Enrile’s Anger Clouds Aquino Vote Triumph : Ex-Defense Chief Trails in Unofficial Count for Senate, Plans Protests That Could Spark Clashes

By the time he grabbed the microphone on top of a battered Jeep one night late last week, Juan Ponce Enrile’s eyes had glazed over. His shirt was wet with the sweat of his anger and the heat of the afternoon. His voice trembled with the passion of a revolutionary.

Shouting outside the same Manila military camp where he staged his successful coup against former President Ferdinand E. Marcos 15 months ago, Enrile lashed out at President Corazon Aquino, who he now feels betrayed him by cheating him out of a Senate seat in last week’s congressional election.

“This is the people power that put her in power,” Enrile proclaimed to more than 25,000 supporters filling the same thoroughfare where he had helped lead Filipinos in their “people power” revolt against Marcos in February, 1986. “And this is the people power that can remove her.”

Calmer heads viewed it differently. The next day, as street cleaners dragged away lampposts that Enrile’s supporters had torn out of the ground and buses they had turned into barricades, the prestigious Manila Chronicle, headlined a front-page story, “Enrile’s Trip to Fantasyland.”

Cheaters and Victims

“There is little doubt that the general mass of Filipinos is not with them,” political satirist Luis Beltran said of Enrile and his followers in the right-wing opposition.

“The reason for this is obvious: Too many of those protesting cheating now were themselves the cheaters during the Marcos regime, when their victims--unlike themselves--were not even allowed to demonstrate.”

But Beltran conceded that “in this country, dreams, like political defeats, have a hard time dying.” And in the aftermath of Enrile’s well-attended protest rally, senior military intelligence officers are beginning to worry that, even if Enrile’s protests are merely the maneuverings of a potential election loser, many Filipinos could be killed before Enrile’s dreams die.

Enrile’s campaign of protest already has triggered a backlash. A moderate-leftist alliance of student groups said it will stage an anti-Enrile People Power protest outside the offices of the Election Commission that is still tabulating the election’s votes.

Rally organizer Carlo Ocampo, chairman of the University of the Philippines student council, called Enrile’s group “the warriors of Marcos who took our freedoms away.”

Enrile Trails in Count

As of Saturday, Enrile narrowly trailed the 24 front-running candidates in the race for 24 Senate seats elected from the nation at large. He could still emerge a winner in official tabulations, which have barely begun. Some analysts believe that Enrile may have launched a protest campaign as a device to try to keep his enemies in the presidential palace from cheating him of victory and that the protests will end if he wins in the final tally.

So far, Aquino and her advisers have shown no serious concern about Enrile’s protests. They have reacted instead with satisfaction and confidence in the president’s overwhelming personal popularity, which apparently propelled into office at least 20 of her senatorial candidates and a majority of her candidates for the House of Representatives.

The president herself said during a ceremony in which she received the 25-millionth copy of the Good News Bible, “We have to accept the reality that not everybody can win.”

The armed forces nevertheless remained on red alert this weekend. Manila’s five key military bases were closed to all unofficial visitors, and Chief of Staff Fidel V. Ramos warned soldiers not to consider attending Enrile’s rallies, another one of which is scheduled for today in Cebu City.

Soldiers Voted for Enrile

Members of the armed forces voted overwhelmingly for Enrile in the election. He is deeply admired and respected by many strategically placed junior officers.

But Gen. Ramos, who joined Enrile in the rebellion against Marcos last year, noted that things are different now.

“First, different personalities are involved,” he said at a news conference. “The issues are different. The background, the environment, are different, and the participation of the armed forces is different at this time.”

The core of Enrile’s protest is an as yet undocumented allegation that the Aquino administration cheated to give the president’s slate a landslide victory.

At a press conference, half a dozen congressional losers from Tarlac, Aquino’s home province, asserted that her brother, the uncle of her late husband and her brother’s right-hand man all cheated in the election for the three seats there.

Enrile supporters had invited the press to listen to allegations that henchmen of the president’s relatives killed opposition campaign workers and doctored ballot returns to come out ahead, but they offered no proof.

Nor has there been evidence of large-scale cheating on the national level.

Al Graham, a Canadian Parliament member who headed an international observer team, told Aquino that the difference between this year’s election and that run by Marcos in February, 1986, was “like night and day. . . .”

Although foreign journalists noted isolated cases of vote-buying and intimidation on election day, no government-sponsored conspiracy to fix the outcome nationwide was detected, and the minor cheating observed was done by nearly every party in the contest.

Lacking hard evidence, Enrile has supported his charges of cheating by citing “statistical improbabilities”--his conviction that he could not possibly have lost to such unknown personalities as Saturnina Rasul, Mamintal Tamano and Victor Ziga.

Before the election, Aquino’s campaign aides predicted that Enrile would easily be elected, basing their opinions on pre-election surveys that showed him to have the highest name-recognition of anyone in the nation, aside from Aquino. Moreover, Enrile is reported to have spent more than $2 million of his own money on a slick, Madison Avenue-style campaign that included the fanciest bumper stickers and other campaign trappings ever used in a Philippine election.

In assessing Enrile’s possible loss--on Saturday he was running 26th for the 24-seat Senate in an unofficial count with 60% of the precincts reporting, and 19th in the official tally--Paul Aquino, the president’s brother-in-law and campaign director, said that the vast majority of citizens simply cast straight ruling-party ballots, sweeping the unknowns in with the knowns. The final official results will not be known for many more days.

Whether or not Enrile’s allegations of fraud have any real foundation, sources close to him have said that Enrile and his fellow rightist opposition leaders plan a prolonged protest campaign against the Aquino government. And, with millions of Filipinos having cast ballots for Enrile, there were growing signs that such a movement might turn violent.

More important, according to military sources, it could further split the already divided 200,000-member armed forces.

Even if Enrile ultimately emerges with a seat in the Senate, he has already indicated that he will not sit. Aides said that for Enrile, the protest has become a matter of principle, pride and anger accumulated during nearly a year of squabbling with Aquino’s supporters in the Cabinet.

Enrile is still angry with Aquino over the way she fired him as defense minister last November after her aides charged that he and his military backers were plotting a coup.

At the time she fired Enrile, Aquino also promised to dismiss several other Cabinet ministers who Enrile and most of the military believed were leftists, Communists or corrupt.

Many Soldiers Fearful

Eventually, those ministers were replaced or shuffled within the Cabinet, but three of them are now among the winners on Aquino’s Senate slate. With such left-leaning politicians as former Cabinet members Augusto Sanchez and Aquilino Pimentel in the Senate and Enrile apparently out, many military officers say they fear their interests will not be represented in the new Congress.

“There will definitely be some support for Enrile within the military, but we’re hoping there’s still enough professionalism there to resist the temptation to join him,” one senior officer said.

Meantime, the officer said, the armed forces high command is worried about how soldiers will respond if Enrile’s protests turn violent.

“Can you just imagine,” asked a navy officer who asked for anonymity, “what would happen if riot troops are asked to move against Enrile, a man they supported in huge numbers at the polls?”

And, given the mood of vindictiveness and anger at Thursday’s rally, the military sources said, there is every likelihood that future protests will turn ugly.