Candidates Under Fire

THE PHILIPPINES

Politics in the Philippines is as much a battle of bullets as ballots. As they campaign for the countrywide Nov. 14 elections for mayors, provincial governors and one-third of the 24-man Senate, the candidates are packing .45 automatics under their loose-fitting barong tagalog shirts, or are escorted by bodyguards who carry submachine guns. The precautions are sensible--but not always effective. In one two-day period last week, seven political killings took place throughout the archipelago, bringing to 21 the number of reported political murders in recent weeks. Some 50 other persons have been wounded since the campaign began.

A Liberal Party candidate for city council in a northern Luzon town was shot to death in an ambush. In Batangas, 60 miles south of Manila, the brother and a bodyguard of the Liberal mayoral candidate were killed in a shoot-out with bodyguards of the incumbent Nacionalista Party mayor. In downtown Manila, an assassin killed a candidate for governor of one of the outlying provinces. In a nightclub near Manila, a gunman severely wounded Jose B. Laurel Jr., son of the wartime puppet President and now Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives, pumping two .45-cal. slugs into him before being chased away by Laurel's own bodyguard. The threat of violence has become so serious that President Ferdinand Marcos has sent detachments of the federal Constabulary into Manila and Batangas to strengthen understaffed local police forces, may send the troopers into other cities as well.

In the Philippines, where having guns and bodyguards is a matter of prestige and power, almost everybody who is anybody packs a weapon. Manila is the world's only major city where office buildings and bars have signs imploring customers to check their firearms when entering. But it is at election time that the murder rate really soars.

Filipino sociologists trace the high incidence of political shoot-outs to the islands' rigid feudalistic society. Members of a particular clan feel great loyalty to their leader, and the duty to defend him far outweighs the legal injunction against killing. Though the candidates themselves usually counsel moderation and almost never do any shooting, their followers often feel compelled by a fierce sense of honor to avenge insults--or to ensure their leader's victory by canceling out the other names on the ballot with bullets.

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