Marcos Loyalist Jailed by Aquino Regime : Legislator Tied to Post-Election Killings; Second Suspect Sought

The Philippine military Wednesday arrested a key loyalist of deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos in connection with more than a dozen post-election killings in the northern province of Quirino.

Authorities continued a nationwide manhunt for a second reputed warlord suspected of murdering his chief rival just after the Feb. 7 presidential voting.

“These two men were terrorizing the people--the people were shaking in their boots, and something had to be done,” Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile said in an interview Wednesday afternoon, soon after the arrest.

Enrile said the arrests are part of a nationwide crackdown on the armed men left behind by the former president.

“What chance does an ordinary citizen have against these people unless we show our country that no one is above the law any more?” he asked.

The arrested loyalist, Orlando Dulay, is a national legislator and former military commander under Marcos who, witnesses told The Times last month, was responsible for the Feb. 9 slaying of three teen-age daughters of peasant opposition leaders in his rural region.

The disclosure of his arrest was among the highlights of intelligence reports given President Corazon Aquino late Wednesday during her first meeting with all of her senior military commanders since she assumed power two weeks ago.

Insurgency Reported Lagging

Several top-ranking officers at the 90-minute briefing said Aquino was also told that the nation’s burgeoning Communist insurgency is now in limbo. They said that leaders of the rebel New People’s Army are “in a state of confusion” over how to react to her government, which came to power after Marcos fled the country Feb. 25 amid a largely nonviolent military and civilian rebellion.

The rebellion was led by one-time Marcos loyalists Enrile and the new military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, who invited Aquino to the Wednesday military briefing after her first official meeting with her 18-member civilian Cabinet on Wednesday morning.

“The primary message to the president was that the honeymoon between the armed forces and the people is still on,” said Brig. Gen. Ramon Montano, the new military commander for metropolitan Manila.

Wednesday’s arrest of Dulay was intended as a strong signal from the military leaders who rebelled against Marcos that they are actively going after supporters left behind by the authoritarian president when he fled with his family and more than 80 associates to a U.S. Air Force base in Hawaii.

‘Take My Guns and Fight’

Dulay was interviewed at his sprawling villa last month, soon after the slayings of more than a dozen of his political opponents and their children. Surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards, Dulay said that if Marcos were ever forced out of the Philippines by the Americans, he would “take my guns, go up to the mountains and fight the new government.”

Although Dulay denied that he was involved in the post-election killings in his province, local leaders and members of the victims’ families blame him and his men for the deaths of at least nine local opposition leaders and the three teen-agers. The three girls were found with their necks broken, stab wounds in their chests and “Marcos for President” bumper stickers pasted to their midriffs just three days after their fathers had finished campaigning for Aquino.

Six days after Marcos fled, though, Dulay said in an interview, “As I have served President Marcos, I will serve Cory Aquino also. Of course I am for Cory now. How can you be sentimental when you’re in government service?”

Dulay added last week that he planned to travel to the United States this week to buy a home for his family in New Jersey. “I think things are going to get a lot worse,” he said.

Enrile said that since Marcos left, Dulay has continued to “terrorize” constituents in his province, about 200 miles north of Manila.

Other Assemblyman Sought

The defense minister added that troops are still searching for another pro-Marcos assemblyman, Arturo Pacificador, who has already been charged with murder in the 1984 massacre of seven supporters of his chief political rival, Evelio Javier. Pacificador, who is believed to be in hiding in Manila, is also the prime suspect in the machine-gun slaying of Javier himself four days after the Feb. 7 election.

“We have no real idea where this guy is right now, but we’re all through talking soft to him,” Enrile said. “The people must see that we are serious about treating everybody equally under the law now.”

Enrile, one of Marcos’ most trusted confidants during the 15 years he served as Marcos’ defense minister, also said that members of Marcos’ New Society Movement political party told him Wednesday that they had received telephone calls from the deposed president’s daughter, Imee Marcos Manotoc. Marcos had privately designated her as his political heiress before she and her family joined him in fleeing the country.

“Imee has been calling people telling them she will spend all the money she has to see to it that I am killed,” Enrile said, adding that his crackdown on Marcos loyalists is unrelated to the alleged death threats against him.

The military’s move against the Marcos loyalists, he said, includes more than a hunt for the former president’s men. A dozen raids have been made this week on the homes and rural strongholds of politicians who fled with Marcos in search of arms and the remnants of private armies that have led critics to label them warlords.

Guns, Ammunition Found

The raiding parties already have confiscated nearly 2,000 high-powered rifles and submachine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition from the loyalists’ homes--the majority of them from the estate of Eduardo Cojuangco, one of Marcos’ top aides now in Hawaii.

In just one of Cojuangco’s many villas and haciendas, Enrile’s troops found 781 M-16 rifles, three submachine guns and 1.2 million rounds of ammunition. Most of the arms had been distributed to Marcos’ supporters by his military chief of staff, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, as “election insurance” in the weeks before the presidential poll, according to Ramos, Ver’s successor.

In the interview with Enrile and other top military commanders Wednesday, it was clear that the crackdown was initiated by the military itself and not on Aquino’s orders. The commanders added that Aquino asked no questions during the briefing and expressed no opinions.

Asked whether the military was operating almost independently of Aquino’s civilian government, Enrile reiterated that he and his military organization continue to be “totally subservient” to Aquino.

“But it will take her some time to get acquainted with how things work in the military,” he added.