WORLD, Page 28THE PHILIPPINESThere Is Always a Next TimeBattered and baited by mutineers, Aquino gets tough and reachesfor People Power. But she may not be able to act on the lessonsgleaned from the latest rebellionBy 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.
