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Philippines The Old Political Opposition
Martial law had emasculated and marginalized the opposition,
led by a number of traditional politicians who attempted, with
limited success, to promote a credible, noncommunist alternative
to Marcos. The most important of these was Salvador H. "Doy"
Laurel. Laurel organized a coalition of ten political groups, the
United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO), to contest
the 1982 National Assembly elections. Although he included
Benigno Aquino as one of UNIDO's twenty "vice presidents," Laurel
and Aquino were bitter rivals.
The Catholic Church
During the martial law and post-martial law periods, the
Catholic Church was the country's strongest and most independent
nongovernmental institution. It traditionally had been
conservative and aligned with the elites. Parish priests and
nuns, however, witnessed the sufferings of the common people and
often became involved in political, and even communist,
activities. One of the best-known politicized clergy was Father
Conrado Balweg, who led a New People's Army guerrilla unit in the
tribal minority regions of northern Luzon. Although Pope John
Paul II had admonished the clergy worldwide not to engage in
active political struggle, the pope's commitment to human rights
and social justice encouraged the Philippine hierarchy to
criticize the Marcos regime's abuses in the late 1970s and early
1980s. Church-state relations deteriorated as the statecontrolled media accused the church of being infiltrated by
communists. Following Aquino's assassination, Cardinal Jaime Sin,
archbishop of Manila and a leader of the Catholic Bishops
Conference of the Philippines, gradually shifted the hierarchy's
stance from one of "critical collaboration" to one of open
opposition.
A prominent Catholic layman, José Concepcion, played a major
role in reviving the National Movement for Free Elections
(NAMFREL) with church support in 1983 in order to monitor the
1984 National Assembly elections. Both in the 1984 balloting and
the February 7, 1986, presidential election, NAMFREL played a
major role in preventing, or at least reporting, regime--
instigated irregularities. The backbone of its organization was
formed by parish priests and nuns in virtually every part of the
country.
Data as of June 1991
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