Aquino Refuses to Resign, Assails Politicians Who Backed Rebellion : Philippines: Her speech to a crowd in Manila is laced with slang expressions. It casts her in a new, tougher image.

President Corazon Aquino, addressing a throng of supporters from behind a bullet-proof shield, vowed Friday that she will never resign and indicated that politicians who supported the latest attempted coup will be investigated by a presidential commission.

“I am angry,” Aquino declared at her first public appearance since the collapse Thursday of the most serious military rebellion in the Philippines since she came to power in 1986.

About 400 rebel commandos finally withdrew this afternoon from their last stronghold, leaving the Mactan Air Base near Cebu City, about 350 miles south of Manila. Cebu officials said the rebels were boarding boats to return to their barracks in Mindanao, an island further south.

But a fragmentation grenade exploded at Manila’s main post office several hours earlier as crowds lined up to mail Christmas packages, killing two and injuring at least 15. The blast indicated that the rebel movement may well have entered a new phase. Rebel leaders vowed earlier this week to launch a destabilization campaign of bombings at government facilities.

In an interview Friday, Brig. Gen. Rodolfo Biazon, military commander of metropolitan Manila, said he was expecting “small-unit” rebel operations that would included “sabotage, assassinations and terroristic acts.”

In her speech, Aquino lashed out at politicians who supported the rebellion. She ridiculed Vice President Salvador Laurel and asked the crowd, “Do we just swat him away like a fly?”

Laurel, who at the height of the attempted coup had called for Aquino’s resignation, “doesn’t stop,” she said, and added: “He keeps saying, ‘Cory, resign.’ What does he think of me? Stupid? That I would resign so he could become president? I won’t give him this position.”

She also attacked her former defense secretary, opposition Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, and billionaire industrialist Eduardo Cojuangco, her estranged cousin.

Cojuangco, who is known as Danding, fled the country in 1986 with the ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos, but slipped back into the country from exile in Los Angeles 10 days before the coup attempt began.

“What’s the connection?” Aquino demanded, alluding to speculation that Cojuangco’s return was a signal to the plotters.

Speaking of politicians in general, she said, “Just because I am a woman, they treat me in a small way.”

The speech, extemporaneous and laced with slang expressions in Tagalog, was viewed by her supporters as an attempt to create a new, get-tough image.

The week of fighting left at least 83 dead and Aquino’s image severely weakened abroad. But members of her Cabinet and supporters in Congress applauded her aggressive new tone, in contrast to her weary and near-tears appearance on television Wednesday.

“Far from hurting her, it has enhanced her,” Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus said of the rebellion after Aquino finished her speech. “She found an occasion to come out fighting. She has emerged out of this a stronger, more popular leader.”

The rally, accompanied by a Catholic Mass, took place in suburban Quezon City, where nuns halted tanks in the 1986 military revolt that catapulted Aquino to power. It was scheduled months ago, in connection with the dedication of a new Catholic peace shrine.

Aquino had appealed for a large turnout as a show of support for her government, and aides said they had expected as many as a million people. Government offices were closed and free transport was provided, but the crowd appeared to number no more than 100,000.

Diplomats said the rally did little to enhance Aquino’s image.

“I still don’t get the impression she has decided to get tough,” an Asian diplomat said. “I think she’s incapable of knocking heads together. The system does not allow her to do it.”

Huge yellow banners carried such messages as, “Cory Yes! Coup No!” and “Make Love and Peace, Not War.” Many in the crowd wore yellow, as did the president, the color that came to symbolize the 1986 “people power revolution.”

Aquino made a point of telling the crowd that Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu had called to thank her for freeing Japanese caught by the fighting in Manila’s financial district, Makati. But she made no mention of President Bush, who supplied critical air support last Friday.

“She has expressed her thanks,” U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Platt said.

Platt, who was present at the rally, sought to minimize reports that U.S. support is waning.

U.S. officials insist that U.S. jet fighters took no aggressive action last Friday in keeping rebel aircraft on the ground at Sangley Air Base. But Brig. Gen. Oscar Florendo, spokesman for the Philippine armed forces, said that “the Americans had orders to fight back if they were attacked.”

Also at the rally, where scores of armed presidential guards stood beside priests and nuns, were senior Defense Department officials, among them Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos. Ramos has stood by Aquino in all six coup attempts.

A Ramos aide estimated that as many as 2,000 rebel soldiers are still at large. He conceded that the rebellion caused severe internal damage to the Philippine armed forces, which have been increasingly politicized and polarized since the revolt of 1986.

“We have to go back to square one, or maybe one step behind that,” the aide said, adding that Aquino must begin by reorganizing her Cabinet. Some analysts expect this process to begin next week.

There was clearly some official concern about the possibility of still another coup attempt. There were soldiers on the roof of every building for about a mile around.

Presidential guards with field glasses and machine guns scanned the crowd. A helicopter gunship accompanied the presidential motorcade to and from the site.

No one but Aquino’s most trusted aides and a religious entourage involved with the Mass was allowed within 20 feet of the stage.

At the beginning of her speech, Aquino acknowledged that her friends and aides had advised her not to attend. But she declared, “I will not ask anything of you that I cannot do myself.”

U.S. WEIGHS ADVICE--American experts disagree on lessons of the rebellion. A4