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                |                                                              March 10, 1986

PHILIPPINES

Anatomy of a Revolution


Forbearance, diplomatic skill and some luck led to the end of
the Marcos era


"Senator, what do you think?  Should I step down?"

It was the second time that Paul Laxalt, the Nevada Republican
and personal friend of Ronald Reagan's, had spoken that day
with Ferdinand Marcos, the beleaguered President of the
Philippines. At 2 o'clock (EST) last Monday afternoon, Marcos
telephoned Laxalt, who had visited Manila in October as a
special emissary, with an urgent question: Was it true, as U.S
Ambassador Stephen Bosworth had told him, that President Reagan
was calling for a "peaceful transition to a new government" in
the Philippines?  While the two men talked, Laxalt said later,
it became apparent that Marcos was "hanging on, looking for a
life preserver. He was a desperate man clutching at straws."
He asked whether the reference to a "peaceful transition" meant
he should stay on until 1987, when his current term was
originally supposed to end, and he wondered whether some sort
of power-sharing arrangement with the Philippine opposition
could be worked out.

Marcos spoke of his fear that his palace was about to be
attacked, but seemed determined to stay on as President. At
Marcos' request, Laxalt then went to the White House, where he
discussed the conversation with Reagan and Secretary of State
George Shultz. The President repeated his desire for a
peaceful, negotiated settlement in the Philippines and said once
more that Marcos would be welcome if he decided to seek
sanctuary in the U.S. But Reagan said he thought the idea of
power sharing was impractical and that it would be undignified
for Marcos to stay on as a "consultant."

At 4:15 p.m. Laxalt called Marcos, who immediately asked
whether Reagan wanted him to step down. Laxalt said the
President was not in a position to make that kind of demand.
Then Marcos put the question directly to Laxalt: What should
he do?  Replied the Senator: "Mr. President, I'm not bound by
diplomatic restraint. I'm talking only for myself. I think you
should cut and cut cleanly. The time has come." There was a
long pause that to Laxalt seemed interminable. Finally he asked,
"Mr. President, are you still there?" Marcos replied, in a
subdued voice, "Yes, I'm still here. I am so very, very
disappointed."

In Manila it was after 5 o'clock in the morning of the longest
day of Ferdinand Marcos' life. Before it was over, he would
attend his final inauguration ceremony, a foolish charade
carried out in the sanctuary of his Malacanang Palace. That
evening, a ruler no more, he would flee with his family and
retainers aboard four American helicopters to Clark Air Base on
the first leg of a flight that would take him to Guam, Hawaii
and exile.

That same night, to mark the end of his increasingly
authoritarian 20-year rule, millions of his countrymen would
stage one of the biggest celebrations in the Philippines since
its deliverance from the Japanese in 1945 and its independence
from the U.S. in 1946. At the Malacanang Palace, giddy with
excitement, hundreds of Filipinos would scale fences and storm
their way through locked doors in order to glimpse--and in some
cases to loot--the ornate Spanish-style palace that had served
as Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos' seat of almost absolute power.

If there was something inexplicable about the mass phenomenon
that rescued the island nation from a failing dictatorship,
enabling thousands of unarmed civilians to protect one faction
of the armed forces from the other, there was not doubt when the
process began. It was Aug. 21. 1983, on the tarmac at Manila
international airport. On that day, Opposition Politician
Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino Jr., 50, returning from three years of
self-imposed exile in the U.S., was slain by a single bullet as
he stepped off a jetliner into a crowd of soldiers and
well-wishers. Though Marcos tried to put the blame on Communist
agitators, one Filipino civilian and 25 members of the military,
including General Fabian Ver, the armed forces Chief of Staff
and Marcos stalwart, were indicted on charges of conspiracy to
commit murder. The defendants were acquitted in December after
a yearlong trial, but few Filipinos doubted their guilt.

The Aquino murder shocked and angered the country, sparking
popular demonstrations and intensifying the disaffection with
Marcos. It infuriated thousands of professional military men,
who bitterly resented the politicization that the armed forces
were undergoing and the hatred that this process was
engendering. Of the assassination, Colonel Gregorio Honosan
says today, "From a military viewpoint, it is technically
impossible to get inside a cordon of 2,000 men, so this
reinforced our belief that nobody in government could be safe."

The assassination produced a sharp increase in the size and
intensity of Communist guerrilla activity by the military
organization called the New People's Army. Though the
insurgency is concentrated on Mindanao and some other southern
islands, it spread after the Aquino assassination to 60 of the
country's 74 provinces. In addition, the killing of Aquino
created a nationwide crisis of confidence that caused the
already stagnant economy to spiral downward, even as most other
Southeast Asian nations were prospering. After the
assassination, says an American official, "all these concerns
took a quantum leap."

Two of the most important elements of Philippine society, the
church and the military, began quickly turning against Marcos.
The Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, is a powerful
figure in a country nominally 85% Roman Catholic, and his
opposition to Marcos was clear. He increasingly and openly
encouraged opposition political figures.

The revolt in the armed forces began to take shape as long ago
as 1977, when a power struggle within the Marcos government
eroded the influence of the President's longtime political ally
Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. "It began as a self-defense
action," recalls Navy Captain Rex Robles, a spokesman for the
Reform the Armed Forces Movement, which Enrile now confirms he
clandestinely helped establish. Realizing that he was being
pushed aside in a power struggle with General Ver, Enrile, a
Harvard-trained lawyer, began to work secretly to protect
himself and lay the groundwork for the inevitable post-Marcos
period.

Late last fall events began to move rapidly. In November,
Marcos declared that he would hold a special presidential
election to convince the Reagan Administration that he still
enjoyed popular support. a month later, immediately following
the acquittal of Ver, Corazon Aquino announced that she would
challenge Marcos for the presidency. Cardinal Sin then helped
persuade former Senator Salvador Laurel to join the Aquino
ticket. In the meantime Enrile had been building his
reform-movement, a highly visible band of about 100 well-trained
soldiers whose aim was not to topple marcos but to pressure him
to reorganize the military. Throughout the election campaign,
while Enrile publicly supported Marcos, his reformers conducted
a crusade for honest voting that angered the President and the
Ver faction in the military. The reformers in turn were
enraged by the strong-arm methods used by the pro-Marcos forces
in the vote counting, and even more by the assassination of
Evelio Javier, a leading opposition figure. Nonetheless they
remained inactive because they wanted to appear impartial. The
military men had already established links with Corazon Aquino,
and before the campaign had helped train her security detail.

Once the voting was over, the reformers prepared to take a more
active part in the efforts to topple Marcos. By this time they
had won the support of some of the Marcos family's closest
security forces. Says one reformist: "I don't think the
President thought that so many of his praetorian guards would
turn against him. He thought money could buy loyalty. He
underestimated the basic decency of Filipinos." The group
tested palace security by smuggling cars filled with empty boxes
into the palace grounds. Since nobody bothered to stop them,
they realized they would be able to bring in explosives if they
should choose to do so.

Two weeks ago the reformers learned that they were in imminent
danger. As the first step in a byzantine crackdown, Marcos
arrested a group of soldiers. Though these troops were not
members of the reform movement, the reformers theorized that the
men would be used to incriminate them. The rebels suspected
that the threatened crackdown was a maneuver by Ver and
supporters to reinforce their links with Marcos. At the same
time, however, there were reports that some sort of coup might
actually be in the making.

Immediately the reformers decided to accelerate their plans.
They reached Enrile, who was sitting in the coffeehouse in the
Atrium building in Makati, and informed him of what was
happening. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Enrile resigned from the
government and announced that he was joining the opposition
forces. Some of Enrile's reformist colleagues tried to convince
him that such a move would merely forewarn Marcos of the group's
intentions, but he insisted, "I just cannot do this to the
President otherwise."

The decision made, he sought Lieut. General Fidel Ramos' help.
"I called Eddie. I had never discussed anything with him over
the years, except in terms of the reform movement's general lack
of aggressive intentions and its interest in institutional
change. I told him, 'My boys are in this predicament, and I
will have to be with them. I would like to find out whether you
will join us or not.'  General Ramos said, 'I am with you all
the way.'"

At the moment of showdown, Cardinal Sin again played a crucial
role. He publicly praised Enrile and Ramos, and called on the
Philippine people to take to the streets in peaceful support of
them. Radio Veritas, the Catholic station, became the
unofficial broadcaster of the rebellion, reporting on military
units that had joined the opposition and giving instructions to
crowds.

In the end the ailing Marcos, who is reported to be suffering
from a form of systemic lupus erythematosus, a disease in which
human antibodies attack the body's tissue, especially the
kidneys, was woefully uninformed as to what the reformers were
really up to and how much support they had gained. Says Enrile:
"Evidently the President was a captive of a group in the
military. That was the sad thing about it."

Reagan Administration policy during the final hours of the
Marcos reign was set during a meeting last Sunday morning in the
Bethesda, Md., home of Secretary of State George Shultz, at
which the President's special envoy, Philip Habib, who had
returned from Manila only hours before, presented a report on
his trip. In attendance were Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary
of Defense; Admiral William Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; Robert Gates, deputy director for intelligence
of the Central Intelligence Agency; and John Poindexter, the
National Security Adviser. Also present were three officials
who had been preoccupied with the Philippine crisis for months:
Michael Armacost, Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs; Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of State for East
Asian and Pacific Affairs; and Richard Armitage, Assistant
Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy.

The group agreed on four principles, which were subsequently
presented to President Reagan: Marcos' ability to govern with
the consent of his people had ended; any effort by him to crush
the reform movement would only worsen the situation; it was of
great importance to the U.S. that force not be used; and it
would be damaging to U.S. standing in the world if Marcos were
treated like the Shah of Iran, who was admitted to the U.S. for
medical treatment but was not permitted by the Carte
Administration to remain. As it turned out, Marcos was less
worried about the fate of the Shah than about what happened to
Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnamese President who was
assassinated during a 1963 coup. Says one senior American
official: "He wanted to make sure he did not leave with a
bullet."

President Reagan, who had once solidly supported Marcos,
quickly accepted the four-point policy. Reagan's views had
already been shifting during the previous three weeks. Indeed,
in response to Marcos' deteriorating situation, he had moved
rapidly from his dismaying remark after the election that there
had probably been voting fraud on both sides to a White House
statement condemning the election as fatally flawed by fraud,
most of it on the part of the Marcos forces.

At a Sunday-afternoon meeting of the National Security Council,
Special Envoy Habib reported flatly, "The Marcos era has
ended." Shultz summarized the views of the participants by
saying that "not a person here" believed Marcos could remain in
power, adding, "He's had it." President Reagan agreed but
remained concerned about the fate of MArcos. Said Reagan:
"We'll treat this man in retirement with dignity. He is not to
wander."

By then the Administration was emphasizing as strongly as
possible that Marcos should avoid a military showdown. On
Saturday, Reagan sent the Philippine leader an appeal not to use
force to remain in power. Next day he dispatched a second
message, advising Marcos that he as well as his family and close
associates was welcome to live in the U.S. White House
Spokesman Larry Speaks announced that American military aid to
the Philippines would be cut off if troops loyal to Marcos used
the army against the Philippine reform movement forces led by
Enrile and Ramos. On Sunday evening, Shultz and Under Secretary
of State Armacost met at the State Department with Blas Ople,
Marcos' Minister of Labor, who had come to Washington to plead
the Philippine President's case. According to Ople, the
American diplomats gave him a blunt message: Marcos had lost
control of his army, the troops under General Ver were
ineffectual, and if Marcos did no step down, the country could
be heading for civil war. A similar statement was sent to the
U.S. Ambassador in Manila, Stephen Bosworth, who took it to
Marcos.

It was early Monday morning before Ople finally managed to talk
to Marcos by telephone. The Philippine President was angry that
while his palace was being threatened and his television station
taken over, the U.S. was telling him not to defend himself. He
told Ople that Mrs. Marcos was there beside him and "she doesn't
want to leave." Later that day, at about the same time Marcos
was calling Senator Laxalt, Imelda Marcos telephoned Nancy
Reagan. The message was the same: Mrs. Reagan urged the
Marcoses to avoid bloodshed, expressed concern for their family,
and assured Mrs. Marcos that they were welcome to come to the
U.S.

The Administration was worried about General Ver, who on Monday
was still in a position to attempt a last-gasp military move.
There were reports that he was about to send tanks to attack
the reformers. Accordingly, the National Security Council sent
a message to Ver advising him that it would not be in his
"interest" to make a military move. Translation: if he called
out troops, he would forfeit his chance of being included in the
Marcos rescue operation. The warning was heeded.

In the period following the Aquino assassination, American
policymakers had become increasingly concerned about the
Philippines' rapid political and economic decline. One
particular concern was the future status of the two large U.S.
military installations in the Philippines, Clark Air Base and
Subic Bay Naval Base. The leases on those facilities will run
out in 1991, but the U.S. hopes that they can be renegotiated.
Following a 1984 policy review by the National Security
Council, which concluded that Marcos would "try to remain in
power indefinitely," the Administration began to work for
economic, political and military reform in the Philippines.
Shultz laid down the overriding principle: the U.S. must be
loyal to the institutions of democracy, not to Marcos.

In October, Reagan sent Senator Laxalt to Manila to tell Marcos
that changes had to be made. Said Laxalt last week: "He was
getting messages through State, but he just wasn't believing
them." Laxalt told him that the Philippine army had to spend
more time dealing with the Communist insurgents.

Pressure on Marcos was also building in the U.S. Congress.
Senator Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee, who headed an official American
team of poll watchers that observed the elections, concluded
that there had been many instances of fraud, vote tampering,
violence and intimidation by Marcos partisans. In a telephone
conversation with Marcos just after the voting, Laxalt observed
that certain aspects of the elections had been "rather strange,"
such as reports that Marcos had carried one province by a vote
of 13,000 to 0. That was not a province, it was a precinct,
said Marcos,and "it was family." When Laxalt answered, "I doubt
very much if I ran in my home district I would get all the votes
of my family," Marcos, who knew that the Senator's parents were
French Basque immigrants, replied, "Well, Filipinos are more
clannish than you independent Basques."

Washington's fear of a bloodbath was not unfounded. Early
Monday morning a crowd of Marcos supporters armed with batons
and tear gas moved toward Camp Crame, where the reformers were
gathered. Over transistor radios, Marcos was heard vowing,
"We'll wipe them out. It is obvious they are committing a
rebellion." And over Radio Veritas came Enrile's reply, "I am
not going to surrender."

Tanks arrived. When helicopters from the 15th strike wing of
the air force began circling overhead, it looked as if the
reformist rebellion was all over. If the choppers had fired
into the Enrile- Ramos headquarters, the reformers would have
been helpless. But then the choppers landed, and out came
airmen waving white flags and giving the "L" sign for laban
(fight), a symbol of the opposition. Suddenly the crowd,
realizing that the air force was now defecting, went wild.

Perhaps the most ominous moment came that same morning, shortly
after Marcos announced on a televised news conference that he
was declaring a state of emergency. At that point his armed
forces Chief of Staff, General Ver, whispered to Marcos in a
voice that was audible to the whole nation, "Sir, we are ready
to annihilate them at your orders...We are left with no option
but to attack." Marcos did not respond. Whether he knew it or
not, his failure to move swiftly against Enrile and Ramos, one
of the more honorable acts of his tarnished presidency, had
already cost him the office he was fighting so desperately to
retain.

Instead he went on with his press conference, but at 8:47 he
was interrupted in mid-sentence as the government-run television
station, Channel 4, suddenly went off the air. When it
reappeared three hours later, the newscaster jubilantly
declared, "This is the first free broadcast of Channel 4...The
people have taken over." Beside him was Colonel Mariano
Santiago, who until last year had been the Marcos-appointed
chairman of the country's Board of Transportation. To many
Filipinos, the seizure of Channel 4 was one of the most
remarkable events of an endlessly astonishing week.

Tuesday was the day of the twin inaugurals. Aquino had wanted
a daylight ceremony because, as she said in her address, "it is
fitting and proper that, as the rights and liberties of our
people were taken away at midnight 14 years ago [when martial
law was declared], the people should formally recover those
rights and liberties in the full light of day." An hour later
Ferdinand Marcos stepped onto the balcony at Malacanang Palace
before a crowd of 4,000 cheering supporters and took the oath
of office. "Whatever we have before us, we will overcome," he
promised, while Imelda vowed to serve the people "all my life
up to my last breath." Though she was choked with emotion, few
people outside the palace sensed that this was to be the
Marcoses' farewell. Then the Marcoses sang favorite songs, at
one point offering a duet to the cheers of the invited guests.
Conspicuously absent was Marcos' Vice President, Arturo
Tolentino, who later said that he had not wanted to take the
oath of office because he hoped to play an intermediary role
between Marcos and the reformists.

An hour after the ceremony, Marcos telephoned Enrile and
demanded that he "stop firing at the palace." Enrile said he
had no troops there. Marcos asked him to call Ambassador
Bosworth to find out if the U.S. could provide the Marcoses with
security in flying out of the palace. Enrile promised to do so.
Marcos had previously raised the possibility of retiring to
Ilocos Norte, his home province in the northern Philippines, but
had been discouraged from doing so by his family and by the new
government. At 9:05 p.m., four American helicopters picked up
the President, Imelda and a contingent of relatives and aides,
including General Ver, and flew them to the U.S. air base.

As the week ended, Reagan Administration policymakers breathed
a great sign of relief that their plans and strategies, so
painstakingly worked out over the past two years, had gone so
well. Both Republicans and Democrats praised the handling of the
Philippine crisis. Officials counted themselves incredibly
lucky. Noting that events had passed without appreciable
bloodshed, a senior U.S. official in Washington ruefully
remarked that the Lord surely looks after "fools, children, the
Philippines and the U.S.A."

After its initial concern about how the inexperienced Corazon
Aquino would fare as President, the Administration was relieved
that she gave important jobs to Laurel, Enrile, Ramos and other
centrists, and adopted so conciliatory a tone toward her former
opponents. Already there were hints of trouble ahead over the
Marcoses' relocation, whether they decided to settle in Hawaii,
California, New York or elsewhere, and over the legal status of
Marcos' properties abroad. Though Marcos' only known income was
his presidential salary of $5,700 a year, the Central
Intelligence Agency has reportedly estimated the value of his
family's worldwide holdings at perhaps $2 billion. New York's
Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz observed mildly last week,
"There is a strong presumption that he had a very good financial
adviser or acquired the millions of dollars he has through
presumptively improper means." Aboard the plane that carried
Marcos to Hawaii, federal authorities found $1.2 million in
Philippine currency, and another planeload of Marcos' personal
effects arrived at week's end. Solarz said that while he
thought it was appropriate for Reagan to offer Marcos sanctuary,
the President had certainly not offered Marcos "immunity against
civil proceedings brought by the government of the Philippines
to recover a fortune stolen from the Philippines."

But for the moment the Administration was relieved to have
passed the center of the storm. Even as he praised Marcos for
his "difficult and courageous decision" to step down, Reagan
congratulated Aquino on the "democratic outcome" of the
elections and promised to work closely with her government in
rebuilding the Philippine economy and armed forces.

--By William E. Smith. Reported by Sandra Burton/Manila, and
Johanna McGeary and William Steward/Washington.