As part of growing congressional efforts to put pressure on Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R., Kan.) said Monday that he will introduce legislation this week ”to expedite” a study on ”alternate sites” for the strategic American military bases in the Philippines.
”Marcos shouldn`t use those bases for leverage,” Dole said.
At the same time, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), one of three Democratic senators who returned from Manila Sunday night, called on President Reagan
”to urge Marcos to leave, to step aside, given the results of this election.”
”The President should pick up the telephone and tell Mr. Marcos he should step aside,” Levin said, speaking on behalf of Senators David Boren
(D., Okla.) and David Pryor (D., Ark.), who accompanied him to the Philippines.
Levin said the best way to protect U.S. military interests in the Philippines is to get Marcos to leave office.
”The question is no longer whether he will have to step down, but when, and what the view of the Philippine people will be of us,” he said.
Congress officially returns from the Presidents` Day recess Tuesday, and the pressure on Reagan to put pressure on Marcos is expected to increase as members express bipartisan outrage over reports of fraud and violence used by Marcos and his supporters to keep him in office.
How far Congress is willing to go is not yet clear, but Dole indicated support for the Philippine president has about run out as reports continue to mount that Marcos stole the Feb. 7 presidential election from his challenger, Corazon Aquino.
Asked if he were ready to say ”good riddance” to Marcos, Dole told reporters, ”Not yet.”
The majority leader said he thought senators ought to hear from the three Democratic senators who just returned and from Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who headed a group that observed the election. Since his return, Lugar has described the results as ”fatally flawed.”
Dole also said any decisions should be delayed until U.S. envoy Philip Habib comes back from his mission to the Philippines and reports to Reagan on his talks with Marcos and Aquino, who is now calling for a campaign of nonviolent protest aimed at forcing Marcos out of office.
Levin, however, said: ”Time is running out. The President must act clearly and quickly.”
Levin said ”wishy-washy” statements issued by the White House after the election about charges of fraud and violence had shaken the Philippine people`s confidence in the United States.
”What Filipinos want is a clear statement of where we are,” Levin said. ”Where we are has got to be with the people of the Philippines who just voted out Ferdinand Marcos.”
Levin said he and the other senators were particularly impressed by a meeting they had with American businessmen in Manila who ”wanted to disassociate themselves from Marcos.” He said they discussed that meeting with Habib in the Philippines and ”we are hopeful Habib will let the President know what we found out.”
Levin said the opinion of the businessmen was important because of the amount of money American businesses have invested in the Philippines and because businessmen are ”usually cautious in a situation like that.”
If Marcos should resist U.S. pressure, including entreaties from Reagan,
”we should have nothing more to do with him in terms of military and economic assistance,” Levin said, calling Marcos ”a dictator who tried to murder democracy.”
But Levin, who is a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said the contractual obligations for the two U.S. bases in the Philippines should be honored.
In Manila, Habib met separately Monday with Marcos and Aquino, who both claim victory in the presidential election.
Aquino`s spokesman, Rene Saguisag, said that in their 55-minute meeting the opposition candidate gave Habib ”an earful” about U.S. policy on the Philippines.
Aquino said on church-run Radio Veritas Monday night: ”I repeated and stressed my position that the crisis could only be resolved by a swift and orderly transfer to the Aquino presidency that the Filipino people had chosen overwhelmingly at the polls.”
Marcos` only public comment after meeting two hours with Habib was that Habib guaranteed he was ”not interested in any way in telling us how to run our affairs.”
Marcos, who has been running the Philippines for 20 years with a mixture of authoritarian rule and democracy, said he gave Habib documents proving his opponents cheated and used violence in the election.
The Marcos-controlled National Assembly declared Marcos the winner Saturday by 1.5 million votes. An unofficial vote count by an independent citizens group still had Aquino ahead.
Meanwhile, signs emerged that Aquino`s call for restrained civil disobedience at a giant rally Sunday was having an effect.
The price of stock in the huge San Miguel Corp. dropped about 20 percent from last week. Aquino asked Filipinos to boycott the company, whose chairman, Eduardo Cojuangco, she called a Marcos ”crony.”
Several banks she listed for boycott reported heavy withdrawals.
Reflecting what Marcos acknowledges as ”an economic crisis,” the nation`s Central Bank raised interest rates sharply Monday and the bank`s governor said the economy would slow as a result.
