Long-Suffering Marcos Loyalists Have Their Day at Last

Sunday after Sunday, month after month, they have endured tear gas and water cannons. They have fought off helmeted policemen pounding them with truncheons, and they have fought back with stones and slogans and curses.

They have stood in a blazing sun in the downtown Manila park known as the Luneta, expressing their beliefs with T-shirt decals, with signs and banners, and by burning effigies of President Corazon Aquino and President Reagan. Week after week they have been dispersed by police, and week after week they have returned.

But on Sunday, the weekly ritual of the several thousand die-hard supporters of deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos was different. It ended in a siege of Manila’s best and most famous tourist hotel, trapping hundreds of foreigners who were largely unaware of the internal divisions that refuse to die in the new Philippines of President Aquino.

A Military Force of Their Own

For the first time since their demonstrations began in the wake of Marcos’ flight into exile Feb. 25, the loyalists--most of them former local officials and civil servants who lost their jobs along with Marcos--had a military force of their own. They were joined by about 300 armed soldiers who deserted their military posts.

The desertions stunned many residents of this sprawling city, which otherwise remained largely normal Sunday. But few of Aquino’s top civilian and military advisers were surprised by the sudden appearance of the pro-Marcos force, armed with government-issue M-16 assault rifles, Israeli submachine guns and grenade launchers.

Two weeks ago, Manila’s military chief of police, Gen. Ramon Montano, confided that more than 600 automatic weapons assigned to Marcos’ once-feared Presidential Security Command remained unaccounted for and were believed to be in the hands of pro-Marcos officers who had not yet declared their loyalty to Aquino.

A senior Cabinet member said privately 10 days ago that government intelligence agents had evidence that Col. Rolando Abadilla, former chief of Marcos’ intelligence in metropolitan Manila and the personal bodyguard of Marcos’ son, was traveling throughout the country, soliciting support for Marcos’ cause from senior military colonels and generals.

“Abadilla has been telling everyone he’s got enough support and firepower to mount a countercoup,” the Cabinet minister said. “He’s telling these people that (Defense Minister Juan Ponce) Enrile is with him. He’s saying he’s got Chief of Staff (Fidel V.) Ramos in his pocket.

“We know it isn’t true, so we’re just waiting for him to make his move. At least then, we’ll have them all in one place, know who they all are and get them all at once.”

On Sunday, Abadilla made his move. He was among the first of the pro-Marcos soldiers to enter the Manila Hotel, leaving about 200 men behind at the rally to protect the demonstrators from a possible attempt to disperse them.

There were signs that Abadilla’s recruiting efforts had paid off. The first general to join the rebellious force at the hotel was Jaime Echevarria, a veteran soldier who spent nearly a decade as regional commander in eastern Mindanao, the region hardest hit by a bloody, 17-year Communist insurgency.

“I spent seven long years fighting the Communists in Mindanao as a soldier loyal to the Philippine government and the Filipino people,” Echevarria said as he changed from his civilian clothing into his old combat uniform. “That’s why I’m here today--I’m still fighting the Communists.”

Repeated by Soldiers, Civilians

It was a refrain repeated by the soldiers and civilians who spent Sunday night in the overcrowded hallways and lobby of the Manila Hotel. For most, their expressed motive was to preempt pending cease-fire talks between Aquino’s government and leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military wing, the New People’s Army.

Arturo Tolentino, the white-haired, one-time vice presidential candidate who had himself sworn in as acting president, was asked why he named Enrile, who is President Aquino’s defense minister, to his shadow Cabinet. He replied: “It is so he can continue in his fight against communism without limitations or restrictions on his power.”

Tolentino was alluding to tensions between Enrile and Aquino’s soft-line civilian advisers over how to handle a rebellion that has so far left tens of thousands of dead in the Philippine countryside.

But there were other motives behind Sunday’s pro-Marcos move. For many, it was a last-ditch effort to get back what they had lost.

Most of the politicians who joined Tolentino were, like Tolentino, stripped of powers they had enjoyed for decades until Marcos was driven from power.

“The die is cast,” said former national assemblyman Salvador Britanico, a staunch Marcos supporter for two decades. “Either we win all or we lose all.”

When asked if their actions were aimed simply at securing Marcos’ return to the Philippines--a position each had endorsed just two months ago--every rebellious politician interviewed said he was merely seeking early national elections for mayors, governors, assemblymen and president.

But the civilian supporters who gathered outside the hotel into the early morning hours today were clearly still devoted to the deposed president.

Some hugged portraits of Marcos and his wife, Imelda. Others chanted, “Still Marcos! Still Marcos! Still Marcos!”

Several sources who were present Sunday night when Tolentino and his top advisers spoke to Marcos by telephone said Marcos insisted he will not return.

“President Marcos told them to avoid bloodshed at all costs and to accept any reasonable political settlement . . . ,” said a Filipino journalist loyal to the former first family who listened to the conversation. “Everyone seemed a little shocked. It was like he was calling the whole thing off and saying, ‘Take the first thing they offer you and get the hell out of that hotel.’ ”

Many of the civilian supporters both inside and outside the hotel began doing that in the early morning hours, drifting home as the morning air came in off Manila Bay.