Marcos Declares Emergency; Won’t Quit, Threatens Force : Rebels Seize TV Station as He Speaks

President Ferdinand E. Marcos today declared a nationwide state of emergency aimed primarily at shutting down radio and television stations broadcasting reports that his government had been overthrown. He ordered loyal troops to use force to defend government installations after a rebel force of about 2,000 soldiers claimed that it had defeated Marcos and driven him from the country.

Marcos announced the move on government television from Malacanang, the presidential palace, where he was flanked by his wife, daughter, grandchildren and loyal military generals. He acted after the Roman Catholic Church-backed Radio Veritas began announcing repeatedly that Marcos and his family had fled the country and that the rebel forces had taken over the government. Marcos said he will not resign.

However, while Marcos was explaining his state of emergency to the broadcast audience, a detachment of rebel troops attacked the government television station, and it went off the air.

Station Taken Over

It was later learned that the rebel detachment, led by Col. Mariano Santiago, took over the station after a clash in which at least four people were wounded.

Amid conflicting reports from radio and television stations controlled variously by the government and the rebels, there were reports of sporadic shooting by government troops around the presidential palace, where many demonstrators had gathered, and of several other confrontations in what appeared to be mainly a propaganda war.

Reuters news agency reported that supporters of opposition leader Corazon Aquino had announced the formation of a new government. Another news agency report said that a tank fired at a rebel helicopter that dropped a grenade on Marcos’ palace.

The city remained largely peaceful as Marcos resisted efforts by his military chief of staff, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, to launch an all-out attack on the rebels’ headquarters at Camp Crame, a military base several miles from Marcos’ Malacanang Palace.

Marcos Vows to Use Force

Before the attack on the government television station shut down the president’s primary means of communicating with the nation, Marcos had vowed to use “all the force at my disposal” to put down the rebels, led by former Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, former deputy military chief of staff. They remained with their heavily armed troops inside the camp.

In a Sunday midnight television address to the nation, Marcos pledged to “wipe out” the rebellion against him. Six hours after that midnight broadcast, a column of marines loyal to Marcos used tear gas and truncheons to clear civilian demonstrators out of their path and at dawn reoccupied an army base seized Saturday by the two military leaders.

The base, Camp Aguinaldo, which contains the Philippine Defense Ministry, was abandoned by the rebels Sunday so they could concentrate their forces at adjacent Camp Crame, which they consider easier to defend.

After announcing the state of emergency, Marcos advised all citizens to stay inside their homes today, and the Ministry of Education ordered all schools closed for the day.

Declaring that Enrile and Ramos--once among his most loyal supporters--had established “a revolutionary government,” the president said his emergency declaration bans all broadcasts of military operations by radio and television stations, which he said are now under the control of the government.

The order, he said, differed from his 1972 declaration of martial law because his civilian government remains in charge of the country.

“Radio stations are causing all kinds of panic,” the president said without mentioning by name Radio Veritas, which falsely broadcast all morning that Enrile and Ramos had succeeded in forcing Marcos to resign and flee the nation.

‘Not as We Expected’

After Marcos’ state of emergency broadcast, announcers on Radio Veritas backed off their claim.

“Things did not go as we expected,” said one announcer, who did not give her name, but she added, “We heard so many reports, we really came to believe them.”

But the station continued to broadcast appeals throughout the day to all Filipinos to come to the aid of the rebels by forming a growing human barricade of civilians outside their camp. And it broadcast reports relayed from rebel leaders inside their headquarters.

During the president’s interrupted television broadcast today, Marcos left no doubt that he has no intention of resigning and that he plans to go through with an inauguration ceremony for himself Tuesday morning.

“There is no way I can step down or resign,” Marcos said, adding that he still controls more than enough of the 200,000-man military to put down the rebellion whenever he wishes.

Before the television station went off the air, Marcos ordered all loyal military commanders to use “small weapons” to defend all government installations, and he scrambled F-5 fighter jets for surveillance flights, adding that he will use tanks, heavy artillery and fighter-bombers only if necessary.

Noting that he received several messages from President Reagan urging that violence not be used to put down the rebel force under Ramos and Enrile, Marcos said his answer to Washington was, “If there is a need to use violence in defense of our installations, then our personnel will use violence.”

Marcos said that he told U.S. Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth to inform Reagan that Marcos and his loyalists “are in control of the situation” and that Reagan should not support either side.

“We will not initiate the violence but if they try to use force to take any government installations like Malacanang, we will be forced to utilize all available military force against them,” adding that his standing order of “maximum tolerance” in such confrontations has been lifted.

Marcos specifically told his commanders not to use mortars, recoilless rifles, tanks, artillery or fighter jets to attack. He authorized them to use anti-aircraft guns to shoot down rebel helicopters if they are used in rebel attacks.

“We are going to see to it that government operates normally,” he said, adding that anyone who resists “will be arrested immediately.”

“We are in control of the military. It is quite true that they (the rebels) have some troops with them but this is not sufficient to support the revolutionary government.”

Marcos and Ver Argue

Before Marcos’ broadcast was cut short by the station’s going off the air, the president was shown arguing heatedly with Gen. Ver, the chief of staff, against attacking Camp Crame, where Ramos and Enrile added a squadron of attack helicopters and pilots Sunday night.

Dressed in combat fatigues, an agitated Ver told the president, “We have to neutralize the helicopters they have got. We have got two fighter planes in the air right now.”

Then, Marcos interrupted and told Ver, “Now, hold on.” Ver then appealed, “Give the commanders the option to decide at the time (what force to use). Our attack forces are being delayed. They are massing civilians near our troops. We cannot go on withdrawing.”

Marcos then forcefully told the general, “You disperse the crowd without shooting them.”

Pledge by Marcos

Then, the president told reporters, “I stopped Gen. Ver from using F-5 fighters and attacking the camp,” and he pledged that his loyal troops will only use small-weapons fire against the rebel-controlled camp, and even then only if they are fired upon.

Outside the rebel camp, thousands of civilian supporters gathered again as the day went on to chant, sing, and show their support for the mutiny.

At one point, before Marcos’ declaration of a state of emergency, Enrile and Ramos appeared before their troops and told them that they had won and that Marcos had fled the Philippines.

Ramos announced that he was declaring opposition candidate Aquino, who said she was deprived of victory in the Feb. 7 election by official cheating, to be the new president of the Philippines. And he began naming appointments to posts in what he called the “New Armed Forces of the Philippines.”

No comment was reported from Aquino on Ramos’ announcements.

Marcos warned civilian demonstrators outside of rebel-controlled Camp Crame to disperse because “there is a strong possibility there will be an exchange of small-arms fire” and “they are liable to get caught in a crossfire.”

“If Camp Crame starts sniping at our people or keeps on making appointments like Mr. Ramos has been making . . . we have to stop this by ordering the arrest of anybody who implements these orders of Ramos or Enrile.”

Marcos added, however, that he has issued no orders for the arrest of Aquino and that he has no intention of doing so.

Marcos Furious

Marcos was obviously furious when he went on television at midnight Sunday with his pledge to destroy the rebel leaders in Camp Crame.

Jabbing fingers into the air and slamming his fist on the desk, Marcos charged that Enrile and Ramos are part of “a new power group trying to seize power” from both him and the nation’s political opposition.

He accused them of sedition, open rebellion and conspiring to overthrow his government and said he will “let the blood flow” if the two rebel leaders continue to demand his resignation as their only condition of surrender.

Vowing never to resign, Marcos declared, “I have all the power in my hands to put an end to this rebellion when we decide enough is enough.”

The marines in battle gear who reoccupied Camp Aguinaldo dispersed hundreds of people demonstrating there in support of Enrile and Ramos in Camp Crame, which is located just across a wide street from Camp Aguinaldo.

Witnesses said some students tried to link arms to stop or block the marines, and radio reports from the scene said many people fell as they tried to escape the troops.

But there were no immediate reports of anyone being seriously hurt, and there were no clashes between loyalist and rebel military forces during the reoccupation of the camp.

Marcos’ midnight television address marked a radical departure from his earlier pledge to use all peaceful means to solve the crisis in his 200,000-man military.

The speech was made several hours after thousands of middle-class civilian demonstrators armed only with banners and flowers had turned aside a move made by Marcos forces on Sunday to take back Camp Aguinaldo.

The demonstrators, most of them supporters of opposition presidential candidate Corazon Aquino, stopped the loyalist troops by refusing to move from the path of the armored force, which did not use tear gas or make any other forceful effort to break through the human barrier.

Inside Camp Crame on Sunday, Ramos told reporters that his band of rebels, although heavily armed, is “a mismatch” for Marcos’ tanks and artillery. But he quickly added: “There is a more powerful weapon system at our disposal--people power. And people power is sufficient to support the New Armed Forces of the Philippines.”

Public Relations Effort

At the same time, Ramos launched a public relations campaign of his own. In a series of Sunday meetings at Camp Crame, Ramos declared to Aquino’s aides and to other opposition leaders that he and Enrile have the support of the majority of the military.

The rebel leaders also reiterated their determination not to surrender until Marcos resigns. They accuse him of gaining reelection illegally, through fraud and intimidation of voters, in the Feb. 7 balloting.

Top aides to Aquino, who is leading a nationwide protest movement against Marcos in an effort to force his resignation, said they fully support the mutiny.

Aquino herself returned to Manila on Sunday from the island of Cebu. She said that she wanted to visit Enrile and Ramos to congratulate them for their stand but that her security officials had advised against it. Instead, she sent them a short written message of support.