Some Expect Coalition to Fail : Aquino Shows Insecurity as Political Crisis Deepens

Two hours before the most critical Cabinet meeting of her eight months in office, Philippine President Corazon Aquino took refuge in a Roman Catholic convent on the outskirts of Manila.

The convent is a place that Aquino has visited only at the most critical times in her political life. On this morning, her face haggard, her usually disarming smile faded into a frown and her voice choked with tension, the president confided her burden to the 100 Carmelite nuns who gathered around her. Finally, among these members of what Aquino has called her favorite and most trusted religious order, she broke down and cried.

It was a moment that revealed much about the 53-year-old former housewife who has established a unique and effective presidential style. And those who witnessed the scene Oct. 21 say that, despite denials by Aquino’s closest Cabinet ministers, it showed that the president herself has realized the Philippine nation is again in crisis.

Aquino is not alone in her concern. The recent weeks of wrangling within her fragile coalition government, which was formed virtually overnight amid the chaos and turmoil of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ flight into exile last February, have left most Filipino and foreign political analysts, businessmen and diplomats uncertain of the nation’s future.

Many questions have been raised, notably about the depth of the crisis that has aligned Aquino against Juan Ponce Enrile, the minister of defense, and, last week, Vice President Salvador Laurel. Almost daily, the defense minister has publicly questioned her mandate, her policies in dealing with the nation’s Communist insurgency and other issues--and the honesty of those around her.

Some diplomats and Philippine political analysts say Enrile and Laurel are trying to force Aquino to call a presidential election next year. She has shown in the past few days that she is not willing to do this, but they are expected to keep on trying. Both Cabinet ministers would presumably be candidates.

Other people, historian Renato Constantino for one, believe that the apparent disintegration of Aquino’s coalition is to be expected.

The forces that brought Aquino to power in February, Constantino points out, were united by just one aim--to drive Marcos from office after 20 years of dictatorship. Now that Marcos is gone, Constantino and other analysts say, the unity is gone, too. New alliances must now be formed along “ideological lines,” as Constantino puts it.

Most of the “political bush fires,” according to Teodoro Benigno Jr., the president’s press secretary, will be out by the middle of next year, after Aquino permits local and national elections.

How Long Can It Last?

Still, as the crisis appeared to deepen last week, many analysts wondered how long the Aquino government could last. They wondered whether the government, as now constituted, could hold together until next January, when a new constitution is to be put before the voters, or until May, when elections are scheduled.

Never in the eight months since Aquino took office have the forces against her been so strong or so vocal, some analysts believe, and never before have the feelings of popular insecurity seemed so great.

In living rooms, restaurants, classrooms and even billiard halls throughout Manila, Filipinos from the wealthy intelligentsia to the urban poor were asking whether Enrile has enough backing among the nation’s powerful military to stage another coup.

A recent wave of bombings in the heart of Manila’s financial district redoubled those fears, with Enrile loudly blaming the explosions on new urban units of the nation’s Communist insurgent army, while many respected Filipino analysts speculate publicly that Enrile supporters may have been responsible, planting bombs to justify a military takeover.

Throughout, Aquino has been all but silent. Her press secretary and several loyal Cabinet advisers have tried to reassure the nation in daily press conferences and speeches that Aquino’s grip on the government and the nation remains firm; that her popular mandate is still overwhelming, and that she is still, as press secretary Benigno declared, “the center of political gravity in the Philippines today.”

Crisis Takes a Toll

Nonetheless, the crisis has taken a toll on the country, both economically and socially.

The Manila Stock Exchange, which had been so bullish a few weeks ago that Finance Minister Jaime Ongpin warned investors that it was getting out of hand, has plummeted since the Cabinet crisis led Aquino to visit the Carmelites.

Theater owners, restaurateurs and shop owners are complaining that business is down by as much as 50% because consumers, fearing a coup or worse, are holding onto their money.

So stagnant has the economy become that several large national banks, awash with deposits and short on borrowers, appealed to their customers to withdraw money from their savings accounts and spend it.

Last Friday, even Aquino’s military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, who continues to remain a powerful, neutral force in the squabbles between Aquino and Enrile, acknowledged that the Philippine “ship of state” now has “quite a lot of holes--some large ones, some small ones, some above the waterline and some below.”

And a few days later, asked whether he could assure the people that there will not be a coup while President Aquino is in Tokyo next week, he replied:

“I can only assure you that we will try our best to prevent any. But I cannot read into the minds of everyone.”

Ramos Urges Unity

Ramos, who joined Enrile in leading the coup against Marcos and lately has served as a behind-the-scenes mediator in the Aquino-Enrile conflict, appealed for unity Thursday and warned against any military move to revamp the government.

Responding to a published report of a plan within the military to eliminate “inept and . . . left-leaning elements” while retaining Aquino as president, Ramos warned “any military adventurists against embarking on such a rash course of action because it could be bloody and destabilizing,” and he directed commanders to “take immediate action to neutralize any such plot.”

In a statement from the military press office, Ramos emphasized that it is “vital that we safeguard and enhance the gains of the February revolution, toward which all Filipinos should contribute.”

Ramos’ position is seen as crucial. Without his support, military experts here believe, Enrile is not likely to attempt a military takeover. If he did, they argue, it could easily degenerate into a bloody civil war within the armed forces that would only benefit the Communist New People’s Army.

In the past few days, though, Ramos has made it clear that he agrees with Enrile’s assessment that the Communist insurgency, which Defense Ministry and U.S. intelligence reports indicate has grown to 22,500 armed regulars now active in nearly a fifth of the nation’s 45,000 villages, poses an extreme and imminent threat.

Seeks Talks Deadline

Privately, the general has pushed Aquino for a deadline on the peace talks with the rebel leaders that began four months ago, a demand that Aquino agreed to during her attempted reconciliation with Enrile the evening before she visited the convent.

Ramos has stressed in recent public appearances that he and the armed forces “are squarely in the center,” maintaining a quiet neutrality in the war of words between Aquino supporters and the defense minister.

Perhaps more important, though, he has also declared publicly that he considers Enrile the “political spokesman of the armed forces.” In that capacity, Enrile warned in an apparent threat Oct. 30 that if Aquino asks him to resign, he would first have to consult the military.

Few Filipino political analysts, though, expect Enrile to take power by using the military. They believe the 62-year-old defense chief, who was a member of Marcos’ Cabinet and the chief architect of nine years of martial law, is simply trying to gain political power from within the government--power that he believes is rightly his.

“Many people do not understand this, but what we had in February was a coup d’etat ,” said historian Constantino, whose textbooks are standard reading in university history courses here. “What we are seeing now is merely the completion of that coup.”

Differing Views of Revolt

This analysis cuts to the heart of the rivalry between Enrile and Aquino. Simply stated, the two leaders maintain radically different views of the three-day rebellion that overthrew Marcos last February. Enrile and a small group of soldiers joined forces with Ramos, then Marcos’ deputy chief of staff, in appealing to the rest of the military to join them in open rebellion. Holed up in a military base in the capital, they were protected from loyalist counterattack by a human shield of priests, nuns and civilians, many of them supporters of Corazon Aquino.

In private conversations and recent interviews, Aquino has made it clear that she disagrees fundamentally with Enrile’s view of those crucial three days. The president believes that it was she, and not Enrile, who overthrew Marcos. She did that, she maintains, first by challenging him at the polls last Feb. 7, then by launching a nationwide boycott and civil disobedience campaign after the election was allegedly stolen from her and finally by “rescuing” Enrile and Ramos by having herself sworn into office several hours before Marcos fled the besieged Malacanang presidential palace.

Aquino pictures Enrile as a desperate man making a pathetic last stand to save his own skin with a handful of men who almost certainly would have been killed or captured had her civilian supporters not protected them in a demonstration of what she calls “people power.”

Enrile’s version of those same three days is like the photographic negative of Aquino’s.

The defense minister believes it was only because he and Ramos risked their lives that Aquino could take her oath in the first place.

“We were the wielders of power before anybody took her or his oath to become a part of this government,” Enrile declared in a speech last week. “And so no one can tell us they handed us an appointment or a position.”

Throughout the coup, Enrile said, Aquino was hiding, first in a Carmelite convent and then in the home of her mother-in-law.

‘We Handed Power to Her’

“Mrs. Aquino was nowhere in sight,” he said in a speech last week. “She wasn’t leading the people then.”

“We handed power to her,” he was quoted as saying in another speech. “Modesty aside, I would not say that Mrs. Aquino gave me the job. . . . It was my job before. The leaders of that revolution were the military who started it. Mrs. Aquino was not there to lead the people. She led the people when she went out to ask the people to vote in the election.

“When Aquino came into the picture, we (Enrile and Ramos) had 80% of the military force in the country. We were, in fact, in control of the country, Gen. Ramos and I. Marcos was willing to surrender power to us.”

Reality probably lies somewhere between the two views. But the differences persist, even after Aquino and Enrile met last month amid suggestions that there had been a reconciliation. And this persistence, coupled with the toughness of Enrile’s recent speeches, has led many to believe that the rift is worsening.

In private conversations, Enrile has made it clear that he resents Aquino and her inner circle of advisers and Cabinet ministers, not only for usurping power that he believes rightly belongs to the military but because they have made him feel like an outsider.

Helped Jail Dissidents

Enrile was minister of defense when Marcos declared martial law in 1972. He was the chief architect of that military takeover, and he was directly responsible for the jailing of thousands of Filipino dissidents, among them several who now are Aquino’s Cabinet ministers, and even her husband, who was assassinated in 1983 when returning from exile in America.

The late Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. spent more than seven years in solitary confinement under military orders approved by Enrile.

Aquino’s Cabinet ministers--except for Enrile, they were all part of the political coalition that challenged Marcos at the polls in February--have done little to show forgiveness or acceptance of Enrile.

The outspoken minister of local governments, Aquilino Pimentel, who has called on Enrile to resign, was asked why Enrile is now, in turn, demanding the ouster of at least five Cabinet ministers.

“Enrile’s conscience must be bothering him,” said Pimentel, a former political prisoner. “We were incarcerated during martial law, and probably he does not like to see our faces during Cabinet meetings.”

Aquino herself has not commented publicly on the rift, aside from the speech she delivered announcing a tougher line on the insurgency the day after her first and only peace meeting with Enrile. She conceded then that there are “many differences” between them but insisted that “there is no falling out between Minister Enrile and myself.”

Her Supporters Irked

Such seeming stonewalling, together with the recent statements of Aquino’s advisers denying that there is a crisis, has irked many political analysts and newspaper columnists who were once Aquino’s staunch supporters.

Amando Doronila, a columnist for the Manila Chronicle who was jailed and forced into exile by Marcos and who counted himself among Aquino’s most avid supporters, criticized the president this week for her presidential style since the current crisis began.

Chastising Aquino for her visit to the convent, Doronila wrote: “What we are seeing very often is a president who seeks asylum behind the cloisters of religious sisters when she faces crisis.

“She may find strength from religious prayers, which, however, do not make her communicate with her people. The tradition of the Philippine presidency is activist and interventionist.”

Doronila added that Aquino cannot afford to “stay above the turbulence like a benign observer indifferent to what’s going on below.”

Another prominent analyst, Maximo Soliven, who owns the Philippine Star and is one of many businessmen who helped Aquino during her presidential campaign, blamed such behavior on Aquino’s advisers. They “protect her from reality like some small child who cannot come to grips with it, or assure her that all is well when all is not well,” he said.