Ferdinand E. Marcos: Democracy and the Iron Fist With AM-Philippines Vote Bjt

MANILA, Philippines (AP) _ For 20 years, President Ferdinand E. Marcos has been ruling the steadily pro-American Philippines with an uneven mixture of democracy and the iron fist.

In that time he has outwitted, outmaneuvered or outlasted nearly every strong opponent.

Now, at 68, he is challenged by a 53-year-old, politically inexperienced widow who accuses him of ruining the economy, widespread corruption, abusing his people and killing her husband. He also faces pressure from his American allies and charges that the war record on which he based his political career is fraudulent.

On Feb. 7, an electorate of 27 million Filipinos will decide whether they want to be governed for six more years by Marcos or by Corazon Aquino, widow of former Sen. Benigno Aquino, who was assassinated upon his return home from exile in August 1983.

The election is the latest challenge to Marcos’ public career which began with his conviction for a murder committed when he was 18 and is now mired in the aftermath of the Aquino assassination.

Marcos’ conviction in the death of his father’s political rival was overturned by the Supreme Court, where he argued his own case after achieving the highest score on the national lawyers’ exam, taken while he was facing the murder charge.

Five decades later, Marcos’ closest military confidant and other soldiers were acquitted in the Aquino killing.

Carlos P. Romulo, the late former foreign minister, once called Marcos the ″quintessential Filipino.″

American biographer Hartzell Spence, in a 1965 book that is now copyrighted by Marcos, describes the Filipino leader as a man who has risen above the supposed weaknesses of his people.

″In a nation of gamblers and pleasure-seekers, Marcos makes no wagers and is happiest when reading a book in his own library,″ Spence wrote. ″He neither smokes nor drinks. In a culture addicted to graft and political corruption, he has a reputation as an honest man, both personally and politically. Among people who are essentially lazy, Marcos is a dynamo.″

More recent Marcos watchers are less charitable and see him as a man considerably weakened physically and politically since Aquino’s assassination.

The U.S. Congress has been looking into charges that Marcos and his wife, Imelda, have been siphoning off public funds for personal investments in the United States, including real estate in New York City.

Mrs. Aquino has called him an ″inveterate liar″ and her supporters accuse him of cheating.

Marcos was born Sept. 11, 1917, in Sarrat, a town in northern Luzon. The bed on which he was born has become a minor tourist attraction in the town which is part of the Ilocos region, known for fierce, sometimes violent political loyalties.

The president has long claimed to have led a guerrilla unit during Japanese occupation in World War II and earned 27 Philippine and U.S. medals. But recently published classified U.S. Army documents claim the unit did not exist, and challenges have been raised to many of Marcos’ medals.

Marcos became the youngest representative in the Philippines’ U.S.-style Congress in 1949, and was re-elected in 1953.

In 1954, as one of the country’s most eligible bachelors, he met Imelda Romualdez, a beauty queen from a prominent central Philippines family who was working as a clerk at the Central Bank.

Eleven days later they were married. He was 38, she 26. They have three children, two of them active in politics. They also have an adopted daughter and three grandchildren.

Marcos was re-elected to Congress in 1957 and to the Senate in 1959.

After switching from the Liberal to the Nacionalista Party, he was elected president in 1965 and again in 1969, becoming the first ever to be re-elected for what would have been his last term under laws then in effect.

In 1972, blaming growing unrest by student militants and rising criminality, Marcos declared martial law and in 1973 had the constitution rewritten, keeping himself in power. He also has given his wife powers second only to his own, putting her in his Cabinet and making her the governor of Manila.

Marcos lifted martial law in 1981, announced a restoration of full democracy and won a presidential election boycotted by all major opponents.

But Marcos has given up none of the vast powers accumulated during martial law, including the power to arrest anyone he wants. He has allowed some democratic reforms, including a freer press. Critics, however, still call him a dictator.