Aquino Facing Challenge by Enrile, Split in Cabinet

The political coalition that brought President Corazon Aquino to power eight months ago has begun to fray, and there have been signs this week that a Cabinet crisis is imminent.

Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Vice President Salvador H. Laurel have hinted--in speeches, at press conferences and in private conversations--that they may soon declare a split with the Aquino government. The general secretary of the political coalition that endorsed Aquino in last February’s election said Thursday that three other Cabinet ministers “will have no option but to resign” if the split occurs.

The central figure in all this is Enrile, who was instrumental in Aquino’s rise to power. He and several hundred other military leaders rebelled against President Ferdinand E. Marcos after the election and eventually forced him into exile.

“My only political affiliation is to myself and no one else,” Enrile said in a public statement Tuesday in Manila. At the same time, he made it clear that he has fundamental disagreements with the way Aquino has been running the country.

Also on Tuesday, Enrile deliberately slighted the president by refusing to attend her weekly Cabinet meeting, his aides said Friday.

Enrile has challenged Aquino’s mandate to rule, asserting that because she set aside the constitution in March, she should put her government to a popular test under a new constitution that is to be voted on in a nationwide referendum next year.

Enrile also has chided the president for “shackling” the armed forces and inadvertently aiding the Communist insurgency by allowing the Communist Party and its military wing, the New People’s Army, freedom to propagandize and to ambush military patrols in the countryside while government representatives try to negotiate a political settlement.

Weekly Addresses

More than anything else, Enrile has used the Communist issue in his effort to draw support away from Aquino and her peaceful approach to ending the country’s 17-year insurgency. Every week for the past several months, Enrile has addressed businessmen, professionals and conservative labor groups with sharp warnings that the insurgency and continued economic deterioration have thrown the nation into a worsening crisis.

He has also taken his appeal to the provinces. Last month, he addressed a large anti-Communist rally on the troubled island of Negros, and on Sunday he is scheduled make a similar appearance at Cebu, the Philippines’ second-largest city.

Enrile, who still enjoys tremendous support among the 200,000 men of the Philippine armed forces, has often denied that he has any personal political ambitions.

“I have no political plans, to tell you the truth,” he said this week. “If I am talking of politics, it is simply because I am exercising not only my duty as a member of the Cabinet . . . but also exercising my right as a citizen to call attention to things.”

Advisers’ Doubts

Few people in Aquino’s inner circle of advisers believe these statements. The minister of local governments, Aquilino Pimentel, who spent several months in prison while Enrile was Marcos’ defense minister, has charged that Enrile is trying to destabilize Aquino’s government so that Enrile can assume the presidency.

Pimentel has also charged that Enrile is training an elite private army--a charge Enrile answered this week by hinting that he could bring off another coup if he wished to do so.

“Why do I need a private army?” he said. “I am the defense minister of the republic.”

Senior officials at the Defense Ministry have said privately that Enrile has no plans for a coup d’etat and is not likely to resign. Rather, they said, he is likely to declare in an act of open defiance that he is formally “separating” from Aquino’s government, while maintaining that he is still the nation’s minister of defense.

Such an act, which Aquino’s aides concede would force the president to meet with Enrile and possibly delegate more responsibility to him for military affairs, already has the tacit approval of Vice President Laurel.

Draft Constitution

Laurel met with Enrile for more than an hour Wednesday, and in a news conference apparently timed to coincide with submission of the new draft constitution to Aquino, Laurel virtually declared that his political umbrella group, the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO), is splitting from her government.

“I would say there is a problem,” Laurel said after his meeting with Enrile. He described the tension between Aquino and Enrile as “a communications gap,” and he added that his coalition, which was Aquino’s party of record for the presidential election, would not support a political movement recently formed by Aquino supporters and advisers.

“The UNIDO has decided to field an official list of candidates, UNIDO’s own list of candidates,” Laurel said. He added that he was “not necessarily” breaking with the other parties represented in Aquino’s administration, and emphasized that “this government is supposed to be a coalition.”

Enrile used precisely the same words the day before in discussing his displeasure with the Aquino government’s policies.

‘A Working Alliance’

“What is becoming clear in all this is that Defense Minister Enrile and . . . Laurel may already have forged a working alliance,” Manila political columnist Luis Beltran said Friday.

Beltran said the two men are planning to campaign against the new constitution, which fixes the terms of Aquino and Laurel at six years.

He added, however, echoing several Cabinet ministers, that support for Enrile and Laurel in the Cabinet has been waning, and that members of Laurel’s coalition in the Cabinet would not support them in a break with the government.

A senior Defense Ministry official warned that the support of Aquino’s “liberal democrats” in the Cabinet “will be meaningless if she no longer controls the military and elements of the political right.”

The official said that Enrile believes he is appealing in his personal campaign to the most crucial segment of Philippine society--conservatives in the political and military sectors and in the powerful Roman Catholic Church.

Church Backing Sought

Enrile, again citing the Communist issue, undertook a new campaign this week to attract support from the church, something that was vital in organizing the massive street demonstrations that protected Enrile and his military rebels during the February coup.

Referring to the Communists as “godless,” Enrile said that the streets were filled at the time of the coup with people carrying crucifixes and icons, with priests and nuns, people who “believed in something beyond man.”

“You know,” he went on, “in February there were many actors in that revolution, and today there are very few claimants to the roles that were played in that event.”