How Aquino Can Recoup

...I have been reliably told that 130 posts joined the rebel cause...

...A frequent target is President Aquino's younger brother, Jose "Peping" Cojuangco, who is reputed to control casinos and the arrastré (this port city's stevedoring and warehouse trade...

...The capital is rife with confusion and uncertainty as rumors of plots and counterplots are punctuated by death in the street—most recently the assassination of Leandro Alejandro, the youthful leader of the Leftist group Bayan and erstwhile Congressional candidate...

...The government responded to the latest events with the usual Cabinet overhaul, eliminating some but not all of the military's targets and appointing more conservative replacements...

...The Congress elected in May is too inexperienced: Many members will need at least a year or two to develop the skill and staffs necessary to initiate and pass effective legislation...

...Richard J. Kessler, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently returned from an extended slay in the Philippines...

...The August 28 coup was the most dramatic event in what is now a fairly well-defined pattern of moves by the Philippine Right to further isolate the President from her civilian constituency and from the military...

...By focusing so much attention on the excesses of the ancien regime, the Aquino government has created an atmosphere that greatly magnifies any sign of weakness in its own moral fiber...

...The government now appears to fear them more than the New People's Army, or the revitalized Moslem rebellion in the south...

...Fear is the principal weapon of her opponents, and they are using it well...

...Eventually she agreed to run, because no one else could do so and win...

...When the assault was finally ordered in mid-afternoon, the defenders apparently outnumbered the attackers...

...Despite her political problems, she is still extremely popular, and no opposition leader has risen to challenge that popularity...

...Aquino has been no exception...

...As stories about Cojuangco get blown out of all proportion, the impression that the President is ignoring or even condones compromising behavior by her brother saps the authority of an administration that continues to accentuate its sharp contrast to the Marcos regime...

...Yet it might have been moderated had Aquino not behaved in so tentative and riskaverse a manner, postponing difficult decisions like land reform...

...Like the Executive Branch, Congress would rather dwell on the past as a source of present difficulties than worry about a plan for the country's future...

...The Aquino circlesoon froze many of them out of the government, forcing them to run as oppositionists in the May elections...

...Subjected to constant political and physical threat, the unseasoned President surrounded herself with what by mid-1986 was being referred to as a cordon sanitaire of advisers and family...

...They hope to create an environment in which a "strong man" will be welcomed even at the cost of sacrificing democracy...

...Tour guides caustically refer to Marcos in the present tense —"This is where he sleeps...

...Nor did it help that the President's closest advisers—notably Joker Arroyo, her executive secretary until his resignation last month—were politically and administratively inexperienced and adversarial in character...

...now a senator, he lost face during the August 28 coup by remaining incommunicado, appearing less an instigator than a pawn of his former protégés...

...the centre cannot hold...

...Granted, some disappointment was inevitable in so broad a coalition...

...Although the bulk of the military is not enamored of the coup leader, Colonel Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan, they do share his frustration with the government and military leadership, especially over the ineffectual handling of the Communist insurgency in the countryside...

...I first met Corazon Aquino several years ago, when she was resisting considerable pressure to challenge Marcos for the presidency of the Philippines...

...The coup's failure was followed by the standard press interviews, with Colonel Honasan claiming he did not intend to overthrow Aquino, he merely wanted to "send a message" to her about the military's discontent...

...The choice now facing Aquino is much like the one she faced in 1985— when the best had conviction...

...And weakness there is, as there must be in a government whose bureaucracy has been as thoroughly corrupted as this country's was during the Marcos years...

...Marcos has spent the last two years in Hawaii happily using every means at his disposal to destabilize her government (often with comic-opera effect, as when he had a video made of himself working out, literally flexing his muscles for his supporters...

...But few were included in the Aquino Administration when it took office, and their eager hopes for an activist, reformminded government—shared by the Catholic Church, a fourth element in the coalition—were disappointed...

...There is some truth to this view, just as there is some truth to the military's complaints of government corruption and weak leadership...

...In addition, the body includes too many advocates of old political family special interests to be reformist in nature...

...But instead of trying to reduce tensions by ironing out the differences, the two sides talk past each other—the falcon cannot hear the falconer—to the enormous satisfaction of Aquino's enemies...

...The Aquino Administration does not seem to grasp their concern...

...Things fall apart...

...Moreover, by signaling a lack of understanding of the military's grievances, itwould no doubt swell the ranks of the mutinous...

...Both the enlisted men and the officers have rural roots: The former come from the same peasant stock as the footsoldiers in the Communist New People's Army...

...Filipinos are treated to a fantastic display of the ostentatious wealth accumulated by the country's former rulers...

...With the launching of the most recent attempt to unseat Aquino, on August 28, the lack of military support for her government became embarrassingly obvious...

...If she does not come out of her cloister to reinvigorate her old coalition and reassert her presidential authority, her nation will fall apart around her as surely as if Marcos had never left...

...Over the last year, however, Aquino seemed to distance herself from this coalition, first by avoiding an active role in framing the new Constitution, and then by neglecting to establish a political party for the spring Congressional elections...

...As a result, her own legitimacy has gradually been called into question...

...For the loose coalition that brought her to power in 1985-86— consisting of the rural poor, middle-class professionals and businessmen, the Church, plus elements of the military and traditional elites—is much more representative of the Philippine people than the new legislature happens to be...

...I thought she would refuse to become a candidate—the blandishments of power simply did not interest her...

...Paradoxically, while the prospect of another coup remains Aquino's most pressing short-term threat, any preemptive effort by her to identify and punish disloyal Army elements would almost guarantee another attack...

...Back then a few profited mightily...

...Having organized a constitutional convention, successfully lobbied for the approval of the resulting document in a national plebiscite, and presided over the election of a 24-seat Senate and a 200-seat House, Aquino seems satisfied to yield the task of governing to the people's new representatives...

...While Laurel's defection was not in itself lethal, it does point up a large problem: Aquino's unwillingness or inability to stem the breakup of the political coalition that elevated her to the presidency in 1986...

...THERE is SOMETHING ironie about Aquino's deference to Congress...

...The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity...

...Her top rival on the Right, Juan Ponce Enrile, was forced to resign his Cabinet position after the November crisis...

...Throughout the day Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Fidel V. Ramos had to struggle to recruit enough soldiers to mount a counterattack against the units holed up in Camp Aguinaldo, the General Headquarters of all the Armed Forces...

...It sees a military greedily lusting for the power and influence once enjoyed under Marcos...

...I was struck by her saintliness in the midst of a crowd that mucked around in political intrigue for good or for evil...

...Glaring, too, is their appalling taste in transforming what was once the airy home of Spanish and American governor-generals into a virtual mausoleum, hermetically sealed to protect the ailing Ferdinand from the fumes of the Pasig River...

...The middle-class professionals who were the backbone of the so-called cause-oriented groups that demonstrated against Marcos in the "parliament of the streets" comprised a third element...

...He received considerable press attention in the United States during the August uprising, but he was almost completely ignored in Manila, where his followers are becoming pathetically few...

...Yet if that is her intention, the national agenda that Filipinos have been awaiting for almost two years may never emerge...

...One Senate session I attended was taken up with whether the Philippines should resurrect its claim to the Malaysian state of Sabah, and whether it should abrogate the Marcos-approved Treaty of Friendship with Japan officially ending the hostilities of World War II...

...What is more distressing, though, is that the Aquino leadership seems to have lost its driving vision of a better future for the Philippines, so important to the "people power" revolution of February 1986 that drove Marcos from office...

...Still, there are allegations of venality in the official family, and current circumstances make them particularly damaging...

...Veteran lawmakers from the premartiallaw(1972) Congress, who should be providing guidance, prefer to posture over issues long dead...

...But she has not completed her mission...

...One element of that coalition was made up of members of the traditional elites who split away from Marcos...

...This further isolated her from the political coalition she had led and it began to break up, making her vulnerable...

...The explanation for Aquino's remoteness lies in the savage, occasionally bloody nature of Philippine politics...

...now the graft tends to be petty and spread out...

...ANOTHER CHANCE IN THE PHILIPPINES How Aquino Can Recoup BY RICHARD J. KESSLER Manila Yeats' poem "TheSecond Coming," written in 1920, well captures the mood in the Philippines today: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer...

...So far Aquino is holding, buttressed by her deep religious faith and moral virtue...

...A couple of weeks later, on the eve of a Leftist rally and strike, the assassination of Leandro Alejandro occurred, echoing the killing of Leftist trade union leader Rolando Olalia shortly before a coup attempt last November...

...Politicians find it easier to blame the CIA or conservative Americans such as retired Major General John K. Singlaub for military discontent than to acknowledge their own inaction...

...Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned...

...Rather than coopting enemies into friends, they made additional enemies, heightening the siege mentality in the palace...

...It is also quite visible: While waiting in the departure lounge of Manila International Airport, I watched a Japanese "tourist" make arrangements with security guards to smuggle something aboard my flight...

...Symptomatic is the persistent popularity of the tour of the old Malacanang Palace, longtime court of Ferdinand E. and Imelda Marcos (President Corazon C. Aquino maintains her office in the guest house next door...

...At home, Marcos loyalists, joined by officials in his regime who thought of themselves as technocrats but were turned out anyway after Aquino came to power, have similarly been busy trying to undermine the government by word and deed—and in the Philippines a few well-chosen words of disinformation are often more destructive than deeds...

...Meanwhile, Aquino's problems have been compounded by myriad other challenges from both the Right and the Left...

...Today the country has the feel of a ship in a storm, and everyone is bracing to see if the anchor will hold...

...Her courage transformed the political landscape of the country...

...That they have not yet succeeded is testimony to Aquino's continued resilience...

...That is why he had to play second fiddle to Aquino in the 1986 election, and that is why most of his party, unido, has stuck with the government...

...As for Vice President Salvador H. "Doy" Laurel, who resigned after the coup in a seeming gesture to the military, his political clout never has been impressive...

...Ina political environment where constant suspicion is the norm, Filipinos tend to turn inward, placing crucial trust only in their families and select retainers of proven loyalty...

...the latter are drawn from the rural middle class...

...A second element was the Armed Forces, whose revolt in February 1986 was instrumental in ousting Marcos...

...She is still indifferent to theallure of power, hence her readiness to turn it over to the new Congress...

...Thus it is not only their lives that are threatened by the Communists, but also the lives of their families...

...Fear about the future is matched by a failure to move beyond the past...

...When Cabinet issues such as land reform and the handling of negotiations concerning the Philippines' $29 billion foreign debt grew contentious, and when efforts by Communist insurgents and disaffected military groups to mortally wound the government increased, the cordon sanitaire became tighter...

...Marcos' support is also on the wane...