Philippine Military Chief Hits the Silk in Peace Bid

Just after dawn Tuesday on his 58th birthday, military Chief of Staff Fidel V. Ramos strapped a parachute to his back, tied 50 pounds of medicine to his chest and jumped out of a C-130 transport plane at 1,500 feet.

Moments later, cigar clenched between his teeth, Ramos landed in the heart of a crowd on what is becoming the most troubled island in the Philippines.

As Gen. Ramos folded his chute, many of the sugar-cane workers who had gathered around him bowed reverently. Others threw garlands of bougainvilleas and orchids around his neck. But most simply gaped, awe-struck.

It was the first time in the history of this remote region of northern Negros that a man had dropped out of the sky. And it was no less a man than the co-leader of a military and civilian rebellion that had driven former President Ferdinand E. Marcos from power on Feb. 25.

“This is our gift from God,” said one peasant farmer in the devout Roman Catholic town of New Sagay. “First he rids us of Marcos. Then he appears from the heavens bringing soldiers and medicines. Whatever this man says, we will listen.”

Ramos’ message Tuesday was simple.

He and his specially trained team of 60 army, navy, air force and marine paratroopers had descEnded on NegRos Island to offer an olive branch and a club in his two-pronged effort to end Asia’s most persistent Communist rebellion.

Nowhere could the message have been more appropriate and timely than Negros. In the three weeks since President Corazon Aquino came to power, offering the rebels a six-month cease-fire, 49 civilians and seven soldiers have been slain in raids by the Communist New People’s Army throughout the impoverished island.

What is worse, Ramos and local military commanders said Tuesday, heavily armed private armies of local warlords still loyal to Marcos continue to roam the Negros countryside.

Their presence has fueled the Communists’ contention that oppression and elitism will not end under Aquino, whose pleas that the local death squads surrender their weapons have gone largely unanswered.

“In every way, Gen. Ramos felt this was a perfect place to spend his birthday,” said one aide, Col. Luis San Andres. “We feel it is a very critical place where the general’s presence will have some impact.”

Some of the results were tangible Tuesday. By the day’s end, Ramos and his men had recovered 156 M-16 rifles, pistols and homemade machine guns from members of Marcos’ private armies.

Ramos also responded to the recent carnage by the Communist rebels by ordering an entire infantry division of the Philippine army to saturate the island’s three provinces with professional soldiers in the next few days.

And he received dozens of rounds of applause from one-time anti-Marcos activists, kisses from nuns and at least three homemade birthday cakes--the icing of one of them depicting the 72-hour siege that drove Marcos from power.

Many who greeted the 39-year military veteran, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, carried yellow balloons that read, “Happy Birthday, Eddie,” Ramos’ nickname. And at one of his appearances, several women had brought signs that read, “Generals May Come and Go, but You Will Always Be in Our Heart,” and “Thank You, Gen. Ramos, for Giving Us Hope Again.”

The soft-spoken chief of staff’s one-day tour was a convincing demonstration to thousands of the island’s people that he himself is a principal weapon in the government’s arsenal against an insurgency that grew from a few hundred men to an effective fighting force of more than 15,000 during the 20-year Marcos regime.

In intelligence briefings in Washington during the past two years, officials of the Reagan Administration have blamed much of the growing insurgency on the incompetence and misplaced priorities of Ramos’ predecessor, Marcos’ loyalist Gen. Fabian C. Ver, who fled with his president to exile in Hawaii.

During Ver’s five years at the helm of the 200,000-man Philippine armed forces, his top priority was protecting Marcos. More than 5,000 combat-trained soldiers were diverted from the front lines of the nation’s civil war to stand guard at Malacanang, the presidential palace. Tens of millions of dollars in military funds were siphoned off from the war effort to install elaborate security and electronic surveillance devices to track Marcos’ enemies.

“Under Mr. Marcos and Ver, the people had no security,” Ramos told the crowd in New Sagay on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session he calls “dialoguing.”

“Their idea of security was the security of their vested interests, the security of Malacanang, the security of their crony businessmen, the security of their generals,” he added. “What we will now ensure is the security of the people.”

‘National Reconciliation’

Ramos stressed that his approach to ending the insurgency will not be confined to a military solution. It will include a program of “national reconciliation”--efforts at negotiations to disarm both the radical left and the radical right--as well as massive efforts to bring development projects to the poorest of the Filipino poor.

“In the Marcos regime, there was far too much emphasis on the showcase and the showpiece developments--big banks, five-star hotels, beautiful buildings and edifices--while none of the goods and services of the government were getting to the people,” Ramos told the largely middle-class group of admirers in the island’s largest city, Bacolod.

“When we talk about development now, it must be the development of the far-flung communities all over the country. We must deliver the goods--water, credit for fertilizer and seed, job opportunities and health care--on the level of the grass roots, where most Filipinos live.”

For Ramos, who risked his life along with Marcos’ former defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, in staging last month’s mutiny, the desire for the nation to recover from the Marcos era has become almost an obsession.

Missed Out on Democracy

In each of his appearances Tuesday, Ramos stressed that the Filipino people have missed every chance they have ever had for true independence and democracy--from the time the United States claimed the Philippines from Spain as a territory in 1898 until Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972, which he said could have restored freedom in the country had it been implemented without corruption and abuse by the armed forces.

“We are celebrating a new birthday today--not just mine, but everybody’s,” Ramos told his crowds. “We have in our hands an opportunity for a new life. If we throw it away again because we don’t give a damn, we may never get another chance.”

Ramos conceded in an interview later, though, that the “three pillars of the new government’s program to end the insurgency” will take time to implement. And in the meantime, a war is raging on islands like Negros, where powerful sugar barons still rule over tenant farmers in a system that increasingly spawns malnutrition and even starvation.

Further crippling Ramos’ military reform efforts in Negros is a history of military abuse that is worse here than on most other Philippine islands.

The worst such incident took place just a few miles from Ramos’ jump site in the sugar-growing town of Escalante. Last Sept. 21, soldiers opened fire on hundreds of unarmed demonstrators there, killing 27--most of them shot in the back as they ran away.

Despite his initial denial of military guilt in the incident, Ramos, who was then deputy chief of staff under Ver, ordered a thorough investigation of the incident by an independent fact-finding commission. The 17-member body recommended murder charges against 47 local politicians and soldiers, but no action was ever taken under Marcos.

The suspected mastermind in the massacre in Escalante is the province’s former governor, who is still holed up in his villa. Ramos’ men have managed to collect 527 high-powered rifles in the past week from the former governor’s private army, but residents of the area say they are living in fear of reprisals for testifying before the commission.

Adding to the military’s poor image are equipment shortages caused by Ver’s diversion of funds to operations in Manila. Many of the soldiers in the field in Negros are wearing ragged and torn uniforms. There is never enough food, they say, which encourages many of them to steal from civilians.

Asked whether he believes he can end the insurgency without bloodshed or force, Ramos said flatly: “No. There are just too many loose guns around.”

Still, Ramos noted, in his spartan, twin-engine prop-jet while en route home Tuesday evening, he has had a strong run of luck in the past month, during which he, Enrile and a ragtag band of a few hundred reform-minded military officers managed to overthrow a powerful dictator.

As he spoke, Ramos was playing poker with his top aides, a frequent diversion for a man who enjoys his cigars and the camaraderie of his troops.

Suddenly, he laid down a hand of four fives and smiled, “I guess my luck is still holding.”