Marcos Loyalists Plan Protests for Aquino’s 9-Day Visit to U.S.

This past winter, as Ferdinand E. Marcos campaigned to retain the Philippine presidency, Cely Carbonell expressed her support by joining an organization called Friends of Marcos in America, but she was just “a silent member.”

“It was after the illegal ouster (of Marcos) that I became active,” said Carbonell, who now is West Coast coordinator of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in the Philippines, a new network of Marcos loyalists that is planning demonstrations against Philippine President Corazon Aquino during a nine-day U.S. visit that begins today with a stopover in San Francisco.

Marcos was declared the victor in the February election amid widespread charges of voting fraud. But he fled to Hawaii later in the month, leaving Aquino to assume office after military leaders backed by demonstrators turned against him.

The planned anti-Aquino protests--and earlier demonstrations such as a May 22 rally by about 30 Marcos loyalists outside the Philippine Consulate in Los Angeles--reflect how the February political upheaval in the Philippines has brought a reversal of roles for Filipino-American activists, with Marcos supporters now cast as the slogan-chanting street protesters.

Before Marcos was deposed, his backers generally “didn’t find any reason to be active,” according to Rosita La Bello, who emerged as a Southern California spokeswoman for pro-Marcos forces just a few weeks before the Feb. 7 election.

“We were confident he would stay in power,” said La Bello, a businesswoman who now is a fund-raising official with the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in the Philippines. “We regret very much that we did not get an active group before all this happened.”

While supporters of Aquino--the street protesters of last winter--prepare to welcome her as the incumbent, backers of Marcos argue that their hero is still the legally elected president and is the best person to fight communism and preserve U.S. bases in the Philippines.

Marcos supporters accuse Aquino of having accepted pro-Communist politicians into her Cabinet, and they have been lobbying in Washington for the United States to pressure her to take a hard-line anti-Communist stance.

About 1 million ethnic Filipinos live in the United States, but only a small percentage has been politically active on behalf of either Aquino or Marcos.

A small anti-Aquino demonstration is planned today at San Francisco International Airport when Aquino passes through on her way to Washington, and larger demonstrations are set for after Aquino returns to San Francisco, said Carbonell, a Hayward resident.

She predicted that at least 2,000 Marcos backers would gather outside Moscone Convention Center on Sept. 23 while Aquino addresses Filipino-American supporters inside the hall.

In Washington, Marcos loyalists “will have a mass demonstration at the foot of the Capitol building,” said Marc Abenoja, a Glendale resident who is chairman of the Ferdinand Marcos for Freedom Movement, an organization headquartered in Pasadena that is part of the nationwide pro-Marcos network. “We would like to have it when Madame Aquino--I don’t like ‘President’--will be addressing both houses” of Congress on Sept. 18.

Aquino is not scheduled to visit Los Angeles, but Abenoja said that Southern California pro-Marcos activists will go to Washington or San Francisco for the demonstrations.

While Marcos has always had significant quiet support in the Filipino-American community--especially among people from his home region in the northern part of the Philippines--activists opposed to him accounted for most lobbying and demonstrations before his ouster.

Now, said Prospero Roda, a physician from a suburb of Richmond, Va., who heads pro-Marcos activities in the Washington area, “a lot more people who were shy to show themselves in support of Marcos are showing their preference.”

“It is mostly the Communists we are worried about,” Roda said.

Many organizers of the planned anti-Aquino rallies visited Marcos in Hawaii for his 69th birthday celebration Thursday.

At the party, which drew about 400 supporters to Marcos’ beach-front home on the outskirts of Honolulu, Marcos charged that Aquino is in “partnership with the Communist insurgents,” according to a United Press International report.

Carbonell said that many people “who were not in the limelight before” are now active in the pro-Marcos movement. The Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in the Philippines is led largely by Filipino-American doctors who were never part of the Marcos political machinery, she added. Its national head is Glendora physician Rolando L. Atiga, who was a Southern California leader of Friends of Marcos in America before the February election.

Some of Marcos’ closest associates have been placed on the defensive by litigation filed in U.S. courts since his fall.

Leonilo Malabed--a San Francisco physician who as national coordinator of Friends of Marcos in America was the most prominent Marcos backer in California before the Feb. 7 Philippine election--is fighting a lawsuit charging him with a role in the 1981 deaths of two anti-Marcos Filipino union organizers in Seattle.

Suit ‘a Headache’

Malabed said the time he has spent dealing with the suit has been “a headache for me and my family.”

“We believe he is innocent and in the end will triumph,” Carbonell said. “(But) we don’t want to be entangled in a problem like that. We have this organization independent from him. But he is an ally.”

Malabed was quoted recently in the San Francisco Examiner as discussing demonstration plans by phone with an organizer.

As the reporter sat in the doctor’s office, Malabed urged over the phone that the demonstration be peaceful, that organizers obtain a police permit and, just in case, that the organizers have money available to post bail.

“How much? I don’t know. I’ve never been on the other side of it before, damn it,” he was quoted as telling the other rookie opposition organizer.

‘I Talk Too Much’

Malabed told The Times that the leaders of the planned demonstration, upon seeing his quoted remarks, asked him not to discuss the plans again publicly.

“They said I talk too much,” he said.

Malabed continues to publish his Sacramento-based newspaper, The Filipino American. But now the paper comes out once a month, instead of twice a month as it did before Marcos’ fall.

The paper has taken on the more strident tone of an opposition paper. Recent headlines, printed in red ink, proclaimed, “Return Marcos Clamor Snowballs” and “Defiance to Aquino Mounts.”

At Thursday’s party, Marcos said he would like to celebrate his next birthday in the Philippines.

“I want to go back but not to start a civil war,” he said.

David Holley reported from Los Angeles and Dan Morain from San Francisco