Aquino Takes More Powers : Assembly Disbanded; New Constitution Due

President Corazon Aquino dissolved the National Assembly on Tuesday and adopted a provisional constitution that gives her almost absolute power, more than President Ferdinand E. Marcos had under martial law.

A new permanent constitution is to be drafted during the next several months and put to a vote of the people, and Aquino said she hopes a new National Assembly will be elected and in place within a year.

Aquino said she needs the extraordinary authority provided under an eight-page “temporary freedom constitution” to “cut out the cancer in our political system.”

Personal liberties will be protected, she said, by the Philippine bill of rights, which is modeled on the U.S. Bill of Rights and has been retained.

The new provisional constitution also leaves the judicial system intact. Justice Minister Neptali Gonzales said that it includes about 80% of the 1973 constitution that was drafted largely by Marcos.

It gives Aquino the power to rule by proclamation, to perform all legislative functions and to appoint governors and mayors to replace elected holders of those offices.

Vice President Salvador Laurel conceded that Aquino now has at least as much power as Marcos, who was driven from power last month after 20 years of autocratic rule. But Laurel, interviewed after Aquino’s announcement of the new constitution, said he is “sure there’s no danger” that she will abuse her powers.

“Mrs. Cory Aquino is not the type that will be a dictator,” he said. “She has the power, but she will exercise self-restraint.”

‘Proof . . . in the Tasting’

Luis Villafuerte, the official in charge of government reorganization, said: “Theoretically she has more powers than Marcos during martial law, but I think the test is in the exercise. . . . The proof of the pudding is in the tasting.”

Aquino did not comment on the new constitution, which according to Cabinet sources was written by Justice Minister Gonzales.

With her entire Cabinet seated behind her, including Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and her military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, Aquino read a prepared statement to the press and left without answering the reporters’ questions.

In her statement, she pledged to appoint within 60 days a commission of 30 to 50 members--”men and women of probity and patriotism”--to draft a new constitution, which will be submitted to the people in a national referendum.

No Deadline Set

The president set no deadline for completion of work by the constitutional commission, which she said “will have full independence and freedom in accomplishing its sacred task.” But she added, “It is my hope that they will complete their work within 90 days and that our people will have a new permanent constitution, and a duly elected Parliament, within one year.”

Several Cabinet ministers said after the announcement that setting a time limit for establishing a constitutional government was considered essential by the Philippines’ democratic allies and by many of the international financial institutions to which the Philippines owes more than $25 billion.

The ministers said that some of the temporary constitution’s provisions were controversial even within the Cabinet.

Noting that the Cabinet did not vote on the constitution, Aquilino Pimentel, the minister of local government, said, “I have very strong reservations about this proclamation, and I am mulling my options.”

Appointive Method Opposed

Pimentel said his major objection is that the constitutional drafting commission will be appointed rather than elected by popular vote.

But Gonzales said that electing delegates to a constitutional convention “might not result in the most qualified persons to draft the best constitution possible.” If the voters ultimately reject the commission’s draft constitution, he said, a new commission will be appointed, and the process will be repeated.

Aquino’s proclamation Wednesday failed to resolve the question of whether she considers hers to be a constitutional or a revolutionary government. But many analysts and government ministers say this issue is little more than a question of semantics.

In a special presidential election Feb. 7, Aquino lost to Marcos according to the official count, but the election was tarnished by fraud, intimidation and vote buying by Marcos’ party. Aquino assumed power after Marcos fled the country Feb. 25, and she has been under pressure from members of her Cabinet to proclaim hers a revolutionary government.

‘Civil, Democratic’ Regime

“We will not define what kind of government we have,” Gonzales said at a press conference after the interim constitution was proclaimed. Pressed to elaborate, he added:

“I personally would characterize it as a civil government, which is revolutionary in origin and nature. It is democratic in essence, and it is essentially transitory in character.”

Aquino did attempt in her statement to justify her decision to dissolve the 183-member National Assembly, where Marcos’ party, the New Society Movement, held a two-thirds majority. Many formerly pro-Marcos legislators had said that abolishing the assembly would damage the country’s two-party system, and they had pledged to support Aquino and her programs with their votes in the assembly if she would allow that body to keep functioning.

“Just as the (Marcos) cronies pillaged our economy, so the (legislative) majority debased our politics,” Aquino said Tuesday.

The deposed leader’s supporters in the legislature “rammed through the false proclamation of Marcos” as president, and they, themselves, enjoyed a majority in the assembly only because they had cheated in 1984 assembly elections, she said.

Aquino repeated several times that she will fulfill a campaign pledge to restore human rights and create democratic institutions, even in the provisional phase of her government, and that these will be provided for in the constitution that will be submitted to the people.

Reaffirms People’s Rights

“No right provided under the 1973 constitution is absent from the freedom constitution,” she said, adding: “It is only proper that in the transition period, political power should be vested in the genuinely democratic leadership of the nation. This, then, is the route we will take to complete the return to a fully fledged representative government. With the freedom constitution as our vessel, I believe the journey can be a swift and safe one.”

The new provisional constitution emphasizes the supremacy of Aquino’s civilian government over the nation’s 200,000-member armed forces, which took a leading role in the rebellion that drove Marcos from the country.

Several of Aquino’s top aides and Cabinet ministers still fear that the military could mutiny again if it becomes displeased with the course of her government. Ramos and Enrile have both pledged to remain subordinate to Aquino’s leadership.

However, Enrile has already interfered in one civilian political crisis--the controversy over local mayors in Olongapo, the town adjacent to the U.S. naval base at Subic Bay.

Base Workers on Strike

Olongapo is one of 60 cities where Aquino’s Cabinet minister for local government has fired a pro-Marcos mayor and replaced him with an Aquino supporter. The labor union representing 17,000 Filipino workers at the base seized the opportunity to call a strike for better benefits, using picket lines to keep U.S. personnel from entering or leaving the base.

As the base commanders toughened their stand Tuesday, ordering that none of the striking workers are to be paid for the Easter holiday unless they report to work today, Pimentel, the minister of local government, said he will not cancel his order firing Mayor Richard Gordon, who is still holed up in his office on orders of Defense Minister Enrile.

Enrile has said he hopes that Gordon, a popular local figure who has settled earlier strikes in his six years in office, can settle the Subic controversy.

Aquino’s new constitution, however, provides that she alone has the power to hire and fire mayors and governors until new local elections can be held, and she has said there will be no such elections until after the constitutional referendum.