, he has had the assembly dominated by his adherents tally the vote, making a show of careful deliberation. Then probably today or Monday--after a massive opposition rally scheduled for today--the assembly will proclaim Marcos the winner. Marcos will have won another hand of poker in his long series of brushes with opponents at home and with American Presidents.

This time, however, the results could be calamitous. Even if civil conflict can be contained in these coming weeks--a big “if” in itself--the kind of debilitated and discredited but still dug-in Marcos regime now in prospect can only mean increased repression, settling of scores in the nastiest of ways, inept crony government and business and a still-personalized military. It adds up to a worse and worse economic crisis and a marked step-up in the communist insurgency threat.

These results and how the Reagan Administration handles the situation could also have drastic effects, in both the short and the long term, on Philippine-U.S. relations and on the position of the United States in the islands where it is inescapably linked by history and shared sacrifice and now by pervasive cultural influences and strong economic ties.

There is little chance, at least in the short run, that any Philippine government would evict the United States from the important naval and air bases at Subic Bay and Clark Field. But there is a very substantial chance, over the longer term, that developments growing from this election will make the bases increasingly untenable.

So the stakes are high and the possibilities dark. Thus it was especially disheartening to see and hear Reagan’s first reactions. His saying that the election at least showed the emergence of two political parties and that these should now work together to form an effective reformist government was a civics homily that for sheer unreality--not to mention the old American habit of imputing American beliefs and practices to others--would be hard to beat for anyone who has ever dealt with the Philippines, lived there or studied the country in recent years.

Above all, dropping any reference to the need for a “credible” election--the cornerstone of all that Reagan and his officials have been saying for months--amounted to a signal to Marcos that this Administration would roll over and play dead whatever he did.

Perhaps, however, these were only the fumbling first moves in what must be a total U.S. reconsideration of policy toward the Philippines. The mission of the able and objective trouble-shooter Philip C. Habib must be the start of that process.

For the raw fact is that we as a nation confront the toughest policy choices since the Lebanon crisis of 1982, and in a country where a U.S. failure would loom even greater.

Marcos called this election because he saw a small window of opportunity and jumped to get through it, not at all for love of democracy but because it was the best road to solidify and consolidate his personal power. He could claim a real victory over inflation (thanks wholly to a tough-minded and independent Central Bank governor). The economy looked a shade less bad than the negative growth rates of 1984 and 1985. The insurgency was not visibly rampant, at least in Luzon, so that he could still pretend it was under control. The opposition was divided and disorganized. His political machine, the New Society Movement (Kilusan Bagong Lipunan or KBL), was still intact.

But his prestige was falling, local elections scheduled for spring were sure to cut heavily into his nearly complete control of governors and mayors--the backbone of his political machine--and he himself was ill with what experts believed must be the cyclical and progressively degenerative disease, lupus erythematosus.

At intervals he was barely able to work even reduced hours. The man we heard speak during a visit to Manila last month was a pale physical shadow of the one I had known in the 1960s. It was universally assumed that he uses some form of medication to get himself up for public appearances--certainly his campaign trips were short so that he could always return to the presidential palace for the night, and he was never out of reach of portable toilet facilities.

My varied Manila contacts included one dinner with a group whose members were at least nominally pro-Marcos. All commented on the unexpectedly great support Corazon Aquino had gained, and many wondered whether Marcos might not at last have made a political mistake in calling the election. One governor in a historically solid pro-Marcos area, which had benefited from all manner of public works regardless of national priorities, commented that this time the enthusiasm of past years was simply not present, that his people were sitting on their hands in the local rallies.

The anecdotal evidence I heard, including word from American businessmen with contacts all over the islands, was uniformly that the surge of support for Aquino was nationwide, embraced all classes and groups and was by no means the limited semielite movement it could have seemed from our hotel and a few of our contacts.

As I look back, this must have been how Marcos saw it too. He knew from the outset that the election was sure to attract wide media attention and can hardly have wanted to flaunt election irregularities. But in the end he felt he had no choice, and so American television viewers (though not those who watched Philippine TV) got a taste of what can happen in a truly dirty election.

Of the many incidents so vividly displayed over last weekend, only two surprised me, or I think surprised the admirable Namfrel people. The first was the rigging of registration lists by clerks who, while owing their jobs to Marcos, must have needed heavy added bribes to take it this far; it seems now that at least 10% of all eligible voters (20% in Manila), carefully selected as Aquino supporters, may have been barred this way.

And the second was that, even after the captive Election Commission had received the returns at its Manila headquarters, it would still try to alter the computer runs in framing the returns to be published. For once, Marcos’ people had to hire competent technicians rather than simple loyalists; this, as much as any single event, may have been his unmasking, and perhaps a wider portent for the future.

With all the stolen ballots and massive fraud and coercion, no one will ever know what even a reasonably honest or “credible” election would have shown. What we can know, for working and policy purposes, is that if the Namfrel count shows Aquino even close to a majority in the areas to which Namfrel was allowed access by Marcos’ minions, she won the election.

Yet Marcos is going right ahead to ram his set of phony returns through his stooge Election Commission and then through his equally stooge assembly.

Where does this leave the Philippines, and where does it leave the Reagan Administration?

Right away, it raises the possibilities that large-scale civil conflict might break out and that Aquino might announce her own cabinet and have herself sworn in as a rival government. Either case could confront the United States with extraordinarily difficult decisions, where to act could do good in the short run but could also risk taking on an excessive and unwise U.S. role in Philippine domestic politics.

But if we assume only that Marcos emerges clinging to power, the U.S. decisions are not much less tough. Thus, the American public and an apparently divided Administration should, I think, grasp certain fundamental points.

First, Marcos is an evil man. As one who dealt at times with the Shah of Iran, with President Park Chung Hee in Korea and with President Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, I would never remotely have used that adjective for these authoritarian rulers. Each had the welfare of their countries deeply at heart, however misguided and repressive they may have become toward the end.

In the case of Marcos, whatever his degree of unselfish purpose may ever have been, it has long been subsumed--as so often in history--by lust for getting and keeping power (and the wealth it makes possible) by any means, fair or foul.

Second, the Marcos of today is wholly inept in every important area of serious policy. As a wise Filipino economist said to me, the man may be a political genius, but he is an economic dunce. With all his limited remaining energies going into holding his machine together and outwitting his opponents, the chances of Marcos carrying out the sweeping economic reforms and innovations required to get his country moving again are about zero. Nor can he let his cronies down, especially after they have stretched their bankrolls to help him “win” this election.

He cannot begin to combat the communist insurgency effectively unless he shakes up the military from top to bottom and funds it adequately. His army today is a bloated and ill-equipped force, three times as big as in 1972 but with a budget that is less in real terms than it was then, largely because of his own economic and budgetary mismanagement.

Above all, its top leaders have been picked for loyalty rather than performance--or the respect of subordinates.

From another standpoint, Marcos’ deeply tainted victory can only feed communist recruitment apace. While I was there, careful American officials reiterated the judgment of other informed observers that, at the rate the insurgency is now expanding, it would achieve “strategic stalemate” in perhaps three years, assuming that economic conditions and government response stayed in their present unsatisfactory state.

Implicit in this judgment, as these same officials made clear, was that the communist advance could go much slower, even be brought under control, with new national confidence and better government performance. But the prospect is for a faster advance as a consequence of lowered confidence and poorer performance if Marcos settles into power after an assembly proclamation.

The third point to nail down is that Marcos is emphatically not America’s friend. Looking back over the past 20 years, I can see even more clearly than I did at the time how he has played a two-faced game, pandering at home to the most negative themes of what could be a healthy growing current of nationalism and self-reliance in the Philippines, while using the U.S. bases theme to milk Uncle Sam for all he was worth, often for projects that had much more to do with political handouts than underlying merit.

But, all this said, where do we go from here? I am not one of those who believe that in our dealings with authoritarian rulers we must be guided, above all, by their human-rights records or concern for the rule of law. In this case, however--and this is my fourth point--there is no such conflict. For the Reagan Administration now to embrace Marcos after he has stolen this election would be a devastating blow to something the Administration has valued highly in other connections: its credibility.

The manifold official statements before the election--one by Reagan himself in the last week of the campaign--that the Administration would deal in forthcoming fashion with a government that resulted from a “credible” election (and which installed a reform program on moderate lines) would become so much dust and ashes. Do not think that all of East Asia, not to mention key countries in other areas, would not take this aboard and act accordingly.

Thus, at the very least, the United States--meaning specifically Ronald Reagan personally--must keep up a full-court press on Marcos. Congress can help, but only the President can apply to the full the considerable psychological leverage the United States still has. In this effort, one key initial objective must be to protect the opposition in every possible way. If the President’s remarks about a two-party system were a pipe dream today, they have got to be reality when Marcos goes.

But when it comes to specific decisions, can we afford to react, say, by cutting off or sharply limiting what is already a fairly thin aid program, especially on the military side? Pragmatically, I would say no--and would urge aroused members of Congress to take it slow on this one.

Patience, stiff correctness and carefully crafted private messages with tough recommendations could be the recipe for the next few months--always provided that we do not have to react to what could readily become widespread civil violence.

Nor should we overlook the very great impact of private American contacts and decisions, most notably among potential investors and banks. As in South Africa, such private voices may on occasion speak more effectively than government can do in public.

Of one central point I am sure: that concern for the future of the bases must not be at the center of either U.S. policy or U.S. opinion. This is not to say that they are not important, and in the case of Subic Bay practically irreplaceable, as keystones of our security posture for all of Asia from the Persian Gulf to Alaska and Hawaii.

But to keep wringing our hands about the bases not only plays into Marcos’ hands but distorts our fundamental national interest in the Philippines, that the country stand on its feet and return to democracy. Moreover, it is not an accurate reading of the situation, on the evidence our group got on this recent trip and on my intimate knowledge of past history. The bases are not a great grass-roots issue in the Philippines, and there is still enormous favorable feeling for Americans generally--although this could be sharply affected by the Administration’s handling of the coming weeks and months.

Above all, the future of the bases hinges on the future of the Philippines themselves. If conditions there become better, the bases will not be either an unmanageable political problem or in physical jeopardy. If things become much worse, as they well might under an unbridled new Marcos regime, all bets would be off. In any event, even a few billion dollars spent to develop alternative locations would probably be wise insurance. What we must at all costs not suppose is that buttering up Marcos over the bases would begin to offset the negative consequences in terms of serious Filipino opinion.

Our involvement in the affairs of a country to which we wisely granted early independence 40 years ago cannot be avoided, I am convinced, at least in the short run. Only the Philippine people can work out their problems in the end. Yet it is a political fact that at this extraordinarily critical and dangerous time they do look to the United States for all sorts of signals as well as for action. We, all of us, but especially our President, have a job to do that will be difficult and unremitting, dropping the “on again, off again” tendencies of the past and calling for a level of teamwork with Congress that has not been a notable Reagan habit.

Perhaps, at the end, it is worth noting that every recent administration has had its toughest test in the second year of its term of office. Like Iran in 1978 or Lebanon in 1982, the Philippines look like it will be that test in 1986--and beyond. Until the election, the Administration seemed to meet the problem with rare unity and realism. It will take enormous quantities of both to handle it from this point onward .