Aquino Ignores Advice, Will Free All Dissidents : Enrile Calls Release of Communist Leader Dangerous but Says He Will Obey Command

Overriding advice from the military leaders who helped bring her to power, President Corazon Aquino on Friday told Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile to free all political prisoners in the Philippines, including the founder of the nation’s Communist Party.

Aquino did not set a deadline for releasing the more than 450 dissidents jailed by ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos during his 20 years of rule. And, as of Friday night, only 16 of the 39 prisoners whom Aquino ordered freed from military detention camps on Thursday had actually been released.

Meanwhile, thousands of people marched through Makati, Manila’s financial district, to celebrate Aquino’s victory. Dozens of others picketed the Supreme Court, demanding that all its members resign so she can reorganize the judiciary.

Criticized for Delay

Aquino’s order to free all the prisoners came in response to criticism that she was dragging her feet on the detainees issue, and that she has been more conciliatory toward Marcos’ supporters than to his jailed enemies since she assumed the presidency when Marcos abandoned the job Tuesday.

But the order also potentially puts the Philippines’ first woman president into a direct conflict with the military leaders who staged the relatively bloodless rebellion that helped bring her to power.

While Enrile, who started and led the successful three-day mutiny that toppled the Marcos regime, said he would comply with the order, he added that it was his duty to “inform” the 53-year-old president of the dangers in releasing detainees such as Jose Maria Sison, who was jailed on Enrile’s orders in 1976 as the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

The party and its military wing, the New People’s Army, have been waging an increasingly bloody armed insurgency against the government, and Aquino’s order Friday left hard-liners in the military wondering whether she will reverse the strong anti-Communist line of her predecessor.

“I understand the order is to release all political detainees, including Sison,” said Enrile, who until his defection Saturday was Marcos’ defense minister and had served as chief administrator in the martial law years of 1972 to 1981. “I don’t know when his release papers can be processed, but that is the order . . . and we are bound by her orders.”

‘Responsibility Not Ours’

“Of course, we in the military must call to them the danger of releasing the leaders of the Marxist movement,” he added. “But if the decision is made by the highest authority of the land to release them, then so be it. But we must, however, state that the responsibility is not ours if the situation will deteriorate.”

Enrile was asked in a television interview if Sison would be free even if he did not renounce violence. He replied without elaboration: “If he did not renounce violence, then the military organization will deal with him.”

Enrile’s promises to obey the order, which were echoed by his co-leader in this week’s rebellion against Marcos, armed forces chief Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, allayed fears among some of Aquino’s supporters that the military may try to usurp power from her civilian government.

“I’m not saying the release of all the prisoners will be in one day, one week or even one year,” Aquino’s press spokesman Rene Saguisag said. “What I am saying is that Minister Enrile and Gen. Ramos have agreed to respect the will of the government.”

In the days since Marcos’ sudden departure, though, Enrile and Ramos have been preoccupied with securing their rebellion.

Resignations and Pledges

Amid reports of high-ranking Marcos loyalists in the army plotting a counterrevolution in Marcos’ home province of Ilocos Norte, Ramos spent most of Friday accepting the resignations or statements of loyalties from the “holdout” generals and colonels who have decided to join forces with troops loyal to Aquino.

Among them was Brig. Gen. Alexander Felix, a powerful regional commander from north of Manila whom Ramos had said supported Marcos and his chief of staff, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, until the very end.

Felix, who even had with him an “Aquino for president” cigarette lighter, confirmed in an interview that there still are several generals and colonels “on the loose” who remain loyal only to Marcos. But he said they had far too few troops to challenge Ramos, who said Friday that he now has the support of 95% of the military.

“Each of us has to make our decision,” Felix said. Contrary to Ramos’ statement, he added, he had made that decision at the height of the crisis Monday when he saw Ver argue with Marcos on national television over whether to use force to destroy the rebels’ strongholds.

Plot Reported

Among the “holdouts” who reportedly have been meeting to plot an attack on the new government is Brig. Gen. Tomas Dumpit, a commander of Marcos’ much-feared Presidential Security Command.

After an investigation last year, former Marcos loyalist Col. Mariano Santiago had implicated Dumpit in Manila’s largest auto-theft ring, a multimillion-dollar business. But the Marcos regime ordered records implicating Dumpit to be destroyed and allowed him to escape prosecution. Santiago, one of the heroes of this week’s revolution, indicated earlier this week that he is still angry over that decision.

Another Marcos loyalist who did not travel in his entourage to exile in the United States is Col. Balbino Diego, legal counsel to the Presidential Security Command and a suspected “fixer” for the regime. Diego figured in allegations of witness-tampering in the trial of the 25 soldiers accused in the assassination of Aquino’s husband, Benigno.

Exiled Official Returns

Among the first exiles to return from the United States was former Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus, who fled the country when he was charged with arson, attempted murder and subversion after Marcos declared martial law in 1972.

Manglapus told a cheering crowd at Manila International Airport he had come back to honor Aquino.

“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted by Ferdinand Marcos, we are going to be the greatest democracy in the world,” he said.

But he also warned, “Marcos is by no means finished. As long as he has got the money, as long as he is alive, you can be sure he is going to make trouble.”

No Persecution

In several public statements, Aquino, Enrile and Ramos nonetheless have stressed that there will be no persecution of Marcos loyalists under her rule, although she and her aides reserve the right to put them on trial if there is reasonable suspicion that they have been involved in serious crimes.

In announcing Aquino’s blanket order to free political prisoners, spokesman Saguisag said there had been criticism that “maybe the new administration was magnanimous in victory to the Marcoses but would seem to be stricter to the political detainees.”

He indicated, however, that the prisoners could not be released en masse. Setting them free involves a great deal of paper work, he said, and must be governed by “certain administrative requirements” because “we want to be sure that none of them is being held on other charges.”

Asked whether Aquino intends to pursue a second investigation and trial of her husband’s killers, he said, “It’s very low in her priorities.”

Military Reorganization

But the detainees issue is similarly low on the priority list for Ramos and Enrile, who, in addition to securing the revolution, are trying to plan the total reorganization of the 200,000-man armed forces.

Facing the two military leaders is a military that is basically professional but has been corrupted in recent years by powerful politicians who treated them as their own private armies--”because some people in the old days tried to create an elite group, tried to create an armed forces within the armed forces,” Ramos said in an interview Friday.

Ramos minimized the effects of the rebellion on a military that was on the verge of a civil war when Marcos departed, an act that Enrile applauded for having spared considerable bloodshed. Rather, Ramos said, the effect will be a positive one.

New Relationship

“I think the toppling of the regime of President Marcos has created a new basis between the armed forces of the Philippines and the Filipinos,” Ramos said, referring to the way in which tens of thousands of Filipinos had poured into the streets last Saturday to protect his rebel troops from counter-attack by Marcos loyalists.