14 Marcos Political Allies Assail Him, Form New Party

Declaring that Ferdinand E. Marcos “betrayed the trust not only of his nation but of his own political party,” 14 of Marcos’ most trusted party members abandoned the former president Saturday and formed a new party that they said will support the policies and government of President Corazon Aquino.

Led by Marcos’ former labor minister and personal campaign manager, Blas Ople, the new group calls itself the Nationalist Party of the Philippines. Ople said he expects “a multitude” of the country’s governors, mayors and national legislators to resign from Marcos’ New Society Movement and join the new party in the next few days.

At least 90% of the party members who had formed the nucleus of Marcos’ support--a national political machine once considered invincible--have split from Marcos since he fled for America amid a civilian and military rebellion, Ople said. He said he told Marcos by telephone a week ago to stop trying to advise his party members by long distance from Hawaii.

In a written statement, Ople, who was Marcos’ staunchest defender during the controversial Feb. 7 presidential election, said that “a critical mass of evidence” has surfaced to document Marcos’ cheating during the election and that the former president’s record of achievements “is now permanently dimmed by a record of organized pillage without precedent in our history.”

‘Act of Contrition’

Ople described Saturday’s mass defection as “an act of contrition as well as an act of faith and hope,” which he said he and the 13 other national legislators were taking with “strongly mixed emotions.”

“I, of course, can never forget that I owe my own opportunities for my early public career to President Marcos, and I will always feel grateful for this,” Ople told reporters at a news conference also attended by nine of his fellow party organizers.

“But having fought so hard and so selflessly for him in the recent campaign, we feel he has betrayed our hopes and our trust, . . . a feeling shared by perhaps millions of people who voted for him.”

Ople, a shrewd, longtime political strategist for Marcos, denied suggestions that his new party is meant only to lay the groundwork for his future bid for the presidency. “I am completely bereft of presidential ambition. I am organizing this party as a fulfillment of a historical role,” he said.

Yet most political analysts in Manila viewed Ople’s move as one of political survival for him and the other Marcos party members once known as the “Young Turks,” an attempt to distance themselves from the Old Guard of Marcos’ party, whose names have become so synonymous with Marcos’ regime that their political futures are dim at best.

The formation of the breakaway party was also seen as an attempt by Ople and the other elected leaders to protect their personal political power bases as Aquino considers whether to declare hers a revolutionary government that could strip all former Marcos loyalists of their posts.

The 14 founders of Ople’s party urged Aquino not to abolish the present National Assembly, of which all are ranking members. If she agrees, they promised “to extend the fullest cooperation to President Aquino and her government” in the legislature as she attempts to reform the government and improve the economy.

Ople, who named himself as the Nationalist Party’s provisional chairman, said his party would encourage Aquino to work within the framework of the current constitution, which was written and rewritten by Marcos after its adoption in 1973. He also guaranteed that his new party would ensure Aquino and her vice president, Salvador Laurel, official proclamation as the nation’s leaders in the National Assembly, which Marcos had controlled with a two-thirds majority.

Aquino and Laurel lost to Marcos and his running mate, according to official vote tallies that Aquino and most of the nation believe were fraudulent, and Ople was instrumental in the assembly’s proclamation of Marcos as victor last month.

Ople indicated that his group also supports Aquino on such key issues as the future of the two large U.S. military bases in the Philippines. Aquino has said that she will honor the present base treaty, which runs until 1991, and is keeping her options open thereafter.

And Ople, who was highly critical of U.S. pressure on Marcos during the recent election campaign, made it clear that his group will take a far harder line against American interests and American intervention in the Philippines now that Marcos is gone.

Specifically, he described as “disquieting” and “disturbing” the role of the Reagan Administration in the rebellion that brought Aquino to power late last month.

On three occasions during the rebellion, Ople, who was in Washington at the time of the coup, said he was called in by Michael H. Armacost, under secretary of state for political affairs, to act as “a channel” between President Reagan and Marcos. Ople also met with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who “clothed his message to President Marcos in the language of diplomacy.”

“The meaning between the lines was that it was my duty to interpret to President Marcos that ‘we believe you should remove yourself and not apply counterforce.’ ”

In a similar vein, Cesar E.A. Virata, prime minister in the Marcos government, who was not among Ople’s group of defectors Saturday, had told several American journalists Friday that, at the height of the rebellion, he was contacted by telephone by Richard T. Childress, a member of the National Security Council staff, and asked to use his influence “to restrain” the rebel leaders--Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, now Aquino’s armed forces chief of staff--after they sent a helicopter gunship to strafe Marcos’ palace.

Ople said Saturday that “the American role has been in many ways justified by the outcome.” But he added that “many of us were disturbed by the process itself.”

“The limits of friendly relations can be overstepped in so many ways, even if the results may speak well. . . , “ Ople said.