Filipinos in County Urge Marcos to Quit

With the threat of civil war exploding in their homeland, members of Orange County’s Filipino community Monday urged that Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos step down and leave the country immediately to prevent any further bloodshed.

Some said that they would welcome Marcos in Orange County but that chances are greater that he would settle on Long Island in New York, where Mrs. Marcos owns a $19-million estate called Lindenmere.

“Of course, he’s got to leave now. Our first priority is to get rid of him,” said Ramon A. Alcaraz, 70, a former commodore of the Philippine navy now living in Orange.

Urges Marcos to Leave

Ernesto Delfin, a Fountain Valley resident and columnist for the Los Angeles-based newspaper, Philippine American News, said Marcos should “just come to his senses” and take a U.S. Air Force plane and leave the Philippines.

Delfin said many Filipinos in Orange and Los Angeles counties have attended meetings and demonstrations in Los Angeles over the weekend, waging “psychological warfare.”

Father Marito Rebamontan of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Anaheim, said even Orange County relatives of pro-Marcos officials favor Corazon Aquino’s taking the presidency.

“Although they’re reluctant to say anything publicly about it, they want Marcos to step down for the good of the country,” he said.

An estimated 123,000 Filipinos live in Southern California. Between 10,000 and 25,000 live in Orange County.

Alcaraz, who had entertained opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., at Alcaraz’s Orange County residence a month before Aquino was slain at a Philippine airport Aug. 21, 1983, said, “Benigno often tried convincing Marcos to step down.”

“Benigno told Marcos that he could take and enjoy all his wealth that he had accumulated with no vindictiveness.”

Alcaraz said that Filipinos in the United States are not “vindictive” and would welcome Marcos to this country to defuse any further violent confrontations in the Philippines where many of their relatives and friends still live.

Orange County has become home to a number of foreign leaders and military officials, including Nguyen Cao Ky, former premier of South Vietnam, and the late Lon Nol, former president of Cambodia.

Delfin said a large number of Filipinos living in Orange County are mostly middle class and arrived as part of the second and third wave of Philippine immigration. The first came after World War II and were followed by a large contingent of doctors, lawyers, accountants and other professionals in the early 1960s. The third wave is composed of relatives, including parents, of these professionals who have found an economic foothold.

Alcaraz, an alumnus of the Philippine Military Academy, is among 11 former top-ranking Filipino graduates living in the United States who had appealed to the Philppine armed forces to support the military’s reform movement earlier this month.

Alcaraz left the Philippines 14 years ago after being freed from jail for allegedly plotting, with other military leaders, to overthrow the Marcos government.

Since that time, Alcaraz has inverted a small Philippine flag at his residence as a symbolic gesture that his homeland “was at war.”

“When Marcos steps down and Corazon Aquino steps into power, I intend to right the flag,” he said.