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PAGE 10
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MARCH 14, 1986
A word should be said about NAMFREL.
To its everlasting
credit, there could not have been even a mildly free election
without it •••• It should be noted that, by their own estimates,
at least 90 percent of the NAMFREL people were pro-Aquino••••
And NAMFREL leaders were masterfully marketing the stories of
fraud even before the election took place.
The political
thrust of their pitch was elemental: If Aquino lost, the fix
was in••••
The Nicaraguan election of 1984 makes the Marcos election of
1986 look like it was run by the Honest Ballot Association.
The Nicaraguan election had everything except an opposition
that was allowed to compete. Unlike the Philippines, communism
in Nicaragua is not a potential threat; it's already there, a
Soviet and Cuban-backed reality. It is not 8,000 miles from
America; it is close by.
For Cory Aquino, read Arturo Cruz,
Alfonso Robelo and Adolfo Calero, democrats all, trying to
bring pluralist democracy, Filipino-style, to Nicaragua. Alas,
the Sandinistas will not flee the country in the face of �
meaia wave••••
Shortly after the election I saw, on a television program, an independent
reporter telling his story of how, in Manila, he asked a writer-producer
of a major U.S. network his assessment of the long-range implications of
the Philippines election. The network man replied that he hadn't had time
to think about that, that what he was interested in at the moment was
violence!
--Gene Hogberg, News Bureau
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