Aquino Challenged in Staged ‘War of Images’ : Foes Seek to Portray Regime as Unstable

Twenty-four hours into the siege by rebel soldiers at a key Manila television station Tuesday night, a longtime military observer in the Philippines surveyed the scene around the complex and shook his head.

The streets were filled with hundreds of reporters, photographers and foreign television crews--far more, it seemed, than the 200 heavily armed troops occupying the broadcast station and the hundreds more civilians loyal to Ferdinand E. Marcos who tried to form a human barricade around it.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, the observer said, “Never before have so many covered so few.”

It was a moment of levity in an evening of tear gas, street melees and heightened fears that the military under President Corazon Aquino may once again have to use force against her people.

But the comment highlighted what may be the most serious impact of the so-far-unsuccessful attempt by Aquino’s opponents within the Philippine armed forces to take over key military and media facilities here in the capital.

For Aquino, the most critical week of her young presidency has become more a war of images than a battle of bullets.

“What Mrs. Aquino must realize is that a government created by a media event can be destroyed by one,” said Sylvestre Afable, a key aide to ousted Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, referring to the now-legendary “people’s power” revolution that brought Aquino to power last Feb. 25.

Amid concerted efforts by the political left and right to destabilize Aquino’s government before next Monday’s crucial constitutional referendum, both sides have staged highly visual events almost daily. And the domestic and foreign media have recorded and transmitted each stark image.

The past week has added up to the most serious crisis to face Aquino since she took power. Tear-gassing, charges by riot troops, protesters burning tires and denouncing Aquino in the streets and the president’s own statement threatening to take a hard line against the rebel troops--all were relayed to a world and a nation that once viewed the 54-year-old former housewife as a woman of peace who rescued her nation from a brutal dictator.

What was worse, Tuesday’s attempt by troops loyal to Marcos to take over two key military bases in Manila and the Channel 7 television complex came just five days after a routine police action ended in a massacre. Aquino’s military opened fire Thursday on 10,000 leftist peasant demonstrators, killing 19 and wounding more than 100.

The images of those killings, which happened only after the peasant marchers deliberately provoked the military, also were broadcast in chilling detail worldwide.

Aquino’s advisers insist that the president is not concerned about image.

Teodoro Locsin Jr., special counsel to Aquino and one of her top personal aides, insisted that she has no fears that her nationally broadcast statement Tuesday afternoon vowing a military assault on the TV complex would shift her image radically to the right in the eyes of her people and the world.

‘She’s Tired of All This’

“She’s not worried,” Locsin said. “She just wants it done. I don’t think the president worries about her image or the image of her government. She’s just tired of all this.”

In interviews with more than a dozen Philippine and foreign military sources here, though, it is clear that the recent series of attacks on the Aquino government are part of a well-planned strategy targeted specifically at the president’s image--an effort, they said, to create at least the impression that her government is unstable, if not to actually destabilize it.

Even Aquino’s military commanders conceded that they had to prevail upon the president during Tuesday’s drama to conduct lengthy negotiations with the rebels Tuesday night rather than quickly ordering troops to storm the complex. Such restraint, the commanders said, was needed to protect the military’s image and keep the armed forces unified.

“We had a recent experience,” said Deputy Chief of Staff Eduardo Ermita, who led the negotiations from the government side, in a clear reference to last Thursday’s shootings. “And we were afraid that lives will be lost.”

Ramos Appeals for Unity

Aquino’s trusted military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, announced early today, “There is a bigger scenario than just these attempted takeovers.” And Ramos issued a televised appeal through the night for unity in the armed forces and for the support of the Filipino people.

“This is just a sideshow to the main event,” said one Western military analyst with ties to the intelligence community. “There will be more things that go bump in the night this week as we approach the (constitutional) plebiscite. And you can bet the TV cameras will be there.”

Asked whether Tuesday’s simultaneous attacks on the strategic installations in Manila were part of an attempted coup by the military, another Western military expert at the scene of the TV station siege said: “Absolutely not. What we’re seeing is just another staged event to make the government look unstable.

“The short-term goal is to force President Aquino to postpone the constitutional plebiscite. But I have no doubt that the long-term strategy of these people clearly is to bring down the government by destroying its veneer of control.”

Buffeted by Right, Left

Already, the government is beginning to concede that some damage has been done, and there have been many indications that the apparent instability here this week may well be deeper than two-dimensional television images.

During a breakfast forum Monday morning, Aquino’s executive secretary, Joker Arroyo, whose power and influence is so great that he has been nicknamed “The Little President,” said, “You see a situation where the government is buffeted from the left and the right, and the government has to survive.

“To say that we are in complete control is a very problematic matter.”

In particular, the military analysts said they were alarmed that Tuesday’s apparent military rebellion and the government’s response to it--all of it monitored through the day and night on television by soldiers and civilians alike--indicated that Aquino’s civilian government does not have as much control over the powerful 200,000-member military as it seemed to have.

Worse, they said, were indications that the military is also becoming increasingly divided from within, with divisions that now run deeper than ever in the 11 months since Aquino took power.

Rift in the Military

The leader of the 200 rebel soldiers who took over the television station, for example, had been considered by independent analysts to be a “professional and loyal” officer before he apparently moved against the government Tuesday.

“I was actually very, very surprised,” a senior Western diplomat said when asked whether Col. Oscar Canlas is the type of officer who would lead a rebellion. “I think what we’re seeing here is a deepening crack within the military. The only question is how wide that crack is.”

Gen. Ramos himself acknowledged the rift.

In what appeared to be a serious effort to keep his military from breaking apart, an obviously worried Ramos, who was trained in psychological warfare at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, turned to the powerful medium of television early this morning.

The general appeared on an all-night television station just after 1 a.m. today wearing a T-shirt that read “Unity,” and he appealed to “our brothers in the armed forces” to stay together.

Special Armbands Worn

Ramos said he was forced to order loyalist battalions to wear special armband insignia to distinguish them from rebel troops--an indication that he feared that the rebels may grow in number today. And he conceded to reporters that there were still renegade military units moving around Manila and the island of Luzon who could pose a threat to the government.

Uncharacteristically, Ramos hardly smiled during the televised press conference. He held his ever-present cigar casually in his left hand, but his tone was deeply troubled. He noted that the estimated 500 troops who rebelled Tuesday represented “just three-tenths of one percent of the armed forces,” but he added gravely, “If any portion of the armed forces, no matter how small, is separated . . . that would be a significant reduction of our operational effectiveness.”

And the 59-year-old general added an almost desperate plea.

“Please bear with us,” he told the nation. “This is your armed forces, and you can depend on us. . . . Your armed forces has remained faithful to you and to the stability of this government.”

Finally, Ramos converted the press conference into a televised call-in show to answer the concerns of citizens from throughout metropolitan Manila.

Hostages as Insurance

“What we want to do is to preserve all of the good will that now exists between the armed forces and the people,” Ramos told one caller. “That is why we were so concerned about the civilian hostages.”

Until most of the hostages were released early this morning, the rebels were holding more than 40 employees of the station, apparently as insurance against a military strike.

At the height of the drama at the commandeered television station Tuesday night, it appeared that Ramos’ strategy had met stiff opposition from several powerful members of Aquino’s civilian Cabinet, who were privately telling reporters that they and the president wanted to deploy tanks and take aggressive action to retake the Channel 7 complex. Such a move, they said, would show the president to be decisive and help answer critics who were charging that if Aquino had punished the same rebel troops after they took over the Manila Hotel in a similar action last July, Tuesday’s crisis never would have happened.

“I want tanks,” said one Cabinet minister who asked not to be named. “Just shell the place. We’re sick of this.”

One military commander on the scene confirmed that the presidential palace was urging such decisive action but added that Ramos was delaying it, “because he wants to negotiate. He’s concerned about the civilian hostages inside.” It was for that reason, the commander said, that the siege dragged on into today.

And as the confrontation at the station continued throughout the night and into the early morning, so did the war of images.

When Ramos had finished his televised press-conference-turned-talk-show on government TV just before 2 a.m., the station aired a marathon debate on the proposed constitution, in which Aquino’s Cabinet aides and supporters delivered pitches for a “yes” vote that Aquino has said is the most crucial step in stabilizing her government.