Marcos Now Hints He Won’t Replace Controversial Gen. Ver Before Vote

President Ferdinand E. Marcos hinted strongly Tuesday that he will not replace Gen. Fabian C. Ver, his controversial military chief of staff, before the Feb. 7 presidential election, and he charged that a victory for his opponent, Corazon Aquino, would trigger a military crisis that would plunge the Philippines into a bloody civil war.

Aquino, speaking at a rally on the island of Mindanao, 450 miles south of Manila, said the killing has already begun, and she blamed Marcos and his powerful 200,000-member military for an armed Communist rebellion that has now spread to all 73 Philippine provinces.

Marcos’ comments on his embattled chief of staff, who was implicated but later acquitted in the 1983 assassination of Aquino’s husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., appeared to contradict statements he made about Ver last week.

Marcos had just spoken to corporate executives in Manila about the Philippine economy when he was asked by the businessmen when he would order Ver to retire.

“Some people think that with the snap of a finger you can change the chief of staff,” he replied. “You just don’t retire a chief of staff whose leave of absence has caused some difficulties in the armed forces. Factionalism has started, encouraged, I’m afraid, by some of our probably well-meaning and well-intentioned friends.”

Pressure From U.S.

The Reagan Administration has been pressuring Marcos to replace Ver, a relative and former chauffeur of Marcos, as a key step toward reforming the Philippine armed forces.

Marcos ordered Ver to take a leave of absence in 1984 after he was named by an independent, civilian fact-finding board as a co-conspirator in the Aquino assassination. Aquino was shot to death while surrounded by nearly 2,000 soldiers as he returned from self-imposed exile in the United States.

Ver and 24 other soldiers were acquitted last year and returned to their posts, but Marcos told reporters last week that the chief of staff would retire before the special presidential poll--apparently to allay fears here and in Washington that the military plans to intervene in the election to help Marcos win.

After the President’s comments Tuesday, though, one of Marcos’ top advisers said the president apparently changed his mind. And Ver himself told reporters at a special Catholic Mass in honor of Ver’s 66th birthday on Monday, “I would wish to continue serving my country until the end of my life.”

Unsure of a Ver Successor

In addition to fears over deepening the divisions between pro- and anti-Ver factions in the military, Marcos said during the businessmen’s forum that if he orders Ver to retire, he is unsure of which general to name as his replacement.

Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, 57, who is the favored candidate of the Reagan Administration, took personal responsibility last November for a massacre by paramilitary troops of at least 20 demonstrators on the island of Negros, which Marcos suggested disqualified Ramos as a possible replacement.

“Can you recommend to me any officer in the armed forces who can take over?” Marcos asked the businessmen.

Later in his session with the Makati Business Club, which held a similar and far more enthusiastic session with Corazon Aquino two weeks ago, Marcos renewed his charges that Aquino is, “at the very least,” supported by the Communist insurgents.

And at a sparsely attended rally set up to address day laborers and dock workers in Manila after the businessmen’s session, Marcos shouted, “Danger! Danger! Beware of what the opposition is saying. They said they would allow the Communists to come in.

“If the Communists were allowed into the government, there would be fighting all over the country. You and I--who have no guns--we would be the first to suffer. Many will die. It will be a bloody civil war.”

Aquino Blames Marcos

Hours earlier, Aquino had answered the charge during a rally in Mindanao, where hundreds of civilians, police, soldiers and rebels have been slain in an insurgency that began with a few hundred armed men more than a decade ago but now has grown to an estimated 15,000 rebels nationwide. Even Marcos’ military commanders concede that the rebellion is now claiming, on average, 15 lives each day.

“I stand here in the midst of the violence and devastation that Marcos has wrought,” Aquino said as she approached the end of a grueling, 10-day tour of the central and southern Philippine islands.

Aquino later canceled a rally in Marawi, the city that was once a center of Muslim separatist sentiment, after military officials there said they uncovered a plot to kidnap or kill her. Officials in charge of her security at Marawi said they were taking the reports seriously, but her campaign office in Manila said the rally was canceled because of torrential rains. Ramos, commenting from Manila, said the military knew of no plot.

In her speech on Monday, Aquino denied Marcos’ suggestion that she is a Communist, and she charged that the rebellion is being fueled by a “corrupt and abusive” military that is in the hands of top officers whose only qualification is their loyalty to Marcos. She pledged to retire all generals who, like Ver, have stayed beyond mandatory retirement age, and to declare a six-month cease-fire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the rebels.

Finally, Aquino noted that Marcos has not visited Mindanao in many years. “He is afraid,” she declared, and she challenged Marcos to “stand up like a woman.”

The president’s aides said he plans to visit the island later this week.