Revolt Leader Now Preys on Manila Minds

The rumor started just after midnight Saturday, at a fashionable party in suburban Manila.

The son of a colonel who had joined the Aug. 28 failed uprising against President Corazon Aquino told the son of a general who had remained loyally on Aquino’s side that they had better break away from the party early because “there’s going to be trouble between 2 and 3 a.m.”

The rebel’s son added that fugitive Col. Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan, leader of the uprising, was at that moment deploying rebel army ranger squads in several parts of Luzon, the island on which Manila is located, and that each unit would select and attack a town to try to cause havoc in the region.

War Council Convened

Predictably, the loyalist’s son immediately telephoned his father, who panicked and called Aquino’s armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos. Within an hour, a war council was convened in Ramos’ office just after 2 a.m Saturday.

The story from the rebel’s son was false, of course. But it illustrates how Honasan, known for his expertise in psychological warfare, has exchanged bullets for rumors in the opposition to Aquino that he is still directing from somewhere in hiding.

Almost hourly since Honasan aborted his coup and fled with hundreds of armed fellow rebels, unfounded and often contradictory rumors are broadcast on radio stations nationwide, many of them stories floated surreptitiously by the rebels themselves.

Honasan’s own whereabouts has become the focus of a majority of the rumors. Various publications and loyalist military officials have placed him in no fewer than six provinces and cities, among them Manila, hundreds of miles apart. It is equally clear the armed forces who are searching for him have no idea where Honasan and his men are hiding.

Honasan has used the situation to his advantage, leaking tapes of his voice arguing the cause of a growing faction of reformists in the armed services which is now being called “the idealist group.” He has worked through right-wing political figures to distribute communiques issued in the name of a “Ruling Junta of the Nationalist Provisional Government Under the Armed Forces of the Philippines.”

Every document and word maneuvered into circulation by Honasan is printed and aired by every publication and broadcast station that can get hold of it.

“We have gone from coup d’etat to coup d’talk,” said Francisco Nemenzo, a professor at the University of the Philippines.

‘This Is Rumor City’

Luis Beltran, a political satirist and analyst, said Saturday, “This is Rumor City right now. It is still war, but it is now no longer a combat situation. It’s a psy-war, and Gringo and his boys are much better at psy-war than anybody in Gen. Ramos’ camp.”

Ramos, a steady, by-the-book career officer who has studied psychological warfare tactics in the United States, has undertaken a propaganda campaign to counteract Honasan’s invisible war. But, as Beltran and many other analysts have noted, in a nation where armed strength and defiance of authority are almost revered, the deck is stacked against the Aquino government.

The government’s position has forced it to act in ways that even Aquino’s aides had previously condemned loudly under Ferdinand E. Marcos, who was driven from power last year in a coup that Honasan helped plan.

An example occurred early Saturday at DZRH, Manila’s most popular and powerful radio station. One of Honasan’s rebel colonels delivered a tape of Honasan’s voice with a 15-minute message to the nation justifying, explaining and appealing his cause.

Station owner Fred J. Elizalde, who has been under fire from the government in recent weeks for DZRH’s tough, objective reporting on the nation’s troubles, informed Aquino’s aides as a courtesy.

Threatened With Closure

Suddenly, a Cabinet minister appeared in Elizalde’s office, threatening to close down the station if it aired Honasan’s message. Not since January, 1986, the month before Marcos was overthrown, had Elizalde received such a threat.

He did the same thing he did under Marcos. He aired it. And, unknown to the government, several major daily newspapers also had received copies of the tape.

When Manilans awoke Saturday morning, they were bombarded with Honasan’s words.

Declaring that he and his followers had risked their lives 18 months ago to help rid the nation of the dictator Marcos and that they were encouraged by Ramos’ initial moves to reform the armed forces, Honasan asserted, “The direction taken by the civilian political leadership, however, was completely divergent form the start.”

Honasan condemned actions taken by Aquino’s two closest advisers--Joker Arroyo, her executive secretary, and special counsel Teodoro Locsin Jr.--as moves deliberately intended to widen the rift between civilian and military leadership, who had formed close ties at the time of the popularly backed 1986 revolt against Marcos.

‘Witch Hunt’ Charged

Aquino’s government had launched “a witch hunt within the military” for civil rights violations, Honasan said. He charged that Aquino’s advisers rarely consulted the military about the campaign to put down the Communist insurgency, that the insurgents’ legal front groups remained untouched by the government and that leftist causes were favored over the welfare of soldiers.

“Nepotism and political dynasties are very evident,” Honasan declared. “We have to register our protest in the name of the Filipino people, in the strongest terms. And we did.”

Honasan explained that the rebel attack on Aquino’s office and residential complex at the outset of his uprising was a diversionary move.

“We had no intention of harming the president or her family,” he said. “It was politically untenable for us to do so on a leader who is perceived to be popular, sincere and committed, no matter how misguided and incapable she may be.”

Honasan provided no version of his own about how Aquino’s only son, Benigno S. Aquino III, was shot and wounded twice during the initial attack, but his statement as a whole won wide, quiet support nationwide from many junior officers and enlisted men who had initially sided with Aquino during the uprising.

Vows to Continue Struggle

Honasan ended his message ominously: “To our fellow soldiers, the struggle continues for those who have not yet awakened.”

There was no immediate reply from the president to Honasan’s taped assertions and his version of the events of the past nine days.

After hearing Honasan’s tape, analyst Beltran concluded, “Gringo doesn’t have to attack again for days or even weeks. He’s already winning the war without firing a single shot.”

The reasons for Honasan’s psy-war successes are as complex as the deep-seated political instability that has given rise to them, according to Beltran and many other political analysts here.

At the root of the problem, they said in interviews, is the fact that Aquino has increasingly insulated herself within her inner corps of advisers, grouped around Arroyo and Locsin, whom many commentators have dubbed the cordon sanitaire.

“The president herself has reinforced this impression of isolation by making herself less available to the media . . . during the past months, except for TV appearances during crises to deliver brief statements and her own regular TV program, in which she is not subjected to rigorous examinations on public issues,” Amando Doronila, the respected editor of the Manila Chronicle, said Saturday.

Sees Communications Clogged

“One of the reasons for last Friday’s mutiny, which blew up in her face, is that the communications channel between the (presidential) palace and the armed forces has been clogged.”

Last week, however, the presence of Arroyo and Locsin isolated the president not only from most of the armed forces, but also from her own bedrock supporters, who were instrumental in bringing her to power--the Roman Catholic Church and the middle and upper classes.

The Bishops’ Businessmen’s Conference, which includes as members key business and religious leaders who have been Aquino’s most enthusiastic supporters, is publicly pressing Aquino to fire Arroyo, a suspected leftist, and Locsin, a rightist known for trying to direct military policy. So have Aquino’s own family members.

Aquino, however, remains steadfast in her support for the two men, both of whom were extremely close advisers to her late husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., whose assassination in August, 1983, marked the beginning of Marcos’ fall from power.

“She is paying heavy political costs for keeping them,” Doronila wrote in a front-page column calling on Aquino to “get rid of her political albatrosses.”

Says Aquino Backers Alienated

“By stonewalling against the demand to revamp the Cabinet, the president has alienated important segments of her constituency--in particular, business and the Catholic hierarchy--and she is losing allies at a time when she needs them badly.”

Deepening the conflict is a wide rift between Arroyo and Locsin, each of whom provides the president with differing advice, according to several sources close to the presidential palace.

“Up until now, Joker and Teddy Boy have been balancing off each other for the president,” said Speaker of the House Ramon Mitra, who ranks among Aquino’s closest and staunchest supporters. “But now, something has got to be done. Personal considerations must be put aside. At stake, is the future of our entire system of representative government.”

Most agreed that the coming week, which, like the one before it, is likely to be filled with wild and unsettling rumors, will be a decisive one.

“This coming week will be a most interesting and crucial one,” observed one Cabinet deputy secretary who asked not to be named. “If there are no short-term changes--personnel realignments within the president’s own ranks--then I’m afraid it will contribute to a much bigger change a little later on.”