Basic HTML Version
•
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 14, 1986
PAGE 9
intervention by mass demonstrations, or will governments try to
forestall this by an increase in repression?•••
A national discussion over•••the relationship between American
values and American security is long overdue. Clearly, security
without values is like a ship without a rudder1 but values
without security are like a rudder without a-ship. The United
States has a duty to defend its democratic ideals.
But if
American policy winds .!!E harassing friendly governments and
I
� thering about hostile� we will find ourselves ultimately
��very lonely world.
Political analyst Ben Wattenberg was an official U.S. observer during the
Philippine elections. Here, in a March 7 WALL STREET JOURNAL report, is
his jaundiced view of what really went on, and how the U.S. media,
unabashedly one-sided, gave a distorted view of events, contributing to
U.S. government�! actions.
I
It is by now the received wisdom that Corazon Aquino became
president of the Philippines because corrupt dictator Ferdinand
Marcos and his thieving henchmen held a massively fraudulent
election in a near-totalitarian thug state•• �. It must be so:
Americans saw it with their own eyes on television. I didn't.
During election week I was a member of the presidential
election team headed by Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.).
My
sense is that something quite different went on in the
Philippines, a country, that, as our State Department briefer
had told us; was one of the freest in Southeast Asia•••• There
was, by Filipino standards, a normal quotient of fraud, which
is plenty. The election was mildly close. In a truly fair
contest, I believe Mrs. Aquino would have clearly won••••
This may be hard to believe, but the general impression of most
of the teams was tha!: they had seen an imperfect but truly
remarkable electoral scene. Brace yourself: Some of us felt
that in some important respects the process was more open, more
participatory, and, most critically, more public than U.S.
elections•••• At the grass-roots level, all of the teams heard
rumors about harassment, intimidation and bribery.
I have
never been in a more conspiratorial environment. However, it
usually was very hard to find much skulduggery that could be
documented••••
Back in Manila, many delegation members spoke with their
families back in the U.S., and we began to understand how the
election had been covered. Our relatives were petrified: Did
the goons get you? Did you see gunfire? It's so terrible that
those thugs stole the election!
It is said disparagingly of
some public figures that they cannot walk and chew gum at the
same time. The same must be said of a hungry international
press pack, particularly those from television:
They cannot
cover two stories at once. There was only one story in the air
in Manila, and it � being pumped out from every corner:
fraud, corruption and violence. The reporting we got at home
was surely not a lie1 it was only unrepresentative of the total
reality on the ground.