Aquino Outlines Harsh New Security Measures

President Corazon Aquino, voicing strong support for her government’s embattled armed forces and police, announced sweeping new law-and-order measures Sunday, aimed at arresting the nation’s escalating wave of violence.

Taking a tough, pro-military stance before several thousand policemen and soldiers at a military anniversary ceremony, Aquino said she has approved harsher search-and-seizure regulations, a greater number of military checkpoints nationwide and a crackdown on illegal importation of firearms.

Aquino said the new measures were provoked by the still-unsolved Aug. 2 ambush slaying of a member of her Cabinet, Local Governments Secretary Jaime Ferrer.

Still No Leads

Ferrer, 70, was a close friend of the president and the first Cabinet-rank official ever assassinated in the Philippines. Despite a wide manhunt for the four killers, who investigators privately suspect were members of an urban guerrilla hit squad of the Communist New People’s Army, police still have no concrete leads in the case.

But Aquino defended the inability of police and armed forces investigators to solve that and other important recent killings, which have provoked criticism of Aquino and her ability to rule this troubled nation.

“We are blamed for every murder that happens. . . ,” Aquino said angrily, “but you and I know that nothing can stop an assassin’s bullet.”

Referring to her critics, even within her own party, who have charged that Aquino is too weak to run efficient security services, the president said, “You would think from their griping that my only duty as president is to ride shotgun for my Cabinet secretaries and that our soldiers and police all but exhaust their usefulness when a brutal crime happens. And then they (the police) are useful only as the butt of insults.”

But Aquino also said she has learned in the 18 months since she took power that insults are part of the job.

“Let us not complain at the treatment we have received,” Aquino told the men and women in uniform assembled Sunday at the same military camp where soldiers staged a rebellion in February, 1986, that brought Aquino to power. “We are not in office and you are not in uniform for compliments and flattery.”

Aquino predicted that the challenges facing her government will grow more difficult with each government victory over the Communist insurgents as well as over renegade military groups of the right, “for our enemies will grow desperate and more cruel.”

But she repeated her earlier pledge that neither martial law nor emergency powers will be invoked to keep order.

“There will be no constitutional shortcuts to public safety for as long as the victims are largely from our ranks,” Aquino said, alluding to continuing death threats against members of her Cabinet and the senior military command. “A public official is a private risk. If an official cannot stand the heat, he should get out.”

But she added: “We must show that democracy is not defenseless.”

In announcing the new law enforcement measures, Aquino said she has directed customs officials to step up airport searches to try to check the flow of high-powered rifles and machine guns that illegally enter the country each year.

Effort to Curb Firearms

She said the armed forces will adopt “in the next few days . . . sweeping measures aimed at eliminating the alarming proliferation of firearms and impunity of crimes in our society.”

Gen. Renato de Villa, armed forces vice chief of staff, recently estimated that there are 120,000 illegal firearms in the country, in addition to more than 300,000 licensed firearms in civilian hands.

Most senior military commanders view the problems of illegal firearms as one of the country’s potentially most dangerous, but in a recent press conference, De Villa and others offered no new suggestions on how to curb them. Nor did Aquino outline in her Sunday speech any specific new firearms regulations.