Ouster of Enrile Strengthens Right : Aquino Firing of Defense Minister Is Boost for Gen. Ramos, Armed Forces

President Corazon Aquino survived the most explosive crisis of her nine-month-old administration Sunday, ridding her government of the chief challenger to her power and gaining an important vote of confidence from the nation’s 200,000-strong armed forces.

However, Aquino’s sudden decision Sunday to fire Juan Ponce Enrile, her controversial defense minister, and several other Cabinet ministers has left the 53-year-old president more dependent than ever on her military and pushed the basic policies of her government sharply to the right.

And the biggest winner in what now appears to have been a shrewdly executed, preemptive “countercoup” engineered by Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, Aquino’s military chief of staff, is Ramos himself, along with the majority of the armed forces.

The major policy shifts outlined by Aquino in a brief, nationally broadcast statement Sunday afternoon were almost carbon copies of a list of military recommendations that Ramos gave to the president in writing a week ago.

Political Tug of War

Ramos’ Nov. 15 letter to Aquino came amid a political tug of war in which the nation’s leftists were attempting to use the assassination of militant labor leader Rolando Olalia two days earlier to sway Aquino toward the left.

Judging by Aquino’s statement, though, the left clearly lost an important round, several key analysts here said late Sunday.

During a tense Cabinet meeting Sunday morning, the president secured the resignations of all of her Cabinet ministers and promised sweeping changes in the next day or two that reportedly will include the replacement of several ministers who have been leaning to the left. Chief among Ramos’ requests was the removal of several of those ministers, who the military believes are not effective in carrying out vital civilian functions needed to end the government’s 17-year war against Communist insurgents.

On the subject of the insurgency, Aquino firmly reiterated that the rebels have only until the end of this month to agree to a cease-fire before she declares an all-out war in the countryside, a deadline that has been labeled “unworkable” and “impossible” by the rebel leaders who have been negotiating with the government. Ramos and his top field commanders had been against a cease-fire, asserting that the rebels would merely use it to recruit new members and work to entrench their political position nationwide.

By firing Enrile, Aquino irked only a small faction within the armed forces, the former defense minister’s 700-man internal security group. On Sunday night, the group’s leaders personally pledged their allegiance to the new defense minister, retired Gen. Rafael Ileto, a highly respected career soldier-turned-diplomat.

One leader of Enrile’s security group, which had been at the nub of a rash of rumors about an impending coup against Aquino in recent weeks, commented, “Well, the game is over.”

Enrile made no immediate public comment on his forced resignation and apparently accepted it gracefully.

Aquino’s action provoked immediate sounds of alienation from the nation’s political left.

Saturnino Ocampo, one of the rebel negotiators on the cease-fire panel, condemned moves by Ramos that led up to Sunday’s announcement, even though the left has been clamoring for Enrile’s resignation since Olalia was slain, a killing that many leftist leaders blamed on the Defense Ministry.

‘Damned Both Ways’

“We’re damned both ways,” conceded one leftist leader who asked not to be named. “From our perspective, she did the right thing for all the wrong reasons.”

Speaking for the National Democratic Front, the Communist rebels’ propaganda arm, Ocampo denounced the developments as an “imperialist” conspiracy backed by the CIA. The plot, he asserted, was ultimately aimed at forcing Washington’s hard-line counterinsurgency strategy on Aquino, and, as “proof,” Ocampo cited the backgrounds of Ramos and Ileto, both graduates of West Point who served with the American armed forces and who are experts in psychological warfare.

Several sources in the presidential palace denied that Aquino’s action was part of a strategy devised by Ramos. Rather, they said, Aquino took the initiative in getting rid of Enrile because “she was fed up” with incessant rumors that he and his men were trying to overthrow her.

Yet, based on more than a dozen interviews with military and presidential sources, it was clear that Ramos initiated and carried out a series of moves that led to Aquino’s announcement, some of them apparently made without the president’s prior knowledge and all of them presenting Aquino with an irresistible, even if temporary, way out of a crisis.

Ramos’ moves began Saturday when he summoned to his office several key leaders of Enrile’s internal security group, a force that is armed with submachine guns and assault rifles and is well trained in combatting urban guerrilla tactics.

What was discussed at the meeting is not known, but, several hours later, Ramos, who had been described as the “man in the middle” of the conflict between Aquino and Enrile, moved to preempt any action by Enrile’s security group.

Intelligence agents told Ramos on Saturday night that a former member of the defunct National Assembly was having a party for 140 political leaders still loyal to deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos, whom Ramos and Enrile helped overthrow last February.

Ramos immediately began contacting his 12 key regional commanders, issuing orders to secure all radio, television and communications stations and all centers of government to ward off any attempt by Marcos loyalists, with some military backing, to reconvene the assembly Aquino dissolved last March, declare her presidency invalid and take over the government.

Military and political analysts here said such a plan would be “farfetched,” at best. And there was no indication that the celebrants at the home of former assemblyman Antonio Carad were planning anything Saturday night but a dinner party.

In addition, several politicians who attended said that the notion of taking over the assembly building had been discussed in the past but was considered unworkable and that the idea was never even discussed during Saturday’s party.

Also, aides to Enrile said his internal security group had no plans to move against the government Saturday night. In a recent interview, one leader of the group had said that their strategy was “just to be quiet for a while.”

“We’re just sitting on our hands, biting the bullet,” he said. “Once the silence gets to be too much, the pressure is going to build up for us to come out in the open again.”

Ramos Continues Moves

Nonetheless, Ramos continued his moves through the night to secure key government facilities with armed combat troops, while reporters chased futilely around metropolitan Manila looking for signs of a coup. At the assembly building itself, only a few security guards were on duty, and they seemed surprised to see so much interest in a building unused for months.

Aquino had been told of a “rumored, pending coup” Saturday night, and by morning, when she had, in one aide’s words, independently decided “it was just one rumor too many,” Ramos presented her with a military situation nationwide that was secure enough for her to risk firing Enrile.

In many speeches in the past few months, Enrile had dared Aquino to fire him, always adding that, if she tried to remove him, “I will have to consult the country’s military establishment. . . . When I speak, I speak for the entire military establishment.”

“I have to think of the people who placed me here--the military people,” Enrile said in one of his many public speeches last month. “If they want me to resign, I will resign.”

Ready to See Him Go

By Sunday morning, after a series of conversations between Ramos and his regional and service commanders, it was clear that they did want him to resign. The military appeared solidly behind Ramos, and Ramos was solidly behind Aquino. Enrile and his loyalists were presented with a fait accompli.

When Aquino opened her emergency Cabinet meeting Sunday, with Ramos and 13 of her ministers present but not Enrile, “she had already made up her mind to fire Johnny,” one presidential aide said, using Enrile’s nickname.

There were several indications in the past week that Aquino had been preparing to move against her unruly defense minister.

Aquino’s Impatience Shows

In her bi-weekly televised dialogue with the people, Aquino was obviously growing impatient with the seemingly endless rumors of a coup that have haunted her administration for months.

“I am convinced that there is a time to fight,” she said, when asked why she hadn’t moved against the alleged coup plotters. When that time comes, she added, “I want to be good and ready, and I want to make sure I have my forces.

“I believe really the time has come to do battle, and I mean to win. . . . They’re talking and talking against me, and I don’t think there’s any justification for it. . . . Whatever their grievances, I believe a cure could not possibly be so extreme as a coup d’etat. “

Still, Aquino had appeared to be opposed to a major Cabinet shake-up as late as Friday. Her top aides said then that she would make no major changes until after a new constitution drafted by her appointed constitutional commission is submitted to a popular vote next February.

Who Led the Way?

Whether Aquino and Ramos orchestrated their moves ahead of time or whether Ramos seized the initiative alone was unclear. Ramos was unavailable to reporters Sunday, and his aides were either busy in conferences or too tired to comment.

The latest statement attributed to Ramos late Sunday night was merely that “a plot to reconvene the defunct” assembly “had been aborted without any loss of life.”

“The Metro Manila situation is calm,” Ramos announced in a radio message to all commanders, “with President Aquino’s government in full control with the support of the New Armed Forces of the Philippines.”