Aquino, Rebels on Propaganda Campaign Trail

The government and the nation’s Communist leaders both took their cease-fire propaganda campaigns to the Philippines’ poor Thursday, as President Corazon Aquino entered a Communist-controlled Manila slum to pledge help and Communist peace negotiators entertained dozens of guerrillas and scores of journalists in the rural district where the Communist movement began 17 years ago.

More than 60 armed guerrillas greeted leftist leaders Saturnino Ocampo and his wife, Carolina Malay, as they led 85 reporters to the San Juan district of Samal, the town 72 miles west of Manila where the Communist Party, along with its military wing, the New People’s Army, was formed as a small, ragtag band in 1969.

The three-hour meeting with 1,000 townspeople and the elements of the New People’s Army took place less than 30 miles from the huge U.S. naval base at Subic Bay, and it was a clear violation of the cease-fire. The truce agreement bars rebels from carrying weapons into towns. But Ocampo and the other rebel leaders said that no one would mind because all but two of the 12 towns in the province are controlled by the Communists.

Welcomed in Base Area

“This is one occasion to show that the New People’s Army does not terrorize, but in fact is welcomed with cheers and open arms,” declared Ocampo, one of three rebel negotiators who helped draft the 60-day cease-fire that officially took effect on Wednesday.

“So the government and the armed forces cannot insist that the New People’s Army is not allowed here, because they are from here.”

Ocampo’s speech from a makeshift stage in the middle of one of the town’s main streets was met with wild cheers and applause. The Communists have an armed force estimated at 23,200 irregulars nationwide and a claimed mass base of 4 million civilian supporters.

But Aquino, too, was met with applause and cheers as she entered one of Asia’s worst slums Thursday afternoon for the first time since she became president last February.

A crowd of about 1,000 laborers, many wearing Aquino campaign T-shirts and shouting praise, applauded the president as she announced a moratorium on evictions and demolitions of squatters’ shanties, makeshift hovels that house more than 1.5 million landless peasants in the nation’s capital alone.

Aquino Blames Marcos

From her makeshift stage, Aquino blamed the squatters’ problems on deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who was driven into exile during February’s church-backed military coup. Before the inconclusive Feb. 7 presidential election, Marcos had promised ownership of the land to the squatters without any legal right to do so, Aquino explained.

“Only God knew who really owned that land,” Aquino said, adding that the squatters’ plight is the result of “the promise of a desperate politician who wanted to buy the votes of the poor.

“This is one of the problems left behind by the past administration. But I will not turn my back on it, because the lives and future of millions and millions of poor people are at stake here.”

Aquino, daughter of a wealthy and powerful family who is often accused of elitism by Communist leaders, also apologized to the crowd for not visiting their slum sooner.

“We cannot always talk with each other, because my problems are many and vast,” she said. “But it does not mean that you are out of my mind and out of my heart.”

She apologized for not being able to eradicate the poverty that has continued since the rebellion that Aquino says liberated her 54 million countrymen 10 months ago.

“The root of the crisis where these problems come from is deep,” she declared. “It cannot be solved by my administration in 10 months alone.”

Aquino appealed, however, for popular support in a slum district where people carried signs echoing the Communist theme, “Land, Jobs and Peace,” and posted banners proclaiming, “No to Demolition,” “No to Militarization,” and “No to Token Consultation.”

“I cannot face this problem alone,” she said. “I need your support. We have to be one.”