Aquino Keeps a Low Profile as Trusted Aides, Military Wield Authority

With a stroke of the pen, a smiling President Corazon Aquino gave herself unprecedented powers to rule the lives of her 54 million people.

She read a brief statement on national television, justifying her proclamation as the only way to cleanse the country of 20 years of crime and repression. Then she tossed a terse “thank you” to the reporters who had come to question her on her first 30 days in power, turned on her heel and was gone.

She left behind one of her Cabinet ministers to handle the barrage of questions. It was a fitting move, according to members of the Cabinet; after all, the minister who would answer questions was the minister who had drafted the proclamation.

Hasn’t Met Press

And it was typical of the way Aquino, a 53-year-old housewife-turned-politician, has been running the country since President Ferdinand E. Marcos fled Feb. 25 in the face of a popular revolt against his authoritarian regime.

Aquino has not met the press, domestic or foreign, since the day after Marcos left. She has delivered just two major speeches, only one of them to the public.

She has remained largely aloof from her people, keeping to her office in a guest house beside the presidential palace, receiving foreign ambassadors and meeting with a handful of her top advisers, most of them close relatives or trusted friends of her late husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr.

The 18 men and women handpicked by Aquino to serve as her Cabinet have emerged not only as spokesmen for her government but as virtually autonomous power brokers as well. Each wields far-reaching authority.

Commander in Chief

And while Aquino also holds the position of commander in chief of the nation’s 200,000-man armed forces, the military, too, has assumed a level of independence from the civilian government that it never even approached under Marcos.

In short, the sweeping “temporary” powers of government-by-proclamation that President Aquino gave herself last Tuesday are likely to exist largely on paper. The real day-to-day authority will be in the hands of her civilian advisers and the military that helped put her in office.

Such an approach is consistent with Aquino’s promise, made during her presidential campaign, that hers would be a “government of consultation.” Since taking office, according to people close to her, Aquino has not made a single decision without reading reports from several Cabinet ministers and discussing the subject at length with her advisers, among them her brother, Jose Cojuangco, and her brother-in-law, Paul Aquino.

For example, before Aquino announced Tuesday the form of her provisional government, she had asked for no fewer than three separate reports on the subject from her Cabinet and other political supporters, and she had endured weeks of daily pressure from the mass media, urging her to define her government in order to avert impending political chaos.

Members of the Cabinet emphasize that Aquino involves herself personally in such decisions. Asked what role the president played in drafting the provisional constitution last week, Justice Minister Neptali Gonzales said, “You can be sure that the president went over this constitution line by line, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph and page by page.”

Not Easily Swayed

The ministers say, too, that Aquino cannot be dissuaded once she has made up her mind.

Such an unorthodox style in the Philippines’ first woman president, a woman with no experience in politics or law, has not failed to evoke criticism, even within the Cabinet. For example, Luis Villafuerte, who heads Aquino’s commission on government reorganization, was asked why she has refused to meet with the press, and he replied: “That’s a good question. You should ask her that.”

Aquilino Pimentel, the minister for local government, was particularly harsh about the proclamation Aquino signed dissolving the National Assembly, taking all legislative power for herself and creating a temporary “freedom constitution.” As he made his way out of the hall where Aquino put her signature to the new constitution, Pimentel told reporters: “I have very strong reservations about this proclamation. . . . I have strong reservations about all of this.”

Aquino Called Dictator

Predictably, politicians who supported Marcos in the past, many of them members of the National Assembly, were highly critical of her first 30 days. Blas Ople, who was Marcos’ labor minister, charged that Aquino had given herself “the powers of a dictator in a one-party state.” Richard Gordon, the pro-Marcos former mayor of Olongapo, said: “This is exactly how Marcos started out.”

Even members of the Aquino Cabinet concede that there are many similarities between Aquino’s proclamation last week and Marcos’ 1972 declaration of martial law, which was welcomed at the time as “bitter medicine” to deal with widespread political corruption and violence by private armies.

But they are quick to point out that Aquino’s measures are temporary. Marcos kept the nation under martial law officially until 1981, and then unofficially until he fled into exile.

“Mrs. Cory Aquino is not the type that will be a dictator,” Vice President Salvador Laurel said.

Strong Leader Needed

Cabinet ministers and Filipino political analysts argue that the Philippines--a country of divergent cultures and languages and 7,100 widely scattered islands--lends itself to a strong central government and needs a dominating leader.

Francisco Carreon commented last week in a column in the daily Manila Times: “The divisions in our country are deep: starving millions and an opulent few, primitive tribes to effete cosmopolites, Catholics, Protestants, Aglipayans and Muslims. We need a strong, centralized authority, and fear is not a reason to withhold power from government or to attenuate it. It is only a reason to choose our agents wisely.”

The critics charge that Aquino has not chosen as wisely as she might. The 18 members of her Cabinet are largely well-traveled and well-educated businessmen and lawyers from the same families that have dominated the Philippines for decades. Their backgrounds are similar to the backgrounds of people in Marcos’ Cabinet. At least four are graduates of Harvard University; two others are graduates of Yale. Most live in Manila’s wealthiest neighborhoods and own expensive cars. Three own sprawling haciendas with vast tracts of land where tenant farmers struggle to earn a day’s wage.

“They can call themselves whatever they want, but there’s nothing revolutionary about this government,” said Leandro Alejandro, secretary general of a leftist workers’ group that is nonetheless supporting Aquino’s presidency.

Regime Draws Criticism

A more radical organization of laborers, the Kilusang Mayo Uno, or May 1 Movement, was more critical. It issued a statement that said in part: “The hopes of the Filipino people are for deep-seated changes and not reforms. When you take a look, however, at who stands behind Cory (Aquino), then you run across the large plantation owners and rich business people. Cory herself belongs to this class.”

Aquino’s supporters counter that such comments “smack of bigotry,” but it is clear that the economic class of her leadership will make it more difficult to halt the Communist insurgency.

Even her military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, conceded recently that the makeup of Aquino’s government means that coming to terms with the insurgents “does not lend itself to a political solution alone.”

Economic Woes Remain

As the insurgency continues to claim dozens of civilian lives a week, the critics point out that the economic disparities and divisive issues that contributed to the rise of the insurgents are far from solved.

Beggars still sit on street corners in Manila’s tourist district. Despite Aquino’s pious, church-backed presidential campaign, casinos, brothels and smuggling rings continue to operate throughout the country. And often-abusive groups like the Civilian Home Defense Forces have not been disbanded; complaints of their misbehavior continue.

Aquino and her supporters have appealed for patience. Her government has been in power for only a month, they say, and time is needed to “heal the wounds” and reassemble the ruins that Marcos left behind.

Corporations Seized

Even in the reform process, though, Aquino has been criticized, and again by her own Cabinet ministers. Through her Commission on Good Government, which is empowered to trace all assets amassed illegally by Marcos and his family and friends, the Aquino government has seized more than a dozen huge, privately owned corporations, among them television stations, banks and public utilities that her investigators say were secretly owned by Marcos and his people.

When the hidden assets issue came up at a recent Cabinet meeting, Pimentel, the minister for local government, and others cautioned that the government was in danger of committing the same acts Marcos did when he sequestered dozens of corporations and properties.

“I simply said that all of these sequestrations are OK only as long as we don’t transgress on the fundamental rights of the people involved,” Pimentel said afterward. “Otherwise, we’ll be no better than the people we fought so hard to get rid of.”

Pimentel added, however, that he is confident that the good will Aquino still has with the people will in time help her reform the government. And although he, and others, have reservations about the role of Aquino family members in her government, he said he is still “overall optimistic” about the future.

“All I am saying,” he went on, “is that we should never forget where we came from.”