Ramos Orders Four Military Plotters Jailed

Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, the Philippine military chief of staff, on Friday risked causing deeper divisions in the armed forces by ordering the arrest of four renegade officers who he said masterminded this week’s uprising against the government of President Corazon Aquino.

Meanwhile, senior military commanders confirmed that at least 100 rebel soldiers were unaccounted for somewhere in metropolitan Manila. One officer, referring to the rebels as a “lost command,” said the city will remain under red alert until they are found.

The missing troops were part of a rebel force of more than 500 men who attacked military bases and broadcast facilities last Tuesday in an apparent effort to destabilize the Aquino government and possibly pave the way for the return of deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Critical Week

Lt. Col. Reynaldo Cabauatan, leader of the so-called lost command, was one of the four officers Ramos ordered arrested--all of them still at large Friday night. The order was contained in a five-page statement that military analysts described as a thinly veiled acknowledgement of deep rifts in the armed forces after a week that ranked among the most critical in the history of the Philippine military.

“The events of the last few days once more underline the need for unity of the new Armed Forces of the Philippines,” Ramos said, adding that only “a minuscule minority” of the military were involved in the rebellion.

Ramos denied that the military “has become a force for political leverage in our country,” but most of the senior commanders interviewed since the mutiny--on condition that they not be named--said that Ramos’ image within the military has been severely damaged.

Considered Options

Ramos conceded in his statement Friday that forcible retaking of the broadcast station seized by the rebel troops was among the options he had considered. Such an attack would have forced soldiers to open fire on soldiers for the second time this week. A rebel soldier was killed and 16 others were wounded by troops loyal to Ramos when they tried to take over Villamor Air Base in Manila on Tuesday. Moreover, many of the members of the assault force drawn up outside the station said they were friends and classmates of the men inside.

In considering an assault, Ramos was responding to a direct order from President Aquino, who reiterated her hard-line policy against the rebellious troops in a speech Friday.

“I gave them a chance with the Manila Hotel,” she said, referring to the armed takeover of the hotel last July by many of the same soldiers who also took part in Tuesday’s incident. (Ramos punished those who staged the earlier rebellion by ordering them to do 30 push-ups.) “But now it is necessary that everybody should be prosecuted.”

Detentions Reported

Several hours after Aquino’s speech, delivered on the southern island of Mindanao, Ramos announced that 13 officers and 359 enlisted men, as well as 137 civilians, have been detained as a result of Tuesday’s mutiny. He said they will be given “fair and honorable treatment” but that the possible charges against them include treason, which is punishable by death.

“To us now, there is little difference between Gen. Ramos and the civilian government of Mrs. Aquino,” said one of the 100 officers who met with Ramos at the height of the crisis to persuade him to call off the military attack on the broadcast station. “He will have to prove that he is not a political general.”

Amando Doronila, a prominent political analyst, said in a column published Friday that Ramos had been under intense pressure from Aquino and her civilian advisers to storm the station because they “could not afford a prolonged stalemate” in the week before Monday’s referendum on a proposed new constitution that Aquino believes will stabilize her rule.

‘Victim of Tension’

“Ramos was walking on a tightrope,” Doronila said. “Ramos came out of the crisis with diminished prestige in the officer corps. Ramos fell victim to the tension arising . . . from the iron rule in the military that its members should not shoot one another.”

Further complicating the chief of staff’s dilemma was the fact that the leader of the rebel troops at the broadcast station, Col. Oscar Canlas, cleverly transformed the takeover from a Marcos-loyalist move against Aquino into a rallying point for anti-communism, a sentiment that prevails throughout the armed forces.

Despite mounting evidence that the rebel troops were part of what Ramos called “a bigger scenario” by dissident troops to bring Marcos back--several rebels reportedly confessed that they had been paid as much as $500 to take part in the uprising--military sources said that Canlas’ action had radicalized rightists in the officer corps.

Spreading Rumors

Tension within the military was so high Friday night that rumors were spreading of a military plot to assassinate moderate generals over the weekend. Fueling the rumor was Ramos’ order to arrest Col. Rolando Abadilla, the former bodyguard of Marcos’ son, Ferdinand Jr., and one of the leaders of the Manila Hotel takeover last year.

Abadilla is notorious with the political left as head of the Military Intelligence Security Group under Marcos. In several lawsuits filed against Marcos in Hawaii last year, Abadilla’s unit is alleged to have tortured political dissidents, some of whom disappeared after they were arrested.

All four of the officers ordered detained by Ramos on Friday were involved in the Manila Hotel incident but were returned to active duty after they agreed to surrender.

“To many of us, what all this means is that the Armed Forces of the Philippines has no commander in chief,” said another of the officers who helped persuade Ramos to call off a military assault on the broadcast station. “If we had a strong president and a viable civilian government, the military would never have to play politics.”