TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121889/12188900.039

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.6 KB | 129 lines

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THE PHILIPPINES

There Is Always a Next Time


Battered and baited by mutineers, Aquino gets tough and reaches
for People Power. But she may not be able to act on the lessons
gleaned from the latest rebellion

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan


    In 1983, three years before Corazon Aquino rode a wave of
national anger to become President of the Philippines, one of
the country's most astute political observers made an eerily
prescient assessment. "So she becomes the rallying point," he
said. "Immediately, corruption will increase. Everybody will
feather his nest. At that point, she will be nudged to the side
and be made a scapegoat for the mess. Then the military will
take over. They will say, `Well, we've given you your chance.'
But they will have made sure she would fail. They will then
throw her to the people, and they will come in as the great
saviors of the republic." The prediction was made by the
President's husband Benigno Aquino Jr. shortly before he was
assassinated in August 1983. And though he was talking about
Imelda Marcos, his scenario was coming true last week for his
coup-plagued widow.

    As Manila's financial district squeaked away from a
showdown that might have turned it into a Southeast Asian
Beirut, the President essayed a show of strength by reaching for
the People Power that brought her to office. Still, in tacit
disobedience to Aquino's stand against a negotiated end to
hostilities, her military did not so much quell the coup as
reconcile with those who had come closer than ever to unseating
her. Even before the latest coup ended, plots were being hatched
for the next stage of the rebellion, one the planners are
certain will bring about Aquino's fall. As a government trooper
who helped put down the mutiny said of the rebels: "Sir, they
are not the enemy."

    Just as she has done after every other major coup attempt,
the President displayed resolve and dispatch. Aquino
peremptorily summoned the country's Senators to Malacanang
Palace and bluntly presented them with her declaration of a
national state of emergency, the closest thing to martial law
that the constitution allowed her to impose. At the People Power
rally, Aquino, dressed in her trademark yellow, delivered her
toughest speech to date, praising loyalists and accusing her
political enemies of colluding with the mutineers. She
specifically mentioned Vice President Salvador Laurel,
opposition Senator Juan Ponce Enrile and her cousin Eduardo
Cojuangco, a wealthy crony of Ferdinand Marcos who sneaked into
the country a week before the uprising.

    As many as 100,000 Filipinos showed up to wave banners and
shout, "Cory! Cory!" However, it was reported that some
participants were bused in from the provinces, and the
government's claim of a turnout of 1 million was hyperbole. But
the crowd loved her performance. Said a bystander: "Now we can
sleep at night."

    Yet Aquino has always been reluctant to follow through on
her shows of strength, which she equates with her predecessor
Marcos. In the past, every display of post-rebellion resolve has
been followed by inconsistency and a return to bureaucratic
procrastination. Unfortunately, Aquino's devotion to
constitutional principles is "part of the reason she is
perceived as being weak," says Elliot Richardson, former U.S.
Attorney General, who is now U.S. special representative for the
Multilateral Assistance Initiative, an international program
that has obtained pledges of $3.5 billion in development aid for
the Philippines from a score of countries and institutions. He
explains, "She seems totally dedicated to democratic government
-- to the point where she will not do things that smack of
authoritarianism."

    The President may not know what to do with the military.
For the past four years, Aquino has depended on the loyalty of
Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos to keep the armed forces in line.
But Ramos' response to every rebellion has been to patch up
relations between the various military factions and restore the
uneasy status quo between reformist officers and old-line,
self-interested generals. Aquino can no longer afford that kind
of detente. Moreover, it has not worked. If she cannot impose
civilian authority on the armed forces, then her government may
be sidelined into irrelevancy as rival military groups battle
it out. Says a young officer who backs the government: "I think
Cory will have to be hard on the rebels." But to balance out the
harshness, he says, "she must also be hard on the corrupt
politicians around her."

    The rebels' shadowy National Governing Council is a troika
chaired by General Eduardo Abenina and filled out by Lieut.
Colonel Gregorio ("Gringo") Honasan, mastermind of the last two
coup attempts, and General Jose Maria Zumel, a renegade officer
loyal to the cause of Marcos. In a phone call, Abenina told TIME
that the rebels could count on about 60% of the military for
support. Soon, he said, they will begin a new phase of the
rebellion, destroying property and, perhaps, waging a campaign
of political assassinations.

    He denies that the group is out to kill Aquino. "We shall
give her a pleasurable life as a private citizen," said Abenina.
"Her official acts -- like the declaration of state of emergency
-- we will not question." But he said they would scrutinize her
private failure to discipline manipulative relatives. For the
past year, Aquino has promised to prosecute "one big fish" on
graft charges but has yet failed to land a catch. Abenina added,
"Had America not intervened, this civil war would have been over
by now."

    Washington expects more requests for help from the Aquino
regime and is determined to do all it can to keep her in power.
The Aquino rescue is certain to complicate the negotiations over
the two large U.S. installations at Subic Bay and Clark. Aquino,
who was thought to favor the bases, may have to remove herself
entirely from deliberating the issue. Says a White House
official: "The chances of a satisfactory resolution were no more
than 50-50 a couple of months ago, and they're less now."

    And then there is the rest of Benigno Aquino's prophecy to
ponder. With the establishment of an authoritarian military
regime, he said, the Communist guerrillas will gain the
political and armed initiative. Drawn to protect its strategic
bases, the U.S. will have to become partners with the military
in a vicious war. The Philippines, Aquino said, will become
another El Salvador, a fate that should give pause to even
Cory's most unyielding enemies.