Aquino Hits Communists and Creditors : Philippine President Gives Angry Speech to New Congress

Philippine President Corazon Aquino surrendered her power to rule by decree to a new Congress on Monday and in a tough, nationalistic address, condemned communism as “totalitarian slavery,” called for a bigger military commitment against Communist rebels and accused the country’s international creditors of helping to keep the nation poor.

It was the longest and angriest speech that Aquino has given since she succeeded Ferdinand E. Marcos 17 months ago. It was loudly applauded by her political supporters and opponents alike during an historic joint session of the new Philippine legislature, which analysts say marks the beginning of a new era of democracy in a nation torn by dictatorship and internal division for decades.

Soldiers, Police Deployed

More than 3,000 soldiers and riot police were deployed in and around the modern congressional building to stop thousands of leftist and rightist demonstrators more than two miles away as a “security measure.” Manila’s military commander, Gen. Alexander Aguirre, said the building had been swept several times with electronic bomb detectors and sniffer dogs before Aquino arrived, to guard against assassination attempts.

The public also was barred from attending the ceremonies, which included Aquino’s entire Cabinet and the Supreme Court. Aquino’s address, however, was televised nationwide.

The congressional building, once home to a pro-Marcos, rubber-stamp National Assembly that declared Aquino the loser to Marcos in a fraudulent presidential election in February, 1986, was an appropriate setting for the death of dictatorship, Aquino said in her half-hour speech.

‘Mockery of Democracy’

“The dictatorship’s last mockery of democracy was committed in this hall, where the loser was proclaimed winner,” Aquino said. “I join you today in rededicating this hall to true democracy.”

But Aquino, standing beneath a 50-foot Philippine flag, warned that the nation remains in crisis.

“Our country is threatened by totalitarian slavery on the left and reversion to fascist terror and corruption on the right,” she said. The president was referring to the 18-year Communist insurgency that has left 1,800 soldiers, civilians and rebels dead so far this year and to far-rightist military renegades who have vowed to purge alleged leftists from Aquino’s Cabinet.

Aquino said the nation’s 155,000-member military will now fight the rebels “with as much passion as self-preservation can muster.”

Yet she conceded that the military is “in dire need’ of improving its intelligence, logistics and communications capabilities, and she made a thinly veiled appeal to the Congress to grant the military’s request for huge budget increases this year.

“Our defense expenditures are the lowest in (Southeast Asia),” she said, “and yet no country’s security is so seriously threatened as ours.”

Aquino reserved her harshest words, though, for the refusal earlier this month of the Philippines’ creditor banks to grant more generous terms of repayment of the country’s $28 billion in foreign debt, most of it borrowed and spent during Marcos’ 20 years of authoritarian rule.

The civilian-backed military revolt that overthrew Marcos and returned democracy to the country after the 1986 election “gained us applause but no substantial accommodation from our foreign creditors,” Aquino said. “The saga of democracy had made great television but no appreciable change in their business priorities.”

A debt-rescheduling agreement signed in New York last week by 300 creditor banks and Philippine Finance Secretary Jaime Ongpin still requires the nation to repay $20 billion in the next six years, an amount that will equal more than a fourth of the country’s total export earnings.

In a declaration that several economically radical new legislators interpreted as opening the door to a possible repudiation of some of that debt, Aquino added: “We vow never again to let the patrimony of this nation lie at the feet of these ‘noble houses’ that have finally shown the true face of foreign finance.”

Many of the new congressmen and senators applauded Aquino’s new nationalistic tone. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, a close confidante of Aquino’s who has been branded as a Communist by ultra-rightists, said he will introduce legislation in Congress seeking to repudiate all debts that are unjust to the Philippines.

The president’s brother-in-law, Sen. Agapito Aquino, however, said the president is not seeking repudiation but rather “prioritization.”

“The questionable debts will be paid last,” Sen. Aquino said after the speech. In particular, the senator cited more than $2 billion that the Philippines owes for a Westinghouse-built nuclear power plant that has never been used.

Even Aquino’s foes in Congress applauded her speech.

Congressman Jose Rono, who was Marcos’ Cabinet minister for local governments and was elected in last May’s legislative elections as an independent, said he would not support repudiation of debt but that Aquino “won my heart” with her hard line on law and order and anti-communism.

‘Eloquent Message’

“It was a very eloquent message to Congress to take a look in appropriations on doing more for defense, and I will take a strong hint from that speech,” Rono said.

For most of the membership, though, the day was one to celebrate what most said they hoped would be a new era of democracy. Yet, the mood was visibly tempered by the gravity of the crises still facing the nation.

“This is our one big chance,” said Jose Cojuangco, the president’s younger brother and one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes powers in the House of Representatives, in an interview after the president’s speech. “If we fail here, everything we gained in the past--all that democracy bit--is out the window.”

That same tone was sounded in the Senate, which convened in a morning session. There, Senate President Jovito Salonga told his 22 colleagues that the new body must be “more than a sanctuary of freedom,” adding that it owes a debt to the 57 million Filipino people.

“We have seen them in the last campaign,” Salonga said. “Their faces tell us in mute pleas that haunt us wherever we go that poverty and afflictions are not sufferings to be endured any longer, but injustices to be remedied and wrongs to be righted.”

As in the afternoon joint session, though, the public was barred from the inaugural ceremonies, and demonstrators carrying signs that read “Increase Health Budget,” “Filipinos Are Dying” and “Protect Human Rights,” were kept well away from the Senate building.

Salonga nonetheless declared that Monday’s session was “the dawn of freedom” for the troubled nation.

He appealed to his fellow members to fight against the age-old temptation of corruption, a plea mentioned in four separate prayers read by priests at the opening session.

And he urged them to remain independent from Aquino’s executive branch. All but two of the 24 Senate seats were won in last May’s legislative elections by candidates who had been hand-picked by Aquino’s political machine; one seat is still being contested.

In a separate morning session at the congressional building nearly 20 miles away, House Speaker Ramon Mitra, a former dissident maimed in a 1971 political bombing that was widely blamed on Marcos, was making a similar pledge of independence.

“Our experience with strongman rule teaches us there can be no substitute for checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches,” Mitra declared.

Already, though, many members were voicing strong criticism of the president and her aides for a blizzard of legislation she signed into law during the final 24 hours of her unchecked law-making power. She took on the power for 17 months after becoming president and dissolving the nation’s constitution and pro-Marcos legislature.

‘Racing Against Congress’

“I find that a little awkward for Malacanang (presidential palace) to be racing against the Congress,” said Pimentel, Aquino’s former local governments minister. “. . . I have my very strong reservations against all of this legislation.”

Pimentel added that the Senate will try to undo many of the laws Aquino passed unilaterally--among them a ban on the Communist Party, the creation of a citizens’ vigilante army and an increase in the punishment for crimes of rebellion from six years to life in prison.

President Aquino noted that most of 75 unilateral decrees were written to take effect in one to two months because she understands that “Congress may want a second look.”

In appealing for Congress to implement true land reform and the regional autonomy being demanded by Muslims in the south and by ancient tribes in the northern mountains of Luzon Island, Aquino said she is glad to be losing her dictatorial powers, which she had wielded rarely before last week.

“When this session opened,” she said Monday afternoon, “the great powers of the state that were united in my person divided, and a portion has flowed to you. I have felt no loss but rather a great sense of achievement.”

There were signs during the Senate session, however, that internal political problems left over from Aquino’s unilateral acts as president may continue to haunt the new Congress--in particular the removal from the government last November of former Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, who initiated the military coup that brought Aquino to power.

Controversy continued Monday over the 24th Senate seat, which Aquino’s appointed elections commission has refused to concede to Enrile.

The commission on Friday ordered a recount of votes from 6,000 precincts to determine whether the seat belongs to Enrile, a political conservative and now an outspoken Aquino foe, or to Augusto Sanchez, a strong Aquino supporter but bitter Enrile enemy who was forced to resign as labor minister because of his left-leaning views.

Potential Backlash

Several senators said they hope Enrile wins the seat to avoid a potentially violent backlash from his supporters within the military. If Enrile is declared the loser, said Sen. Heherson Alvarez, “on the short-term basis, it’s going to be a problem, but I think the institutions will hold.

“I hope he (Enrile) wins. It would be a more exciting place for me and my colleagues to have a warrior like him in here.”

Political analysts added that it would also be dangerous to leave so large an opposition faction unrepresented in the Senate.

“I’m prepared to see Mr. Enrile in the Senate so that we can keep an eye on him,” said the presidential brother-in-law, Sen. Aquino, who was the second-highest vote recipient in the May 11 election. “It’s much better than if we cannot see what he is up to.”

Joseph Estrada, a popular movie actor who was the only opposition member among the 23 senators on the floor Monday, insisted that Enrile won and that the government is trying to cheat him out of a victory. Estrada vowed to initiate impeachment proceedings against election commission members if Enrile is not given the seat.

For most of the senators interviewed after Monday’s session, though, the nation’s rampant and worsening poverty is the most crucial issue facing the new legislature--that and the future of America’s two sprawling military bases in the Philippines.

Sen. Aquino, a former street activist who campaigned for years for the removal of the American bases, said Monday that the Senate, which will have to approve a new treaty before 1991 if the bases are to remain, is deeply split on the issue.

“It’s simply a matter of negotiating a mutually acceptable system of dismantling the bases,” he said. “. . . You can be nationalistic and still have the bases, provided the bases are contributing to solving our problems. Right now, our biggest problem is economic, so if the U.S. helps us solve that problem, well then, OK.

“I guess I’ve become a pragmatic politician; most of us have.”