OUR MEN IN MANILA

...Gradually it dawned on Aquino that in leaving the Philippines, he had once more allowed himself to be outmaneuvered...

...He might, in fact, tip the balance against the Imelda-Ver group, toward which the dictator inclined...

...Handled wisely, they say, the middle class can be turned into a political force capable of taking the wind out of the Left's sails...

...Aquino could wait no longer...

...officials want to split...

...But as a face-saving gesture, the Administration also pressed Marcos to release Aquino from prison...

...His assassination allowed him to contribute decisively to destroying a hated dictatorship while relieving him of the responsibility of dealing with the maelstrom he helped whip up...

...A return to the pre-Marcos order of elite-directed parliamentary politics would be profoundly destabilizing because Marcos has done such an effective job of destroying the institutions and legitimacy of the old order...

...Over the next eight years, Aquino's public image gradually changed from that of a cocky professional politician to that of a heroic citizen who embodied the best of the old elite democratic tradition...

...Before the conference, he tried to defend his actions...

...Indeed, then-Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke actually offered Aquino the prime ministership of the Philippines, though Marcos would remain president...

...parliamentary government—that is, a return to the pre-Marcos political order...

...But I was bothered by the huge sums of money they were offering and couldn't get a clear picture of who was funding the whole thing...

...On the one hand, it required adherence to the informal rule of elite politics: Each faction of the Establishment must get its chance at the bountiful spoils that come with political office...

...Inflation increased, and devaluation bit deeply into the pocketbooks of The CIA Plans Ahead As the political crisis of the Marcos regime intensifies, the Central Intelligence Agency is enlisting the assistance, sometimes unwitting, of Philippine scholars in the United States to help identify U.S...

...In a Philippine jail, he could easily draw international press attention, but a few months after he had settled in as a fellow of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the publicity had tapered off...

...More important, the assassination accelerated the erosion of U.S...

...But the main obstacle to the parliamentary restoration is probably the White House, which still is noncommittal...

...By 1982, church sources estimated that the NPA had 10,000 regulars pinning down the government's 250,000 troops in fifty-six of the country's seventy-two provinces...

...The escalating protests caused a flight of U.S...

...By declaring martial law, he rallied both allies in an effort to contain if not wipe out the challenge posed by rivals in the elite, the lower classes, the Left, and the nationalists...

...He sent invitations to Philippine scholars Robert Young-blood of the University of Arizona at Tempe...

...this may well be the last opportunity to demonstrate to the Filipino people that peaceful change is possible in their country...

...Green's involvement in CIA-funded research was exposed, and he publicly acknowledged his role at the summer conference in Ohio...

...Initially surprised by the intensity of the opposition to Marcos, American policymakers now view the awakening of the urban middle class as a blessing in disguise...

...The Marcos regime responded to NPA advances by waging a campaign of indiscriminate terror...

...What's more, the pro-U.S...

...In Manila, he formed a ruling clique made up of generals, powerful business cronies, and U.S.-educated technocrats...

...To succeed politically in the Philippines, Aquino had to come to terms with the massive U.S...

...Philippine politics was under increasing strain...

...Students demonstrated, workers struck, and peasants marched for land reform...

...Reagan is probably on solid ground when he assumes that the parliamentary option will open the floodgates to the Left...

...The business and middle classes play for a Washington audience and hold rallies thanking Ronald Reagan for canceling his visit to Manila last October...

...policy options...

...Green also attempted to arrange a special panel on "The Future of Philippine Politics—What Happens After Marcos...

...They fear the current regime has lost the legitimacy to impose on the population the strict austerity measures that will be required if the debt is to be repaid...

...The opportunity arose in May 1980, when Aquino needed triple-bypass heart surgery that could not be performed in the Philippines...

...Government felt they needed...

...He also understood that so long as the volatile urban middle class sensed its living standards were rising, it would remain indifferent to the immiserization of peasants, workers, and the urban poor—whose suffering was the price paid for success of the development program...

...We had joint operations in Indonesia, we had joint operations in Laos, we were in Cambodia...

...Look, you have a situation when Marcos falls, you come in, the Communists back off, and people expect you to make miracles," he explained...

...His proposal was aimed at winning favor with the U.S...

...Aquino angrily refused the deal...

...He had underestimated how alienated they had become in the three years between the time Aquino was exiled and the moment he was killed...

...In a 1981 interview with Multinational Monitor, Aquino pointed with some pride to his CIA connection: "I've worked with the CIA on many operations...

...Justin Green, professor of political science at Villanova University, agreed to play ball with the CIA...

...Aquino accepted the U.S.-mediated effort, hoping to use his long-standing ties with the CIA and the State Department to lobby for an end to U.S...

...Political conflict in this country of fifty million people had polarized between a massively armed regime and an armed Left...

...He has entered history as a hero-martyr, playing the same paradoxical role as the country's national hero, Jose Rizal, whose execution by the Spaniards in 1896 triggered a revolution he had predicted and of which he had disapproved...

...They were looking for a strongman, and Marcos—whose skills at manipulation and intrigue were always more formidable than Aquino's— sensed this reality far more acutely than his rival did...

...But while Aquino's democratic stance elicited admiration, it did not win the support of his class...

...at thirty-five, he was a senator, the youngest ever elected...

...But in a subsequent letter to his colleagues, Green expressed a change of heart: "There is a snake in the garden of Eden and I think we must exorcise it...

...This account of the CIA's venture into Philippine studies appeared in somewhat different form in The Progressive Review, a political quarterly at Princeton University...

...A bitter power struggle was being waged for succession to Marcos's throne...

...By 1980, it had succeeded in creating a sophisticated network of intersecting legal, semi-legal, and clandestine organizations in Manila attracting workers, the urban poor, members of the Catholic clergy, certain professional sectors, and even some elite opposition politicians...

...When a massive financial crisis hit Manila in 1981, many of Mar-cos's friends went bankrupt, but he bailed them out with money borrowed from abroad...

...As the international recession and Western protectionist measures dried up markets for Philippine exports, the economic strategy-sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—exacted a heavy toll...

...Chances of violent revolution after Marcos are enhanced by the Reagan Administration's unwillingness to gamble on any reform that brings the Left closer to power...

...Using this base, Marcos attempted to build a new social consensus among the middle class, the agrarian and industrial elites, and foreign business interests...

...And behind this powerful urban presence lies the even more powerful New People's Army, which dominates the opposition in the countryside, where the majority of the population lives...

...By the early 1970s, an elite democrat was not what the Philippine establishment and the U.S...

...He hooked up with the "Lansdale-Magsaysay Boys," a group of bright young Ateneo graduates who hovered around Colonel Edward Lansdale, a CIA counterinsurgency expert, and his protege, President Ramon Magsaysay...

...Neither option is tenable any longer, however, because the assassination has deepened a political and social crisis that threatens to displace the elite and burst the country at its seams...

...The questionnaire concentrated on eliciting information about the strength and composition of the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines and part of the broad opposition National Democratic Front...

...Aquino distinguished himself as one of the most intrepid of the "Boys" by negotiating the surrender of the Huk leader in 1954...

...As an alternative to Marcos's all-out repression, Aquino, who prided himself as one "who can work with the Communists," favored a strategy of neutralizing the Left by bringing it into the electoral process...

...The rivalry between Marcos and Aquino dominated Philippine politics for two decades...

...Worried about his personal future, Aquino was also troubled by the leftward movement of the Filipino people...

...Such a demand is unlikely to be met by even the most flexible opposition figures...

...Then a second guy will come in, and he'll be blown out in six months...

...Aquino was a threat to Marcos, and within hours of the imposition of martial law, the opposition leader was arrested...

...For the U.S...

...In 1979, Carter concluded an agreement with Marcos, providing him with $500 million in military aid over five years in exchange for secure tenure of the U.S...

...In none of the requests did he mention that the project was being funded by the CIA...

...opposition lacks a figure of sufficient stature to persuade the people to accept the unpopular measures the Pentagon and the bankers will require: the continued presence of American military bases and a Brazilian-type economic austerity program...

...AQUINO IN EXILE The situation alarmed Aquino, who feared that a few more years of Marcos would not only sweep away the dictator but also diminish the attractiveness of a return to the elite-controlled parliamentary politics that had preceded martial law...

...the middle class...

...In his most perceptive moments, Aquino grasped this reality...

...W.B...

...In the eyes of many Filipinos, he was a feisty David fighting a corrupt and brutal Goliath...

...The country found itself going deeper and deeper into debt to the private international banks and the IMF...

...President Reagan and his advisers maintain a strong ideological affinity with pro-U.S...

...This program appeals to the urban middle class, especially to white-collar workers in the private sector...

...Rural evictions or "strategic hamleting," designed to separate peasants from the NPA, created at least 500,000 refugees between 1980 and 1982...

...In 1982, the CIA hired the consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton, Inc., to contact a number of Philippine specialists and offer them sizable fees to participate in a study of "political stability" in the Philippines...

...Belinda Aquino of the University of Hawaii, and Carl Lande and Linda Richter of the University of Kansas...

...presence...

...bases...

...influence in a nation that hosts two extremely valuable pieces of Pentagon real estate: Clark Air Force Base and the naval base at Subic Bay...

...He placed army officers in key positions at the local and regional levels...

...These outposts enable the U.S...

...at last summer's conference in Athens, Ohio, of the Philippine Studies Committee, a branch of the Association of Asian Studies...

...His written description of the project, however, suggests the political nature of such panels: "[We] might discuss various scenarios regarding when and how Marcos might leave, the state of the various oppositions, possible successor regimes and what this might mean to domestic and international futures and how these might be affected by external events, U.S...

...By the end of its term, the Administration was defending itself against a resurgent Right that tied Jimmy Carter's human rights policy to the "loss" of pro-American regimes in Iran and Nicaragua...

...It merely went underground to join the Philippine Left...

...He tried to unite them behind a program that oriented the economy toward foreign capital and production for export...

...official, who is praying for Marcos's quick demise from natural causes...

...I will be president in 1973," Aquino often told reporters, even during the tense period preceding the imposition of martial law in 1972...

...To Marcos's shock, the middle class and business elites were deserting him and joining the opposition...

...OUR MEN IN MANILA A martyred hero, an ailing despot, and after them the deluge BY WALDEN BELLO By the time we reach Malacanang [the presidential palace in Manila], we shall be 20,000 strong," declared Benigno Aquino in one of his more ebullient moods, anticipating the crowds that might welcome him after three years of exile in the United States...

...By 1969, Aquino had become the leader of the opposition Liberal Party and was preparing to run for the presidency...

...Mass opposition to Marcos did not vanish, however...

...David Wurfel of the University of Windsor...

...Marcos had astutely calculated that most of the political and economic Establishment would be cajoled or coerced into supporting the government...

...This was the last straw: Local business was now firmly, if still passively, in opposition...

...It was more than a clash of egos, more than a power struggle, for the two men personified divergent historical options available to the Philippine elite...

...Then he behaved exactly as Marcos had predicted...

...The "urban bombers" had handed Marcos the perfect excuse for permanently banning Aquino from the Philippines...

...At the same time, in the Philippines, his role as head of the elite opposition was threatened by two rivals: the prestigious former Senator Jose Diokno and the up-and-coming popular Mayor "Nene" Pimentel...

...But the attempt to restore the old parliamentary order faces formidable obstacles...

...The Philippines, after all, had the worst income inequalities in Southeast Asia...

...He was wrong...

...Green again failed to mention that he was doing CIA-funded research...

...Elite political dynasties had come to rely more and more on private armies, intimidation of opponents, theft of elections, and elimination of rivals...

...But Aquino never reached Malacanang—a somber possibility he had also foreseen...

...Not every academic was so finicky...

...The government's much-vaunted rural development program, backed by the World Bank and the U.S...

...On the Left, the National Democratic Front is mobilizing the urban base of workers, students, shantytown dwellers, and the lower clergy...

...on the other, a faction led by the equally power-hungry minister of defense, Juan Ponce Enrile, and his close ally, the multimillionaire kingmaker Eduardo Cojuangco...

...Some combination of Marcos's personal enmity, his illness, and the volatile succession crisis brought about Aquino's assassination, which many Filipinos believe was ordered personally by Marcos...

...During the 1970s, Marcos transformed the rules and dynamics of Philippine politics...

...But Aquino tragically miscalculated...

...The dictator was edging toward the grave with a debilitating kidney disease, and control was steadily slipping from his hands...

...Marcos was betting that once out of the country, Aquino would fade from Filipinos' consciousness...

...And when the Reagan Administration took office in 1981, he concluded that exile politics was a lost cause...

...When he appeared before the House Subcommittee on Asia-Pacific Affairs in Washington last June, he announced he would return to the Philippines "to press for two-man negotiations with Marcos for a return to constitutional democracy" before it was too late...

...The work I am doing for Booz, Allen is legitimate scholarship," he wrote to Ron Edgerton, head of the Philippine Studies Committee...

...Sheinbaum, returning in 1982 from a three-month tour of Mindanao, the Philippines' second-largest island...

...On one side was a palace clique headed by Marcos's ambitious wife, Imelda, and by the chief of the armed forces, General Fabian Ver...

...Aquino's murder activated that opposition...

...In a telegram to then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig, he questioned the loyalty of the rural people and their leaders to the Marcos government and found the NPA influence to be quite strong: "This may sound like a worst-case scenario, but present circumstances are not encouraging and the future is ominous...

...He went on an epic thirty-six-day prison hunger strike in 1975, and two years later he defied a death sentence imposed after his conviction on trumped-up charges of murder and subversion...

...He believed he was a politician Washington could live with, if not support...

...Aquino was an arch enemy...

...The parliamentary option recently found a new, though hesitant, set of backers: Marcos's international creditors...

...And large sectors of the citizenry were beginning to stir, invoking formally guaranteed constitutional rights to advance anti-Establishment and anti-American ends...

...At a time when Reagan has fundamentally redefined U.S...

...The panel never came off...

...In the fashion of Shakespearean or classical Greek drama, the murder has immortalized the murdered and doomed the murderer...

...By early 1983, NPA attacks on government units were averaging one a day, and he was informed in June by visiting Senator Diokno that "much of the countryside is now Marcos had underestimated how alienated the middle class and business elites had become in the three years between the time Aquino was exiled and the moment he was killed controlled by the NPA, with government units controlling only the larger towns and provincial cities...

...One academic who was approached said Booz, Allen offered to fly him to Washington for "consultations...

...Today, any program short of genuine democratization and full equality will most likely be rejected by the people, for the temper of the times is revolutionary...

...In response, the IMF forced the rapid devaluation of the peso...

...dictators and are convinced that liberalization is the prelude to revolution...

...Unofficial executions by the military claimed at least 800 victims, most of them peasants, from 1973 to 1981...

...In January 1983, he started distributing questionnaires to Philippine scholars...

...Marcos took the gamble: Aquino in exile might make waves for a while, but the dictator would be rid of the embarrassment of holding a popular and famous opponent behind bars...

...It is a working coalition that many U.S...

...capital, and the flight quickened dramatically after the Philippines' Supreme Court, under popular pressure, issued two rulings limiting the privileges of U.S...

...Lansdale and Magsaysay managed the CIA operation that destroyed the Communist-led Hukbalahap uprising in the early 1950s...

...Furthermore, the State Department and the CIA believed that Marcos had so effectively destroyed the power and popularity of the elite opposition that he was the only effective bulwark against the Left—and the only reliable guardian of the Pentagon's bases...

...He went on speaking tours of the United States, loudly criticizing the regime, while in Manila some of his followers took part in a campaign of bombing selected Marcos-linked establishments...

...at the same time, employment opportunities were evaporating...

...Aquino quickly Walden Bello, a Filipino citizen, is co-author of Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines and an associate of the Southeast Asia Resource Center, based in Berkeley, California...

...Workers' real wages plunged by more than 30 per cent between 1972 and 1978, and the income of rice farmers, who make up the backbone of the country's food system, plummeted by 50 per cent...

...In fact, he tried to convey the impression that the whole thing was an academic exercise...

...But despite the differences, the coalition continues to function...

...The transformation began in the late 1960s, when a group of young activists broke away from Many Filipinos saw Aquino as a feisty David fighting a corrupt and brutal Goliath— but the political and economic Establishment continued to support the Marcos regime the old Communist Party strategy of a "peaceful road to socialism" and founded the New People's Army (NPA...

...I don't feel guilty taking CIA money to further a legitimate scholarly endeavor...

...For instance, Marcos deployed his foot soldiers—the official Philippine Army—to deliver his reelection in 1969...

...The Left, more concerned with domestic support, teams up with the elite nationalists and seeks "the dismantling of the U.S.Marcos dictatorship...

...How do I bring down the price of gasoline, for Pete's sake...

...Consul G.S...

...But beneath the superficial unity of the opposition, competing forces are at work to define the direction of the anti-Marcos coalition...

...As he stepped onto the airport tarmac last August 21, a Magnum .357 bullet pierced his skull and changed the course of Philippine history...

...The NPA thrives on government inattention to basic needs in many (but not all) rural areas," said U.S...

...So the people will say, 'Jesus Christ, you're the guy we waited eight years for...

...Ben Muego of Bowling Green University...

...The key is to push decisively for free elections in May, says the most prominent proponent of this view, Representative Stephen Solarz, head of the House Subcommittee on Asia-Pacific Affairs: "These elections may well constitute a historic watershed in the history of the Philippines...

...I am asking for scholarly help where you feel you can help as a fellow scholar," Green wrote to one colleague...

...The NPA managed to organize multiple base areas on each of the nine major Philippine islands...

...In the interval, the export-oriented economic strategy dependent on foreign capital had collapsed...

...Government but the Carter Administration wouldn't buy it...

...He was an exceptionally skilled politician who knew how to forge alliances within the ruling elite while building popular support by resorting to deliberately vague rhetoric of "anticorrup-tion," "reform," and "social justice...

...And so they have demanded "political changes," realizing that to succeed, austerity must be "democratized...

...In later years, Aquino took no special pains to conceal his associations with the CIA...

...The counterinsurgency efforts failed...

...AQUINO'S LEGACY The murder of Aquino ignited the social tinderbox that was urban Manila...

...The old dictator, for one, "will refuse to go, except in a coffin," says one U.S...

...They must have the right to participate in elections and compete in the marketplace of ideas," he said...

...foreign policy—which seeks not only to contain national liberation movements but also to roll back revolutionary governments—it is difficult to imagine that Washington will want to gamble on a reform that could bring the hated Left closer to power...

...But he also warned, "If they resort to violence after that, then that's a different story...

...The NPA called itself "anti-imperialist" and "anti-feudal," promoting revolution through a peasant-based "protracted people's war...

...By the early 1970s, however, the circumstances had changed...

...Government, Aquino's murder and the subsequent turmoil constitute an embarrassment and a threat...

...His formal schooling at the Ate-neo de Manila, run by American Jesuits for the children of the rich and powerful, paved the way...

...The traditional elite opposition, made up of businessmen and self-described moderate leaders of the Catholic hierarchy, is pushing for a transition to a freely elected, pro-U.S...

...They were especially interested in my knowlege of the Church and various groups within it," said the scholar, who requested anonymity...

...How do I put back three million jobs...

...Even with Marcos gone, any peaceful transition would be extremely difficult...

...Between 1971 and 1975, the percentage of families living below the government's poverty line rose from 49 to 55...

...State Department officials described as the "long-term, strategic challenge" to the regime...

...investors...

...The coalition, then, is an uneasy one, with each faction adhering to a different strategic objective...

...The instruction sheet of the questionnaire informed the specialists that "by answering the following questions, you will be providing information on the NPA that we have not been able to find elsewhere...

...Aquino's death is achieving what his life could not: the toppling of his hated rival, Ferdinand Marcos...

...In the midst of this conflict, Aquino would be a wild card...

...The National Democratic Front (NDF)—the broad coalition led by the Left—had 40,000 organizers in almost all provinces and major cities and boasted five million sympathizers, according to some estimates...

...Agency for International Development, was a failure: Land reform was thwarted by landlord opposition, and the escalating price of fertilizers and pesticides threw hundreds of thousands of small farmers into bankruptcy...

...On the other, it depended on a relatively undeveloped consciousness and organization among the lower classes who provided the bulk of the votes...

...Already reeling from the impact of Marcos's economic policy, Manila's business and financial elites were driven to desperation by the reckless efforts of the dictator's cronies to corner all key sectors of the economy...

...In a profound though tragic sense, Benigno Aquino was graced by history...

...In the mid-1970s, the Left also began to undertake large-scale organizing in the cities...

...Marcos could no longer be relied upon to operate according to the rules of political rationality...

...A charismatic figure, he became a town mayor at the age of twenty-two and a provincial governor at twenty-eight...

...AQUINO BETRAYED It has always been Ferdinand Marcos's particular genius to link the apprehensions of his class and the interests of its patron, the United States, to his personal drive for absolute power...

...mastered the fundamental technique: Mobilize the lower classes through kinship ties and patronage, and political office is yours...

...A defeated and demoralized band in the 1950s, the Left had transformed itself by the end of the 1970s into what U.S...

...The world's attention focused, at least for a time, on the decades-long American policy of supporting Marcos, a man who rules the Philippines in the manner of a Mafia kingpin...

...Since the assassination, Manila has been rocked by huge demonstrations calling for the dismantling of a now thoroughly discredited regime...

...At a time when there is growing support for the Communist-dominated New People's Army...

...You're even worse.'" Recognizing the risk, Aquino predicted that "the first guy that will come in will be blown out in six months...

...military to project a presence in Southeast and Northeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southern Africa, and the Middle East...

...His base— the 250,000 members of the armed forces and the political network of several hundred thousand regional and local satraps—would probably demand some solid guarantees of the positions they acquired through force or fraud during the last decade...

...Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino flourished within the parliamentary system that American colonial officials imposed on the traditional Filipino power structure in the 1930s...

...The "democratic transplant" combined feudal paternalism with the worst features of American boss politics...

...support for Marcos...

...activity, and the changing Philippine domestic scene...