AQUINO AMID THE RUINS : As the Military Plots Against Her, the Philippine President Tries to Preserve What Remains of ‘People Power’

THE GUNS BOOM THEIR salute in the morning haze, echoing from the hills. Down on the parade ground, the cadets stand stiffly in the stifling heat, 146 ramrod-straight youths wearing heavy gray wool tunics and red-plumed hats copied from West Point. It is graduation weekend at the Philippine Military Academy, in the mountains five hours north of Manila, and President Corazon C. Aquino is coming to call.

Three years ago, a bomb exploded in the reviewing stand before Aquino arrived, killing four people. This year, the military is taking no chances. Soldiers search for car bombs, jeepswith .50-caliber machine guns guard the gates, and scowling sharpshooters in black commando garb peer from rooftops. But attendance is low. Several top officers and U.S. Embassy officials, among many others, have remained in Manila, nervously awaiting what the morning headlines predict will be yet another coup attempt.

It’s not an unreasonable fear. In December, rightist rebel soldiers nearly toppled Aquino in the sixth and bloodiest coup attempt since she came to power in 1986. And the military academy is increasingly known as the institution that breeds coup plotters--virtually all of the rebel leaders are graduates. Today, signs of dissent are everywhere. On the field, alumni line up by classes. None wear uniforms. Instead, members of the Class of ’76 sport T-shirts emblazoned with “No Witchhunts,” a protest of the post-coup-attempt arrest of a classmate. Members of the Class of ‘85, who are handing out leaflets demanding “National Discipline,” wear semi-Fascist fashion: black shirts with khaki suits. That, too, seems appropriate. If they win, rebel leaders have said, their military junta will close all but one newspaper, one radio station and one TV station. The rebels also promise “a thorough cleansing of Philippine society.” Most assume that means they will execute opponents.

“Some of our class fought for the rebels, some for the government,” Lt. Jun Kintanar, 26, president of the Class of ‘85, says of the December uprising. “Maybe we’re just disillusioned. We see no purpose or direction. We see the need for reform. We need a strong leader. The question in our country is not do we want a democracy, but are we prepared for democracy? A lot of people abuse it. Or use it as a cloak for graft and corruption. The soldier must inculcate in his mind that the cause he’s fighting for is worth dying for. The problem now is, the only cause is politics.”

Democracy is still new to the Philippines. It’s only been four years since Aquino was swept into office by what has become known as the “people power revolution,” a historic crusade that brought more than a million Filipinos into Manila’s streets to end the despotic 20-year regime of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Hailed as a secular Virgin Mary in this staunchly Roman Catholic country, she was the courageous widow and unassuming former housewife who won the world’s heart as a symbol of nonviolence and democracy. In her words, the “dark night of tyranny” was over.

Today, her successes are undeniable. Under Aquino, the Philippines has ratified a new constitution, restored a bicameral congress and elected thousands of provincial and local officials. Her administration has created an in dependent Supreme Court, rebuilt labor unions and unfettered what may be the world’s most freewheeling press. Her military helped turn the tide on a 20-year communist insurgency. She began to privatize government-owned companies and repay a crushing $28-billion foreign debt. Until the last coup attempt, the

economy was recovering steadily, if slowly. The country has a democracy, if a struggling one.

But the profound social, economic and political problems that still plague the Philippines illustrate the squandered promise and growing predicament of Cory Aquino. She appears unable to appease or control a divided military and unwilling to crack down on government corruption. Inefficiency is so ingrained that tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid remain unspent while most rural areas lack even basic government services. And the president remains so devoted to her class and clan that she turns a blind eye to allegations of graft and nepotism within her own family.

Perhaps most ominous, the devoutly Catholic president has refused to encourage any form of population control. An exploding birth rate already eats away at economic gains, and the population of 60 million is projected to double by the year 2010.

Nearly half the nation already lives in what the World Bank has called “absolute poverty,” with too little income to satisfy basic needs. In some rural areas, up to 80% of preschool children are malnourished. In Manila, millions live as squatters, crowded into dismal shanties without running water or sewerage. Thousands of others live on an infamous garbage dump called Smokey Mountain, picking trash for a living. And an estimated 75,000 street children struggle to survive as scavengers, vendors and prostitutes.

What happened? Aquino offers no answers and no excuses as she stands to address the cadets during graduation weekend in February. Another coup attempt is clearly foremost in her mind. “Let there be no doubt that when freedom is in danger, there are, and can be, no fence-sitters and opportunists among your ranks,” she tells the men. “Never allow your idealism to be desecrated by those whose only desire is to grab power for selfish ends.”

Previous graduates, she says, gave their lives for democracy. They are “true heroes of the republic.” She invokes the names of two men who were killed by communist rebels: Lt. Felix Brawner and Lt. Edgardo Dizon. It’s a curious choice. Brawner’s father, a retired general, has been charged in the latest coup attempt. And Dizon died in one of the most shameful episodes of Aquino’s tenure.

It’s called the Lupao massacre.

LUPAO IS 90 MILES northeast of Manila, on the edge of the Caraballo Mountains in Nueva Ecija province. About 30,000 people live there, mostly tenant farmers eking out a living from dusty rice terraces in tiny villages. There is no irrigation, so most survive on one meager crop per year, giving a third of it to absentee landlords. Many eat but one meal a day. They collect wood from nearly denuded hillsides in the long, lean months. It is like countless other rural Philippine communities.

Edgardo Dizon had just graduated from the Philippine Military Academy when he led 23 men, Alpha Company, of the 14th Infantry Battalion into one of Lupao’s hamlets early on the morning of Feb. 10, 1987. Unknown to them, about two dozen communist commandos had taken over the cluster of bamboo-and-thatch huts the night before. Gunfire broke out as Dizon crossed a small bridge. He fell dead, shot in the head.

According to the President’s Commission on Human Rights, which investigated the incident, Dizon’s troops responded with a murderous two-hour frenzy. By the time the rampage was over, 17 villagers had been slaughtered, including a married couple in their 80s and six children younger than 12. A woman four months pregnant was shot four times in the back. The communist rebels escaped.

The survivors’ testimony is painful to read. Though Ernesto Carnate pleaded, “Stop shooting. We’re all civilians,” a soldier stabbed him in the chest. His daughter, Marilyn, watched in horror from a nearby hut. When a neighbor ran out with her 5-year-old brother, a soldier shot them both.

The soldiers then executed the elderly couple and a 4-year-old girl under a mango tree. Another group, including a 3-year-old boy, was found cowering in a rice paddy and was herded into a hut. They were shot from behind, most of them in the head. The soldiers then fired grenades into the huts, burning them so badly that the bodies inside were unidentifiable. Before leaving, the soldiers looted remaining huts of money, radios and clothes.

Early in the investigation, the military claimed that 11 commandos were killed in a fire fight. Later, as the truth leaked out, soldiers said the dead and wounded civilians had been caught in the cross fire. Both the human rights commission and the military provost marshal general rejected that explanation. If Carnate was killed in cross fire, why did he suffer stab wounds? And why were seven charred bodies found huddled together, shot in the head and back?

The provost called it a cover-up. After the initial killing, the soldiers “decided to kill everybody else so as to eliminate witnesses,” his report said. “In order to hide this heinous crime, they further burned the houses . . . unknowing that there were survivors to tell the tale.”

Aquino flew to the village 10 days after the massacre to appeal to the grieving widows and orphans. “I want to talk to you personally and hear from your lips what really happened here,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “Help me. I hope you will trust me. Tell me what you know.”

Shortly thereafter, 20 soldiers were charged with murder. In a 17-month court-martial, six survivors identified four members of Alpha Company as having led the massacre. But last May, after both prosecution and defense had rested their cases, three of the accused soldiers--including two identified by witnesses--suddenly asked to take the stand.

They testified that four other soldiers, who had come as reinforcements and had not been charged, had committed the atrocities. They gave no evidence, and their statements contradicted all previous testimony by the survivors and other soldiers. But on July 13, the six-member military tribunal met behind closed doors and unanimously acquitted the 20 soldiers of all charges. The witnesses’ identification of the killers, the court said, was “inherently unprovable” and “against the natural course of things.” The four other soldiers were never arrested.

Sitting behind the desk in his simple, second-floor office, Lupao’s middle-aged mayor, George M. Castaneda, says the military paid families about $200 in restitution for each victim. His voice rises in anger. “It was a whitewash. The practice of the military--they cover up all their mistakes. They tolerate wrongdoing. Once a soldier does something wrong, they just transfer him to somewhere else as punishment. Here, when there’s a robber, one thing’s for sure: He is a military man or an ex-military man.”

Edwin D. S. Limos, a lawyer who represented the victims, walks into Castaneda’s office. He is 33, is soft-spoken and wears aviator glasses. A University of the Philippines graduate, he moved to Lupao from Manila to take the case and decided to stay. He says the verdict, which is not subject to appeal, haunts him. “I have total disbelief. I am totally frustrated.”

Later in the day, Limos leads the way to the site of the slaughter, half a mile or so from the town hall. The killing field is abandoned now except for three caribou grazing amid tall weeds and broken concrete. A small wooden cross is planted near the tree where the elderly couple and young girl were shot. Why would soldiers kill civilians? “Maybe because their leader was killed,” Limos says. “Or maybe because they came from the south, where it is very tough. Fighting, looting, killing and salvaging (torture) are normal there. They were used to doing anything they want.”

Limos heads across dusty brown fields to check on several survivors. He stops at a two-room hut with an earthen floor on the edge of a rice paddy. Marissa Gante lives here now with another family. She was 6 when her right hand was shot off and six members of her family were shot to death. She is 9 now but still in first grade. “The other children teased her,” Limos explains. Marissa says nothing, hiding the stub of her arm in her lap. Another survivor, Rick Orentzia, 27, whose mother was killed, sits nearby but refuses to answer questions. “Witnesses were threatened,” Limos says, shaking his head.

Soon Marilyn Carnate, the girl who saw her father stabbed and 5-year-old brother shot, arrives. Now 17, she has one infant and is pregnant again beneath a torn cotton dress. “There was no justice,” she says bitterly. “I testified at the trial. Those men should have been sent to jail.” She says Aquino had promised justice when she visited Lupao. “What happened to her promise? She hasn’t fulfilled her promise yet.”

THE PROMISE STARTED at EDSA, which is an acronym for the eight-lane Manila road where giant crowds massed for four days in February, 1986, to link arms, recite the rosary, block Marcos’ tanks and throw the hated dictator out. A huge statue of the Virgin Mary now looms over the intersection where “people power” prevailed. It is Sunday, Feb. 25, and Aquino stands behind bulletproof glass at the shrine to address the fourth-anniversary celebration of what is always referred to in the Philippines simply as EDSA. The crowd of 30,000 is the smallest ever.

In the morning, she launched the celebration down the street by raising a flag outside Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, the two military garrisons where the 1986 revolt began. Before she arrived, an aide checked the honor guards’ rifles to ensure that none was loaded. This afternoon, three Army helicopters clatter noisily back and forth over the crowd, dumping thousands of leaflets that extol the 1986 uprising. Since yellow has come to symbolize Aquino’s quixotic campaign, many in the crowd wear yellow hats and T-shirts or wave yellow pennants and balloons bearing her picture. Brass bands blare and march about, while hundreds of nuns and priests quietly wait for a Mass to begin. A plane overhead trails a banner advertising “Peace, Justice and Freedom.”

People are cheerful, singing patriotic songs and munching boiled corn and peanuts. Many of them say they are government employees, encouraged by their department heads to attend. This is a middle-class crowd, still the core of Aquino’s support despite daily battles with rising prices, chaotic public transit, water shortages and blackouts. The last coup attempt scared many back into Aquino’s camp, primarily because they believe a military junta would be worse. “We have no alternative,” explains Francisco Vegas, a 34-year-old railway worker. “It’s been disappointing. But with Cory, we have hope. With Marcos, we were hopeless.”

A leftist group holds a much-used banner emblazoned with “No to U.S. Military Bases, No to U.S. Intervention.” Carol Almeda, a 30-year-old government researcher, says she heads an anti-government group with 100,000 government employees as members. “We came to reach out to the Philippine masses,” she explains. As people gather around her, she lists a long series of grievances and demands, ending with a call to nationalize “the oil and steel industry.” What steel industry? “Actually, there is no steel industry,” she concedes. “It’s the principle that’s important.”

Similar leftist groups have led an upsurge in anti-American feelings in the Philippines. Most of the anger is directed at upcoming talks to renegotiate leases for six U.S. military facilities. Six Americans associated with the military have been slain since 1987, presumably by communist guerrillas. As a result, U.S. troops are warned not to wear uniforms off base lest they become targets, while key embassy aides use new armor-plated cars. Still, I feel far safer than in New York. Last fall, when chanting student demonstrators burned a tattered U.S. flag at a Manila rally, two of the most strident rushed over to apologize when embers blew on my shirt. They were the politest protesters I had ever met.

In one corner of the crowd, Andrew Casino, a 23-year-old law student, is trying to cash in on the attempted coup. He sells $4 T-shirts marked with a picture of a tank and the words, “I survived the 1989 coup d’etat in Manila.” He says he has grossed $2,000 since December. He adds that he saved the silk screen in case he needs a 1990 version.

His brother, Paul Stephen R. Casino, 24, is assistant to the undersecretary of the Department of Trade and Industry. “After 20 years of Marcos, we didn’t know what was going to happen when he left,” says Paul, who is wearing one of Andrew’s T-shirts. “Things have improved a little bit. Not as much as people expected in 1986.

That’s why people are disappointed. They cannot gauge the improvements.

“I’m not disappointed with Cory,” he continues. “I’m disappointed with the government. They’re like a bunch of clowns. It’s not her fault. It’s the problem with the Filipinos. You know what crabs are? When you put a bunch in a pail, and one climbs up, the others pull him down. Filipinos are like that. We pull each other down.”

Deeper in the crowd, George Guevara, 41, stands for the Mass with his wife, Marjorie. They have seven children, and he commutes two hours each way to his job as a telephone cable splicer. “It’s tough,” he says. “I have to stand in line and fight my way onto crowded jeepneys,” the gaudily painted, elongated jeeps used for public transportation in the Philippines.

But Guevara hasn’t lost faith in Aquino. “It’s much better now,” he says. Collective bargaining gave him a $75-a-month raise on top of his salary of about $500 a month, far more than he received under Marcos and 10 times the average Filipino’s income. “I don’t think it’s fair to blame the president for the country’s problems,” he says. “And the coup leaders just want power. That’s all. For me, I’m satisfied.”

As the sun sets, Aquino is on stage listing schools erected, houses built, wells dug, irrigation systems started. “Confidence is coming back,” she tells the crowd. Then comes a blistering attack on her political nemesis, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile. The two have feuded publicly ever since she fired him as defense chief in November, 1986, after his aides tried to launch a coup. Today, speaking in coarse Tagalog, Aquino mocks Enrile by name 17 times. “Be a man,” she tells him, “or better yet, be a woman.”

Finally, she turns her contempt on her other chief critic, vice president and opposition leader Salvador (Doy) Laurel. “Do we have to talk about the fly anymore?” she says, dismissing him. The crowd laughs.

A REAL FLY IS BUZZING at Aquino. It has invaded the heavily guarded Malacanang Palace Guest House, has flown upstairs and is divebombing the president of the Republic of the Philippines as she gives an interview. Sitting on a beige couch, she tries again and again to brush it away, then glares at half a dozen aides. One of them finally appears with a red fly swatter. He whacks the Philippine flag behind her, then smacks the wall near the presidential seal. Finally, he drops to his knees to extricate the dead insect from the deep, yellow-gold carpet. Aquino has had somewhat better luck swatting Enrile. Three days earlier, government agents had arrested him on charges of supporting the December coup attempt. The irony is delicious: As Marcos’ martial law administrator in the 1970s, Enrile jailed Aquino’s late husband, Sen. Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr., and thousands of others. Unlike Ninoy, who was held incommunicado for weeks after his arrest and served eight years in jail, Enrile conducted numerous press conferences during his incarceration (he was released on bail after a week). At one point, flanked by a mob of reporters and cameras, he complained, “I am cut off from the outside world.” His “cell” was an air-conditioned two-room police office, complete with phones, an exercise bike, crates of fruit juice and his own bed and maid from home.

“That is all right,” the president says mildly, when asked about Enrile’s gilded cage. “My goodness, this is a free country. And let him have access to the press.”

Aquino relaxes when asked if expectations were too high after 1986. Of course, she says, because the four-day “people power” revolt appeared so sudden and simple. But it wasn’t. Opposition leaders worked hard for years. And, no, her own expectations were not too high. Before her husband was assassinated in 1983, he had warned her.

“He said that he felt sorry for whoever would come after Marcos because, given the many problems Marcos will leave behind, he would not be at all surprised if after six months in office, Marcos’ successor will be booted out of office. So I knew what was in store for me.

“I would have wanted it easier, of course,” she continues. “My goodness, I am not a masochist. . . . And certainly I can look back to many accomplishments during my four years.”

Aquino ticks off the economic gains. Back in 1984-85, inflation rocketed to 40%, factories closed, unemployment zoomed. “Before I took over, there was a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness,” she adds. “Casting modesty aside, I was able to bring back hope.” She has helped lower the percentage of the population living below the poverty line from 59% to 49%, she says, and is now aiming government programs at the bottom third of income earners. Another program will help small businesses and make credit more readily available to farmers’ co-ops. “Hopefully, for the last two years of my term, we will be able not only to duplicate what we have done in the last four years but maybe do even more.”

Still, she says she’s disillusioned. The last two coup attempts, the bloodiest and most disruptive, have “derailed” the gains. Her mistake, she says, was “trusting too much. Or being too patient insofar as my enemies are concerned.” They took advantage of her. “I really set out on a program of reconciliation. And certainly I tried my best.” There was the truce with communist rebels that collapsed in 1987 and the endless attempts to appease right-wing military officers who continue to try to overthrow her.

“At a certain point, you realize there are some people who just don’t want to be reconciled,” she says emphatically. “But I really believe that I have bent over backward to enlist the support of as many of our people as possible.”

The president wears a polka-dot beige dress (an aide says she now wears yellow only when she must; she prefers bright pink), simple pearl earrings and black pumps. She’s 57 now, and her face is broader, framed by wide, silver-rim glasses and a new hairstyle, cropped close around the ears. She is warm and smiles easily. But she flashes in anger when asked if any members of her family have transgressed her own ethical standards. Five family members sit in Congress, and allegations of wrongdoing have dogged her wealthy and powerful younger brother, Rep. Jose (Peping) Cojuangco Jr.--though none of the president’s clan has been charged with a crime.

“My enemies will try everything and anything,” she replies archly. “Even if they are not exactly honest in the matter of their criticisms.” She cites her 34-year-old daughter, Maria (Ballsy) Aquino Cruz, who is her personal secretary. Enrile has suggested that there was something improper about a Japanese businessman’s letter, sent in care of the president’s secretary, about a plan to sell Philippine-owned property in Tokyo. Aquino’s answer is vehement; aides call it her “mother hen” response. “It’s very clear,” she says. “It is a very deliberate attempt to downgrade me and drag down as many innocent persons as possible.”

I change the subject to Lupao. Why did she name Lt. Dizon in her military academy speech? “The first time that I went to the PMA, he was one of the graduates,” she says, relaxing again. “And he was the first one who was killed after the graduation.”

Does she think justice was done in Lupao?

“Yes,” she replies. She recalls that she flew to Lupao “to find out directly from the residents what actually happened and what it was I could do for them.” She says she helped them find land closer to town and later obtain title to the land. Medical aid and job training were provided. “And,” she concludes, “the guilty were prosecuted.”

But they were all acquitted, I say awkwardly.

“No, I don’t think so,” she says. Then she pauses. “Let me check on that.” She glances at her spokesman, Tomas (Buddy) Gomez III. “Buddy, could you check that for me?”

I’m quite sure, I say, all the soldiers were acquitted last July.

“We’ll check on that,” she says stiffly. (Gomez calls two days later to confirm the acquittals.)

She disagrees strongly when told that many Filipinos say that only a strong, even an authoritarian, leader can solve the nation’s problems. Marcos was strong, she points out, and he “sank us even faster.” The problem has been the quick transition from dictatorship to democracy.

“Some people would like the benefits of an authoritarian government,” she explains. “But at the same time, they would like to live under a democracy. I think it’s really impossible for the two to go together.”

Instead, the Philippines should be seen as a “pilot country” for newly restored democracies. Don’t “judge my leadership,” Aquino says, until it can be compared to other fledgling democracies in Eastern Europe and to Nicaragua. “Certainly, I hope they would have it easier,” she adds with a smile. “We do not want to wish the many problems that I’ve had on my counterparts.”

AQUINO’S “pilot country” is in serious trouble. A form of democratic anarchy prevails, and the ideals that brought her to power have faded. Sadly, her best hope of surviving may be the growing fear that what comes next may be much worse.

One need only visit the Malacanang Palace museum, where Marcos memorabilia is kept, to be reminded of what came before Aquino. Here are her predecessor’s diapers and 4-inch platform shoes. And Imelda Marcos’ 6,900 dresses and 1,220 pairs of shoes (including a set of disco pumps with battery-powered flashing lights in the heels). There are two paintings of Imelda as Mona Lisa and one of an ethereal Imelda on the half-shell, grotesquely copied from Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” It is a testimonial to both bad government and bad taste.

It’s unfair to blame Aquino for all her nation’s woes, says Cardinal Jaime Sin, who sent nuns and priests to the streets to help oust Marcos in 1986. Marcos left behind an empty treasury, a bloated bureaucracy, a politicized military and institutional corruption. “We were able to expel Ali Baba,” Sin says. “But the 40 thieves stayed. And now maybe there are only 20 thieves. So the situation has improved.”

But the improvements are often hard to see. Courts remain impossibly clogged, and judges are notoriously corrupt. Congress is more an obstacle than a catalyst for change. Alex Magno, a political scientist at the University of the Philippines, estimates that 30,000 bills now languish in Congress. “The legislative process is overloaded with meaningless legislation,” he says. “A congressman wants to name a rural school after his father, and an opponent from a rival clan objects. So there are hearings and debates and testimony. And real change is put on endless delay.”

Blas Ople, a framer of the constitution and a member of the opposition Nacionalista Party, argues that the president must shoulder most of the responsibility. “She has a majority in both houses, but it’s a meaningless majority,” he says. “Every congressman and senator has his own agenda. And Aquino does not feel it necessary, well into her fourth year, to put together or submit any kind of legislative agenda. As a result, Congress is in a state of perpetual anarchy.”

Jovita Salonga, the Senate president, insists that Congress only follows Aquino’s lead. He blames “towering expectations” after 1986. “People thought, with freedom and democracy, graft and corruption would be rooted out, poverty would be eased, squatters would be housed. These were unreasonable expectations. But there were legitimate expectations that there would be greater efficiency in government, that graft and corruption would be substantially reduced and that there would be a higher moral tone in government. In these areas, where Cory should be strong, there is instead a sense of drift. There is a widespread perception that we have lost our mission.”

It’s hard to find a vision or a sense of urgency in Aquino. As one of her former supporters in the military says, “She floats above all the problems.” Most important, as in Lupao, she has little follow-through. In a hard-hitting speech in October, 1987, after the fifth failed coup attempt, Aquino complained that “it seems clear I must do nearly everything myself.” She created a new “Action Committee, with a single member--me.” She sternly ordered officials to pick up Manila’s garbage, fill in potholes, stop power shortages, improve telephone service and more. All in one week. Nothing happened. Manila’s streets today are strewn with rotting garbage, axle-breaking potholes abound, the electricity fails regularly and telephone service takes months to install or repair.

“Nobody’s afraid of Cory,” explains Tony Gatmaitan, a Manila businessman and economist. “That’s her problem. Like most people, we Filipinos are like school kids. Since Cory came in, we’ve been on perpetual recess. She doesn’t raise her voice, she doesn’t slap our wrists, she doesn’t stop us from running in and out and playing our games. She’s powerless. We need an authoritarian figure.”

Part of the nation’s plight is historical. More than 300 years as a Spanish colony left a feudal plantation economy, with an elite handful of landowners ruling impoverished rural peasants and governing by patronage and bribery. Another 50 years as a U.S. colony, until World War II, only reinforced the brutal land-tenure system and widened the gap between rich and poor. Marcos, first elected in 1965, merely replaced the old aristocracy with his own even-greedier friends.

Thus, Aquino promised that land reform, the key to solving rural poverty, would be the “centerpiece” of her administration. Instead, it has become an embarrassment. Rather than using her popularity to decree reform after she won office in 1986, she handed responsibility to the landlord-dominated Congress. The results were predictable: Barely 5% of available land has changed hands or title under the current loophole-riddled law.

And the president’s commitment stopped short at the heavily guarded borders of her family’s 15,250-acre Hacienda Luisita sugar-cane plantation in central Luzon. The Cojuangco family used a loophole to give shares of stock, instead of land, to Hacienda Luisita’s 7,000 workers. The family argued that breaking up the highly successful plantation--which includes its own 18-hole golf course--would only deprive workers of schools, clinics and other benefits. Polls showed that most of Hacienda Luisita’s workers agreed. But critics called it a mockery of land reform.

“Land reform was important precisely because she was landed,” says Randy David, another political scientist at the University of the Philippines. “And I believe the Hacienda Luisita property would have made a difference, a great difference. It would have symbolized sincerity, compassion for the poor and a willingness to put national interests above traditional family ties. Instead, Hacienda Luisita became the best example of a callous and well-crafted evasion of the spirit of the law. So what do you expect other landlords to do? Instead of distributing land, they are distributing paper shares of stock in companies they (the workers) can never hope to control in any meaningful sense.”

In many ways, the 1986 “revolution” was actually a restoration of the powerful oligarchs, family dynasties and political bosses Marcos had dispossessed. Aquino’s younger brother, Peping Cojuangco, is usually included on the list. A three-term congressman, he’s known as a kind of political godfather, a man you see to get things done. At his home in Dasmarinas, one of Manila’s richest suburbs, we sit in a den filled with a fortune in Asian antiquities. He’s 55, quiet, intense and carefully groomed. He smokes and speaks slowly, particularly when asked about the endless allegations against his family.

“It’s all been insinuation,” he says evenly. “They’ve actually tried to compare our family and the previous family (the Marcoses). There is a very big difference. Our family was in a strong position even before Cory became president.” His brother was a bank president, another sister headed Manila’s Far Eastern University. He himself was a mayor and two-term congressman in the 1960s. “So we have had some form of success. We really don’t need a president in the family to carry on.”

Anyway, he adds, feudalism is good for the Philippines. “They criticize us for a feudal system,” he says. “Maybe someday we can eliminate it. But for the moment, the Philippine way of life is based on the family and feudal structure. I suppose it’s because what every Filipino is looking for is security. And to band together behind a strong leader.”

ASSUMING NO further coup attempts--and even Aquino’s aides won’t rule them out--the Philippines will get its chance to choose a new leader in 1992, when democracy promises to run riot. Every elected position will be up for grabs. That includes president and vice president, 24 senators, 200 congressmen, 73 governors and more than 50,000 provincial, local and village officials.

Since Aquino said she won’t run again, the early favorite is Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos, the terse, cigar-chomping West Point graduate who has stood by Aquino every time his military has mutinied against her. He is nationally respected, but many fear that he cannot control the divided military any better as president. House Speaker Ramon V. Mitra, better known for his white beard than his legislative leadership, also is angling for Aquino’s endorsement.

Vice President Laurel, the in-house critic who welcomed the December coup attempt as “democracy in its fullest and complete sense” and called for her resignation, wants to run. But his image as a buzzing gadfly draws little public support. Nor do many Filipinos back the ever-ambitious Sen. Enrile, who announced his candidacy during his short detention.

Most intriguing is businessman Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco, Aquino’s estranged cousin. He was the consummate Marcos crony, a stalwart of the deposed dictator who recently boasted--probably accurately--that his 200 or so companies once accounted for 25% of the Philippines’ gross national product. He fled with Marcos to Hawaii in 1986 and then spent nearly four years in lonely exile in Long Beach, Calif. Suddenly, a week before the December uprising, he slipped back to Manila. He refuses to say how.

Now, while his lawyers fight a slew of civil and criminal charges against him, the burly 54-year-old billionaire travels the country in his private plane, laying groundwork for a 1992 presidential bid. It is said that the world’s richest Filipino is offering million-dollar fees and $50,000 race horses to key supporters. His campaign slogan is on pocket calendars: “BOSS: In bad times and in good.”

The bad times since the last coup attempt have already won Cojuangco converts, even among former Aquino loyalists. An Air Force general who remained faithful to her through every coup attempt says that he and many of his fellow officers have decided to back Cojuangco in 1992. The general says the country needs to fill its leadership void.

“Power abhors a vacuum,” he says. “She’s not using her power, and that’s the problem. . . . It’s impossible to hate her. She’s like a mother. But she’s no president.”

He shrugs off Cojuangco’s unsavory connections to Marcos. The euphoria of “people power” is long gone, he says. “Sometimes we Filipinos have very short memories,” he explains patiently. “And the 1986 revolution is already fading into the mist of memory.”