In short (2)

President Marcos's call at the United Nations for resuming global negotiations on a redistribution of wealth from rich to poor has its irony. Filipinos would be happy if their leader distributed some of his and his wife's wealth downward - not to mention their political power. Even as Mr. Marcos was holding forth at the UN following a hat-in-hand visit to Washington which many found distasteful, opposition leaders in the Philippines accused the government of bringing the Philippines to the ''brink of disaster'' and Amnesty International reported widespread repression there.

It is hard to be touched by Mr. Marcos's expression of concern about the world's poor. Let him tend to his own first.