Filipinos’ March to Palace Protests Fuel Price Hikes

Thousands of angry students and workers marched on the presidential palace Friday and burned an effigy of President Corazon Aquino to protest a recent increase in the price of petroleum products.

The president, meanwhile, led 2,000 dignitaries in a prayer service marking the fourth anniversary of the assassination of her husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr.

Some of the marchers, many of whom had supported Corazon Aquino in the months after the assassination, said in a statement, “We are back on the streets in the same temper and indignation over what we fully believe is the total failure of the Aquino government.”

The statement, issued by the May First Movement, a labor coalition, said the president has betrayed the ideals of her late husband.

“Now we pay tribute to the martyrdom of Ninoy (Benigno Aquino’s nickname) in the spirit of strong condemnation of the government of his wife,” the statement added.

The demonstration was the largest anti-government turnout since January, when the police opened fire on protesting peasants near the palace. About 1,000 riot troops ringed the palace Friday, forcing the demonstrators to halt at barbed wire barricades half a mile short of the gates.

Aquino Avoids Group

President Aquino refused to meet with the group. She sent a member of her staff to accept their written demands, which included rolling back an 18% increase in fuel prices announced by Aquino last weekend.

The price increase, which has boosted the cost of food and electric power among other things, has also touched off a series of protests, including strikes.

Aquino said she was forced to approve the price increase because the international price of petroleum has risen and because a special government fund for subsidizing gasoline prices has been depleted.

At the prayer service, the president spoke out against people who oppose her. She said that without her husband’s martyrdom, “We would still be sitting in the darkness,” and added: “I hope the people do not forget that, but if they do, the loss is theirs. If they forget Ninoy, it does not matter, because his memory will live on in the rest of us.”

Annoyed by Leftist Leaders

Aquino aides have said privately that she is increasingly annoyed with leaders of the leftist movements that once supported her personal public protests against former President Ferdinand E. Marcos but thereafter boycotted her campaign to defeat him at the polls.

They say they believe that such leftist organizations as the May First Movement and the student movement called Bagong Alyasang Makabayan are little more than fronts for the Philippine Communist Party, which is engaged in a guerrilla war with the government.

Until recently, leaders of these movements have tried to work with the government in an effort to increase the rights of workers and peasant farmers.

Some leaders said Friday that they now reject the idea that Aquino’s husband died a martyr. Peasant leader Jaime Tadeo said: “Ninoy died in vain. We are now experiencing the same thing we did under Marcos. The message to (President) Aquino today is Ninoy was killed by a bullet, and now the Filipino people are being killed by poverty and hunger.”

Several religious leaders joined the protest march. One of them, Sister Mary John Marinzan, dean of St. Scholastica College in Manila, said: “The blood of Ninoy should have brought a better Philippines. But it has not. It seems his death has been to no avail.”