INTRIGUING IN THE PHILIPPINES: CAN THE AQUINO REGIME BRING STABLE DEMOCRACY?
Bronstein, Philip
Inside the Philippine military camp thirty-six hours into the rebellion against Ferdinand Marcos, there is a sense of isolation and despair. Bleary-eyed rebel soldiers, unsure of the outcome of...
...military bases...
...The Communist party and the "Left...
...With merry-go-round logic, the administration and Congress seem to want Aquino to succeed, understand that she needs money to do it, but admit that she won't get that money from the U.S...
...The fact that Cory Aquino is not versed in the traditional political trench warfare is what made her so attractive to Filipinos tired of the past...
...They have benefited more than any other party from Aquino's victory...
...They are armed with rockets and 60mm machine guns...
...Too hopeful perhaps, but not impossible...
...It will bide its time, refusing to attack Aquino personally while sorting out its internal differences...
...Highly agitated, Ramos stops near where I am sitting on the grass to say that an assault by Marcos forces is imminent and all foreign journalists should leave for their own safety...
...As I WRITE AT THE BEGINNING OF JULY, the situation in the Philippines is fluid and there is a chance things will have altered dramatically even by the time this story appears...
...His friends recognize that he will likely never be president again...
...Historically, control of the Philippines has been an incestuous affair of the elite...
...In fairness to the Aquino government, its ability to unravel an inherited catastrophe is bound to be limited...
...Ominously, Enrile told me a week after the rebellion that "the president can fire me anytime she wants...
...The two men reportedly never spoke during Marcos's time, but Jimmy is rumored to have helped his brother leave the country after the revolution...
...But I think my boys in the military will have something to say about that...
...Aquino's victory meant opportunity for the CPP, a chance to come in out of the cold...
...Perhaps the most notably divided family was the Ongpins...
...With their new two-pronged program of aboveground political involvement and continued military activity, they have finally caught up...
...Jose Maria Sison, the former CPP chairman released from jail by Aquino, has said that "the reactionary classes want a temporary ceasefire to consolidate their forces in the belief that the ever-worsening economic and political problems will blow over...
...State Department analysts say the Aquino government has not shown sufficient economic reform, that many of the business monopolies so detrimental under Marcos—like government control of the fertilizer industry—still exist...
...But at the same time I'd like some respect given to me...
...Foreign investment, an essential ingredient of economic recovery, is suspicious of the political climate and is still waiting to come in...
...But even if foreign aid does begin to arrive in larger increments, she incurs the wrath of the supply-side businessmen in her cabinet if she spends it on income-generating local projects...
...Marcos has always been, and remains, immensely popular with Ilocanos, the clannish and prideful people in the northern part of the country...
...Aquino's husband, opposition leader Benigno Aquino, once threatened to hang Cojuangco publicly if given the 507 chance, a statement many believe led to Aquino's assassination in 1983...
...Plus, the Aquino government has not come up with any economic game plan...
...Since the 1983 Aquino assassination, when the middle classes began spontaneous demonstrations, the CPP has been consistently behind the political wave...
...They believe in a mix of capitalism and state programs...
...Many of the new government's machinations have no effect outside Manila, where the peasants who make up the country's vast majority remain economically devastated and inherently skeptical that politics in the republic will ever affect their own living conditions...
...One minor Marcos official who did not enrich himself jokes that his friends tell him he will be prosecuted for "unexplained poverty and stupidity...
...It impressed upon Enrile that he may need Marcos for support should he clash with Aquino...
...Japan—the other potentially major contributor— has been hamstrung by revelations from the Aquino Good Government investigations of bribes and kickbacks during the Marcos regime involving Japanese officials and executives...
...Its main export industries like sugar have been permanently crippled by mismanagement and world recession...
...Labor relations on her sprawling family hacienda to the north were made a campaign issue by Marcos...
...It has had the only declining GNP in all of non-Communist Asia and a foreign debt that now exceeds $26 billion dollars...
...For that very reason, the way in which Aquino handles her government's problems becomes significant beyond the Philippines and will determine whether her presidency is part of a sustained success or merely a historical footnote...
...Regan said "We can do a lot worse than Marcos...
...Even at full strength, the estimated 16,000 full-time NPA soldiers can only stage hit-and-run raids...
...Since then, there have been renewed efforts at a tactical alliance...
...They need someone with honesty and who have they got...
...A VOICE OF DIVISIVE BITTERNESS, however, was raised at the back of the room where the Aquino inaugural ceremony was taking place...
...Budding oligarchs are accumulating economic bases...
...It is safe to assume that they will not withstand the deaths of their colleagues for long, especially while they feel their hands are being tied...
...The CPP remains the best organized and most durable political party in the country...
...The question is, can Aquino, armed with only her moral authority, a few words of encouragement from Reagan and Shultz and dribbles of foreign aid, create a structure of 510 democratic power that will function as well as Marcos's dictatorial control...
...Given 20 years of Marcos rule, with its attendant violence, authoritarianism, bitterness and ruthless machinations, who could not be moved when Corazon Aquino took her oath of office Tuesday "in the name of and by the will of the Filipino people," even while Marcos was still holding out in the palace...
...His participation would have seriously undermined Aquino...
...In 1985, an effort to combine many of the Socdems and the Natdems in a political party called Bayan disintegrated when the Natdems suddenly demanded a larger share of representatives...
...Friends say she felt like her family members were "second-class citizens" while they lived in Boston during her husband's self-imposed exile and that Benigno Aquino's assassination might have been avoided if the U.S...
...Sison and other above-ground Communists realize they can be elected to national positions and slowly move away from their armed colleagues...
...The widespread removal of local elected officials by Jose Cojuangco's ally, Aquino's Local Government Minister Aquilino Pinmentel, has embittered much of the electorate, particularly in areas where the ousted bureaucrats were considered good men who won their seats fairly...
...Under Marcos, the budding RAM group was a favorite of U.S...
...As Robin Leach, the host of American television's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," said 511 recently on his show: "Imelda, if you're listening, you're still famous, babe...
...The U.S...
...They are competing with the CPP for their mass base and are the only other group with a serious following among the young...
...Even Cabinet members are not spared constant accusations...
...But an alliance between UNIDO and other existing opposition parties could prove formidable...
...They are warring in a country already burdened by its traditions but without an established identity of its own...
...Agrarian reform is the only area where the CPP challenges Aquino directly...
...Pimentel is considered a Socdem as well as, to a lesser degree, Agriculture Minister Mitra and even Aquino herself...
...His wife has told friends that Enrile believes he is a dead man, literally, if he is removed...
...SUCH STORIES GO BEYOND BAD JUDGMENT to a more endemic corruption Aquino may not have the resources to root out...
...And there are almost daily reports that Enrile is plotting a coup to preempt his firing and in the face of government human rights and corruption investigations that may land at his doorstep...
...In the long term, the main political concern continues to be the stubbornly entrenched and persistently growing Marxist-oriented insurgency...
...Enrile has denied any wrongdoing...
...Both ministers have since been reined in by Aquino...
...I promised I'd sue the s.o.b...
...That irony was temporarily lost in the public exultation the next day when Marcos fled the country and we were all left to contemplate the stunning reality of this relatively bloodless, but seemingly monumental change...
...Her naiveté and lack of experience hurt her but have also made her personally acceptable to more factions than any other leader in the Philippines today...
...The CPP, by its structural nature, is also remarkably inept at quick decision-making...
...Enrile has spoken for them, calling a negotiated settlement with the Communists "impossible," even while he says he will abide by Aquino's approach...
...Some 70 percent of the country lives below the poverty line, calculated at just over $700 annual per capita income...
...And, most important, it indebted Enrile to Marcos...
...Wharton Econometrics has estimated the country will need $12 billion over the next five years to recover...
...Such a snowball effect would take care of Aquino's political problems through legitimate democratic institutions...
...It will further fragment the military and discourage urgently needed foreign investment while boosting Aquino's greatest potential rival...
...When martial law was declared in 1972," Evangelista told me, "three truckloads of Marines raided my house with a warrant signed by Enrile...
...For the first time since it was formed in 1968, the CPP did not provide bodies for street protests...
...Marcos loyalists...
...If a rightwing coup succeeded, the CPP would suffer the most...
...He controlled the once-vast cocoanut industry under Marcos...
...colony, its 80-plus percent literacy rate, its widespread use of English, and its Catholic majority making it the only predominantly Christian country in Asia, it is easy to forget that the Philippines is also a bankrupt ThirdWorld country...
...Despite the brave support for their cause by millions of urban Filipinos, the rebels have seen the civilian barricades of People's Power dwindle in the early morning hours while loyalist tanks are rolling in the streets and Marcos seems increasingly entrenched in his palace ten miles away...
...If the Socdems have claim to a political entity right now, it is the PDP-Laban, the party formed by Benigno Aquino and the one that ran Cory Aquino's campaign...
...Enrile remains the largest short-term threat to Aquino in spite of his protests to the contrary and demonstrations of loyalty...
...The Socdems also share an ideological enemy with the Natdems in conservative government policymakers like Jimmy Ongpin...
...But one administration source told me recently that "if we were presented with a fait accompli, there's not much we could do...
...Imelda Marcos, though she might have attracted more hostility than adulation as First Lady, is still vigorous and ambitious herself...
...Many Philippine experts in Washington and even influential Filipinos, like industrialist Enrique Zobel, one of the world's wealthiest businessmen, who supported Marcos but made his fortune largely without favors, give Aquino only a year or less unless more fundamental reform is achieved...
...I asked him after the July coup attempt if his group was involved...
...I woke up this morning worried, as usual, whether NISA (the National Intelligence Security), was tapping my phone...
...A friend of both Marcos and Benigno Aquino during their early days in public office describes scenes where the two men would sit in his house arguing over who had killed more of the other's allies...
...Now I can't...
...Bleary-eyed rebel soldiers, unsure of the outcome of their action or its impact throughout the rest of the country, continue to man the windows and doorways, afraid to sleep or to take their hands off their weapons...
...But many of Aquino's other advisers and veterans of the struggle found themselves left in the cold by infighting, power struggles, and old jealousies dormant during the Marcos years...
...We can get to Cory," says Esguerra...
...Jimmy Ongpin is now Aquino's finance minister and architect of her economic policy...
...His brother, Roberto, was Marcos's minister of trade and industry...
...and intensely religious, she would literally bend over backwards to avoid the embraces of old friends during speaking engagements...
...In a developed country there is room to grapple with these problems...
...That would leave only the economic and social problems...
...It let Enrile know the door to negotiation was open for any future alliance...
...With its fifty years as a U.S...
...Aquino's rectitude is an anomaly...
...But in the joy of the moment, as the pilots tearfully hug their new comrades and make their way to headquarters to shake hands with Ramos and Enrile, I recall that it was Enrile himself who had been accused of receiving a kickback when the U.S.-based Sikorsky Aircraft, Inc...
...Some of Aquino's associates are true progressives but almost all of them also come from the upper classes, descendants of the illustrados created by the Spaniards 400 years ago to run the Philippines in perpetuity...
...support, Aquino then shut the CPP out of the civil disobedience effort after the election...
...By now the wonder and excitement of victory over Marcos has faded away...
...One executive of a large multinational corporation that was reported to be opening a Philippine facility told me a few weeks ago, "We'd be foolish to invest there now...
...Far from establishing Aquino's ability to handle crises, the incident highlights the more profound problems she faces...
...He has not been trusted by Aquino's people—"We count our fingers when we shake his hand," one cabinet minister told me—but has acted responsibly and well as vice-president...
...She has released political prisoners, restored habeas corpus, established a commission to write a new constitution, reshaped the Supreme Court and encouraged an expanding free press...
...He has a strong military following and has clashed with the new president on issues like the retention of the country's two U.S...
...Carmen Lao is married to the father of a Marcos son-inlaw...
...The failure of Tolentino in his heroically comic effort to take over Manila's grandest hotel on his way to the presidency does not mean that Marcos no longer has supporters...
...officials looking for a bright spot in a dim picture...
...Aquino herself has not been pleased with the performance of the Reagan administration...
...But the CPP takes the long view, slowly setting up shop in rural barrios and exerting influence in labor unions and among the urban poor...
...The contending forces in the Philippines, mutable as they may be, have powerfully conflicting and potentially irreconcilable interests and ideologies...
...Reagan aides like Don Regan hung on to Marcos till the last minute...
...Aquino herself is a part of that elite, although she lives modestly in Manila...
...The Reagan administration is unhappy with her efforts to negotiate an end to the insurgency, her release of jailed Communist leaders, her unwillingness to commit to a renewal of the rental agreement on the two strategically important American bases, and the influence of progressives in her cabinet...
...The danger can come either from Marcos loyalists who feel he betrayed their hero or from those who suffered under Marcos...
...may have done worse with Aquino...
...Two days later, with Marcos finally gone and Aquino installed in her office at the presidential palace, some were suffering a more good-natured culture shock...
...Ongpin, the man Aquino has entrusted with the country's precious resources, has also been charged with receiving kickbacks in an unrelated business situation by yet another of her own commissions...
...No one wants the bad news that the Philippines is still broken...
...Benigno Aquino directed several Socdem groups during his American exile...
...At sunrise, seven loyalist helicopters swoop suddenly toward the landing strip of the main rebel camp in attack formation...
...One of the RAM officers had warned me in June that they might overthrow Aquino if they felt she was selling the country to the Communists...
...She is also a tough presence at cabinet meetings, but she presides over a group constantly at war with one another on the most basic policy questions, and aides say she takes too long to make up her mind once issues are presented to her...
...As I write, four months after Marcos's departure, such irritations, ironies and shifting allegiances have only become more pronounced...
...In particular, it is sensitive to the antiAmerican sentiments of Aquino's Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo and the nationalist statements of Labor Secretary Bobbit Sanchez and Planning Minister Solita Monsod...
...Aquino's planned state visit to the U.S...
...Laurel and the UNIDO and Liberal parties...
...But his refusal to join the rebellion left Aquino in his debt and demonstrated to all sides that he alone has the political strength to institute major change...
...Aquino is painted into the same corner on overall economic policy: free market versus government-run social programs...
...in the fall might help generate some serious investment...
...In spite of Cory Aquino's insistence that nepotism will be erased from government, her brother, Jose Cojuangco, wields power as head of the political party that formed her strongest campaign base...
...His chameleon character is the perfect embodiment of the murky alliances and instability which constantly disrupt the national need for strong democratic institutions...
...But even influential CPP Central Committee members admit the efforts at a negotiated settlement are just stalling tactics, intended to help them recover their strength...
...She was as uncomfortable with her campaign image as a naive former housewife as she was with the ritual of supporters wiping her feet as they do to statues of saints...
...But they do believe, if he can get back to the Philippines, he may advise and pull the strings of some coalition that may replace Aquino...
...But the helicopters merely land and unload...
...Philippine officeholders have nearly always enriched themselves...
...Unlike the Communists, the Socdems have no Central Committee and so they have grown into separate groups with sometimes conflicting notions...
...HAVING GROWN UP WITH NUNS and chaperones, she does not have the gritty sense of Philippine politics once practiced by her assassinated husband, Benigno Aquino...
...One of their more glamorous figures, Colonel Greg "Gringo" Honasan, Enrile's personal security man, has been unofficially accused by the Task Force Detainees human rights group in the Philippines of cutting the ears off prisoners during fighting against Moslem secessionist rebels on the southern island of Mindanao...
...Still, the perils Aquino faces do not change the magnitude of the Philippine revolution, which gave the world an example of democracy arising from the sheer demand of the people...
...Ronald Reagan's personal friendship with Marcos does not go unnoticed in Manila either...
...While he denies both personal ambition and any intention to move against Aquino, he will do whatever is necessary to thwart efforts to 506 unseat him...
...They may get the black bras but they can't take that away from you...
...The Social Democrats...
...Aquino advisers, who had lived in fear for over a decade, suddenly talked about their prospective posts in the new government and the fundamental changes they would initiate...
...Although Aquino claimed the move was designed as a cleansing action, many of the appointments were purely political, and some of the new men, called Officers-in-Charge, have corruption cases pending against them...
...No one...
...The ultimate irony may be that Aquino will survive for the same reasons Marcos did for so many years: Filipino patience and fear of the alternatives...
...The recent aborted coup attempt by Marcos's running mate in the elections, Arturo Tolentino, has left Enrile in an even stronger position...
...Educated at private schools in the U.S...
...The presence in the government of Enrile and other Marcos holdovers, some of whom are accused as torturers, symbolizes the fragility of the Philippine experiment...
...There are clerics and "Christianoriented" Socdems who are anticommunist...
...While Aquino struggles economically, money will not be a problem for the Marcos faction...
...They cite the economy, the battles between the conservative social viewpoint embodied by people like Zobel and Jimmy Ongpin, and the approach of progressives like Saguisag, and the residual strength of rightist elements led by Enrile, the military, and well-funded Marcos loyalists...
...Despite her appeal to the average Filipino, she remains aloof, wanting to keep what she described to me as a "certain amount of distance" from her constituents...
...The U.S...
...Many officers and their men are convinced that Aquino is indirectly assisting the NPA in its assaults by refusing to order a countrywide offensive...
...Ongpin said he wasn't aware of that fact and besides, Imelda's brother never interfered...
...He said: "No...
...Indeed, Marcos and anti-Marcos factions are filled with members of the same families...
...Although much of the fortune he is alleged to have spirited out of the country has been frozen, he can still retrieve enough of it to buy influence...
...If so, it was another brilliant Marcos move, one which, as usual, performed many functions...
...My own discussions with major players in the Philippine political stage—from the Marcoses and their allies to Aquino officials to insurgency leaders—leave me with the picture of a country groping its way along the edge of a precipice...
...The military has obviously since regained its bearings, but the significance of the question was not lost on de la Torre...
...When the news that Marcos had fled reached the jail cell of Ed de la Torre, a leader of the National Democratic Front, the political organization of the Communist party of the Philippines, the military intelligence officer assigned to watch him look puzzled...
...Its members are not, however, political liberals or potential supporters of Amnesty International...
...Marcos did not invent corruption in the Philippines, nor did he institutionalize it...
...Definitely I'm not a saint," she said...
...Those of us watching from the ground scatter for cover...
...On arrival, he was met by hundreds of Marcos loyalists who cheered him as a hero despite his crucial role in overthrowing the old regime...
...Their corps of trained military leaders will never lay down their arms, particularly if Aquino continues to appear threatened from the right...
...Vice-president Laurel surprisingly suppressed his own presidential interests to take a back seat to Aquino in the last election...
...Manglapus is a charismatic personality and an inspirational speaker who also happens to be an Ilocano, capable of wooing away some Marcos supporters...
...Attorney Rafael Evangelista, a long-time oppositionist, was grumbling about Enrile, the architect of Marcos's martial law, who now sat on Aquino's left as her new Defense Minister...
...During a transition meeting I attended between Aquino technocrats and employees of the Imelda Marcos-run Ministry of Human Settlements, the complexity of the ministry infrastructure seemed to overwhelm everyone...
...At a meeting of the Philippines' creditor countries in Japan last May, no one committed to any major increase in aid...
...He resisted urgings by his more aggressive backers to quit the coalition after it became clear that his UNIDO party, which emerged after Aquino's assassination as the dominant opposition group, was being pushed aside by the PDP-Laban in the new government...
...Now, Marcos will send no more planes to bomb us because they may also defect," explained one colonel...
...He has placed some of his allies in key positions in the new government...
...The Reagan administration would now not endorse a coup, even one instituted by RAM and Enrile...
...PDP-Laban has a strong grass-roots organization, cultivated by Pimentel and Mitra, although it is currently headed by Jose Cojuangco, considered an unrepentant capitalist by Socdem purists...
...We want to reformulate capitalism and inject humanist, democratic positions into basically socialist ideology," says Jerry Esguerra, a Socdem strategist...
...Although it was made possible by a unique convergence of events, rather than a concentrated effort by any of the particular groups now taking credit, the Filipino model is providing the context for its possible application in places like South Korea and Pakistan...
...Her idea of tenant ownership does not reach the "land to the landless" demands of the party...
...It has entered into ceasefire negotiations with the government, praises Cory publicly, and will no longer dismiss the middle and upper classes who put Aquino into power as insignificant...
...This is one possible electoral scenario: Enrile finds he can satisfy his ambitions by running for the Senate from the north...
...Ilocanos are disproportionately represented in the military, which Marcos has already pinpointed as the most likely source of a successful coup...
...Marcos loyalists win a few national seats and local gubernatorial and mayoral posts, deflecting their frustration...
...One specific test Aquino may have faced by the time this is read will be a key indicator of her strength...
...While some Filipinos starve, government priorities seem to have been pursuit of Marcos's stolen fortune and the miscreants of his administration...
...It only brushed aside a fringe element, leaving a much larger and more potent group free to consider its options without minor annoyances from zealots...
...Her calm, fatalist approach to life gives one the impression that nothing fazes her...
...Sanchez has criticized multinational corporations while Monsod has suggested selective repudiation of the foreign debt...
...Jimmy Ongpin's alleged misdeeds illustrate both Aquino's inherited problems and the convoluted workings of Manila politics...
...Regan is not alone in believing the U.S...
...One of their more concrete notions is to "leverage social capital, like taxes, to encourage people's capital...
...Contrary to the view of some analysts who believe the change in the Philippines proves the U.S...
...Others have been traveling in and out of the country even though their names are on hold/ departure lists at the airport...
...We don't know what the rules are...
...aid package now totals about $500 million Help from other countries has not been pouring in either...
...But probity may not be the main criterion in running a country used to masterful manipulation from its leader...
...After laying out all the weaknesses of the Aquino government and all of the obstacles, we cannot forget that she offers a very real possibility of the first relatively free and fair elections in the Philippines in the last decade and a half...
...We don't know what's going to happen next...
...He also realizes the need to retain power in a country where those who lose their positions must atone for their excesses...
...We're all so ecstatic about our glamorous democratic revolution...
...But it is evident that the majority of soldiers share the view of Enrile, Ramos, and the Reagan administration that the insurgents are being coddled by Aquino—even invited into her government—and can be dealt with only through force of arms...
...its leaders would undoubtedly be rounded up again and jailed...
...We're still making our own plans...
...Just before and right after the election, one Socdem faction formed urban guerrilla groups whose aim was to attack Marcos institutions and possibly assassinate key Marcos officials and even Marcos himself...
...has learned it can end dictatorships if it acts early enough, the real message the Reagan administration seems to have learned is that it can come in at the last minute, botch things up, and still take the credit...
...Almost no one in the Senate knows what's going on in the Philippines," says Doug Olin, a Senate Budget Committee staffer who has written several reports on the country...
...Privatization has not been instituted fast enough, they say, and there are no support structures set up to filter money to the proper places...
...Conchita Lao is married to Genny Lopez, a member of the country's most financially powerful premartial law clan, whose members were jailed by Marcos...
...Marcos's allies point out bitterly that the Aquino revolution was engineered and run by only two percent of the population...
...In a way, things were a lot simpler when Marcos was here," says Saguisag, a Harvard-trained attorney who is on leave as Aquino's spokesman to investigate the Marcos government's atomic power plant deal with Westinghouse...
...He merely centralized it...
...But, he told me, he had instructed loyalists to treat Enrile well because "he's like one of my family...
...Expecting to find evidence of massive fraud, after which they would abolish the ministry, the technocrats found instead a maze of mortgage subagencies and unfathomable operational formulas...
...Human rights lawyer Rene Saguisag, a frequent target of the Marcos intelligence agencies, was now presidential spokesman...
...When George Shultz, Aquino's biggest admirer in the administration, finally went to Manila with a $200 million check, Arroyo cautioned against reacting "like jumping chimpanzees...
...Also, a few weeks ago, in the midst of rumors that Aquino was about to accede to the demands of progressives in her government and fire Enrile, the defense minister suddenly left a cabinet meeting and traveled to the northern provinces, his and Marcos's home base...
...when there was a change of government...
...My own anxiety is not calmed by Enrile, who later emerges from a nap to tell me that he has refused calls from Marcos because "the president can be very persuasive...
...Their act buoyed instantly the deteriorating morale of the anti-Marcos rebellion...
...Papers uncovered after Marcos fled revealed that Ongpin's huge mining concern, Benguet, was actually owned by Imelda Marcos's brother...
...But even her own supporters worry that her isolation from her poor constituents will mean a continued policy bias toward wealthy, urban Filipinos...
...In the Philippines, utan na boob, or debt of gratitude, is a major cultural institution and continues to help create empires...
...It is likely that Marcos ordered such a greeting...
...Still, there is an expectation among Filipinos that drastic change must be accomplished with the same speed as the events which brought her to power...
...There are now serious behind-thescenes maneuvers within the Aquino cabinet to oust Enrile as a threatening vestige of darker days...
...Still, she remains likeable and genuinely modest...
...Even in Aquino's own family, her cousin, Eduardo Cojuangco, was Marcos's most influential crony...
...sold these same helicopters to the Philippines in 1983 in a deal tainted by the kind of scandal which reflected the Marcos era...
...had publicly and privately supported his return to the Philippines...
...And even Aquino's vice-president, Salvador Laurel, was a recent (1980) convert from Marcos's KBL party, as are many of his colleagues in his UNIDO faction...
...The Reform the Armed Forces (RAM) movement, which spearheaded the February rebellion, does believe in a professional military, free of the rampant corruption and favoritism under Marcos...
...They all thought we fixed the Philippines...
...Raul Manglapus, who returned in March after his own American exile, is one Socdem leader who, despite his long absence, could reemerge as a national figure outside the Aquino government...
...Reagan's insistence after the elections that "both sides cheated," and his insistence on 509 calling Marcos in Hawaii during a stopover there, have added strength to a growing antiAmerican sentiment in the Philippines...
...But the Enrile issue, part of a larger Aquino government policy dilemma of reconciliation and forgiveness versus justice and redress of Marcos-era sins, is merely one of a long list of problems...
...We have a share in her...
...The Socdems have been a shadowy but influential group in the opposition to Marcos and now hold some prominent positions in the new government...
...has been of little help, paying only what Saguisag calls "lip service and pocket change...
...In the face of growing criticism that Aquino is too inexperienced and indecisive for the job, Saguisag has drawn up a list of achievements of the new government which suggests that Aquino has moved rapidly to shrug off the constraints of Marcos's twenty years in power...
...Pacita Lao is married to Raul Manglapus, a Marcos opponent and perennial presidential candidate who is the head of the Social Democratic movement in the Philippines and at odds with the old oligarchy represented by the Lopezes...
...The Lao sisters are one example...
...If she injects the money into broader infrastructure projects, the long-suffering peasantry will object...
...Retired General Luis Villa-Real, who provided guidance for RAM members during the rebellion against Marcos, is the Philippine head of the World Anti-Communist League and now heads the chief government security agency...
...their pilots turn out to be defectors to the rebel cause...
...IN GENERAL, THE WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT has patted itself on the back for its role in the Philippine revolution and moved on to other foreign policy issues without providing any substantive financial support...
...But most Socdems share many Communist party notions when it comes to land reform and people's cooperatives...
...It was a moment of history that had seemed impossible a few days before but that left labyrinthine questions in its wake...
...Shultz, reflecting the State Department view, said Marcos was finished...
...Mysteriously, more influential Marcos cronies have had sequestered property returned amid rumors of bribes...
...Saguisag insists that integrity, which is now personified in Aquino, has become the most important Philippine leadership commodity...
...The daily average of military casualties during encounters with the Communist party of the Philippines' (CPP) military wing, the New People's Army (NPA), is only slightly less than it was under Marcos and the battles are increasingly savage...
...Liberal Party head Eva Kalaw, one of the few female politicians thrown in jail by Marcos, has a sister who ran Marcos's film censorship board...
...The failure of the July coup attempt led by a few intransigent officers loyal to Marcos and with Tolentino as its figurehead did not weed out all the malcontents in the Philippine military...
...Then I realized, NISA is ours now...
...It is unclear how many in the military actually support Enrile or how many support Ramos...
...Just a few days ago, Aquino's Good Government Commission, charged with probing the wealth of Marcos allies, announced formally that Enrile's millionaire status is one of its primary targets...
...When Marcos, before he fled, called Paul Laxalt, Laxalt went to a White House meeting and asked Regan, Reagan, and Shultz for advice...
...Having stuck his neck out for her, her friend George Shultz could not let her go home empty-handed...
...Angry over their unwillingness to help and anxious to win U.S...
...But no matter how quick the change, and despite the Filipino penchant for tactical alterations, it is worthwhile to look at some of the groups that will define any changes in the years to come: • The military and the right wing...
...The elections, which would include seats in a Senate and House, can be a giant safety valve...
...In Honolulu two weeks later, Marcos denied he played any role in his supporters' reception for Enrile...
...Enrile's appointment was a necessary political deal meant to recognize his influence within 505 the military and reward his role in the revolution...
...Marcos's departure deprived the insurgents of a handy focal point, but Aquino's problems give them renewed hope...
...Reagan provided the out, suggesting that Laxalt tell Marcos to come to the U.S...
...He's a damn hero...
...When I saw her less than a week after she assumed office, she had changed remarkably, appearing far more authoritative than she had as a candidate and even speaking in a deeper, more measured voice...
...In Philippine shorthand they are called Socdems, as opposed to liberal democrats (Libdems), who are molded after the Hubert Humphrey American model, and national democrats (Natdems), a blanket term applied to leftists and Communists...
...When her investigating commissioners hand her reports recommending the prosecution of Enrile for human rights abuses and/or corruption, will she risk losing her moral authority by ignoring the reports or will she pursue them righteously, pushing Enrile to the wall...
...He asked me, 'How are we supposed to know who our enemy is now?' " de la Torre recalled...
...Her popularity in this country has remained high and she intends to address a joint session of Congress as well as groups of bankers and business executives...
...q 513...
...Some of the old elite families Marcos replaced are regaining their former footholds, dimming the possibility of serious structural reform...
...Fidel Ramos, the general who has led the uprising, along with Marcos Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, jogs through the camp in a T-shirt and shorts just before 2 a.m...
...The program may seem a little fuzzy but the Socdems have their nontheoretical side as well...
...It had made a major blunder during the presiden512 tial campaign by recommending a boycott, assuming that Marcos would cheat himself back into office anyway...
...Although Reagan had promised increased aid, much of the money has been hung up in bureaucratic snags...
...The statement is accurate but the inferred logic, that the majority of Filipinos were behind their man, is not...
...The "cobwebs of doubt" about the Reagan administration's true commitment to Aquino—the term used by Laurel which enraged George Shultz—are well-founded...
...And yet vindictiveness, rather than reconciliation, has often been the motivating force in Aquino government dealings with those tainted by their Marcos association, causing a loss of some competent and needed economic experts whose sin may have been merely their efforts to survive in bad times...
...508 "Her opponents will have to find a real pretty boy or pretty girl to match Cory...
...After an agonizing self-assessment and a leadership shake-up, the CPP has now regrouped...
Vol. 33 • September 1986 • No. 4
