Aquino Vows Defeat of Foes on Left, Right : Her Aides See Mutiny Swelling the Yes Vote for New Constitution

Bolstered by renewed backing from more than 200,000 cheering supporters, President Corazon Aquino declared Saturday that she and the Filipino people will overcome the Communist and military threats imperiling her government as it prepares for Monday’s constitutional referendum.

As government troops hunted renegade soldiers who fled to the mountains north of Manila after last week’s mutiny of some elements in the armed forces, Aquino justified using force against her enemies “who only want to sow disorder among us.”

“You all know that I do not want to kill,” said Aquino, who had pledged to follow a policy of reconciliation when she took power from deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos last February. “But I also do not want them to kill us.”

‘Clean the Armed Forces’

Speaking extemporaneously, Aquino told a rally of middle- and working-class supporters gathered in a bay-front park that her military leaders have promised to “try their best to clean the armed forces” of “undesirables and misguided elements.”

Recently, Aquino’s embattled administration has been buffeted by a series of crises: At least 500 soldiers, apparently still loyal to Marcos, attacked military bases and occupied a private broadcast station in Manila for three days; Communist rebels announced Friday they were breaking off peace talks with the government because riot-control troops killed 19 peasant marchers near the presidential palace 10 days ago; and some of the mutinous soldiers continued to elude military patrols Saturday, fueling rumors that another armed attack on the government could begin any time.

Darkest Week of Presidency

At Saturday’s enthusiastic rally, however, top Aquino aides and Cabinet ministers said the darkest week of Aquino’s presidency can have positive consequences.

They conceded that the mutiny was evidence of Aquino’s shaky support within the strong, right-wing military establishment, but they said the threats to Aquino will probably cause millions of undecided citizens to vote Monday in favor of a new constitution that Aquino believes will stabilize her rule.

“They (the mutineers) put a face on the ‘no’ campaign this week, an ugly face,” said Teodoro Locsin Jr., special counsel to the president and one of her closest advisers.

“They put on the face of Canlas and his hoodlums; the face of Marcos and the coup plotters,” Locsin said, referring to the troops under renegade Col. Oscar Canlas, who seized the broadcasting station.

“The reaction among the people was one of revulsion,” he added.

Billy Esposo, chairman of the Coalition for the Constitution’s Approval, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Aquino’s nationwide ratification campaign, said the political dynamic is now no different from Aquino’s presidential campaign against Marcos a year ago.

“Marcos is still our best campaign manager,” said Esposo, who also was a key adviser in Aquino’s presidential bid. “The hate-Marcos fever is there again.”

The president herself told Saturday’s cheering crowd: “In the past months, a lot of people wanted to destroy me. Some say I side too much with the left; others said I was siding with the right. But I am only siding with you, my beloved countrymen.

“The ones from the left and the right are very few. We could easily overcome them.”

Aquino inspired frequent wild applause, laughter and wild cheers, and her supporters on stage beamed and said Aquino had finally begun to recapture the populist support that brought her to power last year.

Old Fervor Revived

“We relaxed a bit some time ago,” she told the crowd. “But in the past week, I found out that I should once again talk with you, to call and remind you that we are the hope of the Filipino people; you, all of us here, we are the hope.”

In the crowd, made up largely of government employees, businessmen and blue-collar workers, the mood approached the fervor of Aquino’s presidential campaign last year, which many Filipinos believe led to a political miracle that ousted Marcos.

Salvador Almine, 36, a packer at a textile company, called approval of the new constitution “especially important to us workers in the factory. It can bring stability and maybe help the economy.” Almine earns 60 pesos ($3) a day.

The rally’s mood was festive, and Aquino’s political aides concluded that it sent an important signal to the armed forces and the Communists that Aquino still has the support of a majority of the country’s 54 million people.

To stir interest in the constitutional referendum, Aquino, her family and her supporters have spent weeks barnstorming the nation, singing songs written for the president, parading her portrait through provincial roads and telling voters that Aquino is the only real issue and that without her, the nation will collapse into fascist or Ccommunist rule.

‘Freedom Constitution’

If the constitution passes, they said, it will be a crucial step in stabilizing Aquino’s increasingly shaky 11-month-old government, which has ruled under a provisional “freedom constitution” that Aquino’s advisers crafted after she threw out the charter that Marcos had written in 1973 to perpetuate his rule.

If the 109-page document, which 48 men and women chosen by Aquino drew up last year, is rejected, or if it fails to win at least 60% of the vote, Aquino and her aides concede that it will prove she is not as popular as she contends. In that case, they have hinted that Aquino may step down and call for new presidential elections.

Aquino’s opponents and critics have seized upon the referendum to try to topple her.

The recent street violence, the military rebellion and a series of protest marches are part of well-planned strategies by both left and right to show that Aquino is such a weak leader and her government is so unstable that voters should say no on Monday.

Aquino and Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, her military chief of staff, have both said they expected more attempts to destabilize the government this weekend in a last-ditch effort to try to force postponement of the referendum. And on election day, military intelligence reports warn, even more violence may be aimed at tainting the results.

“The events of the past week prove two things: The enemies of democracy agree with the friends of democracy that the ratification of the proposed constitution is essential to the preservation of democracy in the Philippines,” Aquino said Thursday in a statement on government television.

Appeal to Allies

She appealed to her old allies in the church and the middle and working classes to “guard the ballot boxes again with our lives” during Monday’s voting because “enemies of democracy can still corrupt the electoral process.”

That was a reference to the way her supporters and citizens tried to prevent voting fraud and theft of ballots by Marcos forces in last February’s presidential election.

Refusing to acknowledge that Aquino’s handling of the crises of the last 10 days have weakened her image as a leader and alienated her from the left and from the military establishment, key tacticians of the constitutional campaign have tried to cast the crises as victories that will help at the polls.

“While it’s not exactly to our liking that people are dying,” said Esposo, head of the Coalition for the Constitution’s Approval, “I think it is creating the excitement that is key to getting the charter passed.

“It focuses the national attention on what the government and the president have been saying, that the charter is the key to stability.”

Esposo also sought to justify his campaign strategy of making a popularity contest out of a referendum on the nation’s basic law.

“Unless personalities are involved, people are not really interested in that document,” he said.

Critics such as ousted Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, however, hope that the referendum will deliver the knockout blow to a government whose indecisiveness, as they see it, has allowed both the Communist rebels and hard-line anti-Communists in the military to impose policy through implicit threats of force.

In Monday’s vote, Enrile said in an interview during his own nationwide “no” campaign against the measure last week: “We come to the ultimate question: Who is in charge? Who is really running this government?”

Led Anti-Marcos Rebellion

Enrile, who initiated the rebellion against Marcos last February that ultimately brought Aquino to office, was fired by the president in November. Her advisers, many of whom had been jailed by Enrile when he was Marcos’ minister of defense, managed to convince the president that Enrile, who still enjoys significant support within the military, was plotting a coup against her.

Since his ouster, Enrile, at 62 still a dynamic and shrewd politician, has become the standard bearer of the right-wing opposition. He is using campaigns such as the anti-constitution drive to create a reservoir of young, ambitious politicians and make the opposition far stronger than it was during Marcos’ 20-year dictatorship.

He is also using the campaign to try to overthrow Aquino, the president’s aides say. His attacks on Aquino have often been intensely personal.

In the town square of Baliwag, one of dozens of small towns where he has staged whistle-stop rallies, a relaxed Enrile shouted to a small crowd a week ago that Aquino is, in effect, a fraud.

“President Aquino says her leadership is based on sincerity and humanity,” he declared. “But what is the truth? Farmers from all over the country went to see the president for five minutes. But what happened? She met the people with bullets and M-16s. Is that a humane government?”

Enrile reminded the crowd of a tape released by opposition leaders of a wiretapped conversation in which Aquino and two aides discussed influencing the drafting of the constitution to favor retention of America’s two large military bases here.

“The government says they are pro-people, but in truth they are pro-foreigners,” he declared. “They are agents of the foreigners, fighting for the foreigner as against Filipino interests. How can we trust this government when they say, ‘Vote yes’ ?”

Enrile also challenges provisions in the proposed constitution that he told the crowd will allow the president to dismiss career civil service workers, permit the government to confiscate private property and permit Aquino to stay in power until June, 1992.

‘Farcical Show’

He criticized Aquino’s campaign as one that ignores the basic issue, a “farcical stage show” in which her 15-year-old daughter, Kris, sings off-key and her son, Benigno Aquino III, tells jokes, and said Aquino fails to discuss details of the constitution, beyond touting provisions that guarantee free education and similar government giveaways.

Enrile challenges Aquino’s fundamental claim for the constitutional referendum.

“Stability cannot be restored through a ratified constitution,” he said. “The problem goes far beyond a piece of paper. Stability can only be restored through effective leadership.”

Enrile’s campaign has failed to generate consistently large crowds or support, and Aquino has largely ignored him. But critics in the mainstream media have been far harder to ignore.

Harsh Judgments

Many Manila columnists and commentators have been harsh in judging the president’s handling of the recent crises, their criticisms focusing on what Aquino’s aides concede is her greatest weakness, indecisiveness.

While the military was gunning down the peasants just a few hundred yards from the presidential palace Jan. 22, palace sources said Aquino went to a convent to pray, as she has done several times during past crises.

“If she leaves the palace when Manila is burning, then how can you be sure there is going to be stability in the land after the referendum?” Enrile asked.

During last week’s three-day siege at the broadcast station, Aquino was seen by the public only once, on the first day of the crisis. Although she tried then to sound decisive in calling for the “full force of the law” to be used against the mutinous soldiers, her hard-line statement served only to tie the hands of government negotiators who were on the verge of persuading the soldiers to leave the building. The siege continued for two more days.

Criticism From Left

A sign at one recent leftist rally in Manila showed that the left also believes that Aquino is seriously lacking in decision-making ability. “Down With Indecisiveness,” it proclaimed. “Vote No on Feb. 2.”

Leftist leaders have said the Jan. 22 shooting episode is proof that the president, although a gentle and humane person, does not have enough control over her military to protect the Filipino people. And the killings, they said, pushed hundreds of thousands of moderate-left voters away from Aquino.

“I expect that a number of organizations will now swing toward a principled ‘no’ rather than a critical ‘yes,’ ” Joe Castro, vice president of the leftist People’s Party, said. After the killings, the party submitted a proposal to the president, asking her either to remove provisions from the constitution that the party believes favor the rich over the poor, or to postpone the referendum.

Leaders of the Communist New People’s Army were so outraged by the killings that they pulled the group’s representatives out of peace talks with the government and vowed to return to armed struggle against the government, an insurgency that has already claimed more than 2,000 lives since Aquino took power.

Expiration of Truce

A 60-day cease-fire that won Aquino worldwide praise as a woman of peace when it went into effect Dec. 10 is due to expire Feb. 8, and the military and the Communist rebels are preparing to return to guerrilla warfare.

“Now you tell me, just where is the stability in war?” asked one senior military commander opposed to the constitution.

Aquino has nonetheless continued her emotional campaign for the constitution with unwavering resolve. She has appeared on television dozens of times a day, sitting stiffly at her desk and telling the nation’s peasants that “this government of which I am president cares for you.” She has made other commercials, tailor-made to appeal to the nation’s schoolteachers, fishermen and blue-collar workers, telling all of them to vote for the constitution.

“Without it,” she has warned, “our fledgling democracy will crumble.”

She acknowledges the nation’s continuing economic crisis and even her own instability as a national leader, but she says only the constitution, and the parliamentary elections that would follow in May, will make it possible for her to create more jobs and consolidate her rule.

‘Please be Patient’

“Please be patient,” she appeals.

Campaign chairman Esposo believes that the Filipino people are willing to wait--and to give Aquino a chance to prove herself after getting another popular mandate.

“You are talking about a people who took 20 years to do something about a dictator who fell into the category of an Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin,” Esposo said, adding that he expects the constitution to pass by a 65%-35% margin.

Independent political experts and newspaper straw polls indicate a slightly smaller margin of victory, but few, if any, political observers believe that the draft constitution will be voted down.

The nation has never voted “no” in any referendum, according to a recent University of the Philippines study. Political science Prof. Doy Romero said that for Aquino the key will be the margin of victory.

With a “yes” vote of 60% or less, he and other analysts say, it will be difficult for Aquino to claim the enormous popular support that she constantly says she enjoys, and it will be equally difficult for her government to implement policy.

When Aquino’s constitutional commission scheduled the referendum for Feb. 2 last October, after three months of agonizing and debate in public hearings, the president’s Cabinet ministers predicted that it would pass with 90% of the vote.

Now, even Aquino’s closest friends and supporters are saying that the president will be happy with just 65%.