Next Step: Asia : The Talk of Manila: Will the Army Stay in Barracks? : The newspapers trumpet speculation that Corazon Aquino’s days as Philippine president are numbered. Her biggest foe seems to be a new group of disgruntled junior army officers.

His troops were on alert, his vacation plans ruined, and the strain of nightly false alarms showed on his face. But the brigadier general laughed as he put down his phone.

“That was my third newspaper call today,” he told his visitor. “Everyone wants to know if the coup has started.”

Manila’s latest round of coup rumors have rattled this weary city, not least because daily headlines have trumpeted 21 “terror” bombings, insisted that long-loyal military leaders plotted a “palace coup,” and repeatedly speculated that President Corazon Aquino would resign, be assassinated or impose martial law.

The explosions caused no serious damage or injuries, and none of the rumors proved true. But the fear they generated has focused attention on a little-known, fast-growing faction of disgruntled junior officers in the Philippine military called the Young Officers Union, or YOU.

By most accounts, the YOU is the latest--and perhaps greatest--threat to Aquino.

Top military officials who long denied the group’s existence now blame it for the August bombing spree, as well as for a sophisticated disinformation campaign that spread false reports via phone and fax. Officials also concede that the impatient young officers played a key role in last December’s attempted coup and may well lead the next.

“They are the wave of the future,” said Jose T. Almonte, a retired general and counterintelligence chief with close links to the rebel movement. “And time is on their side.”

In some ways, they appear to be a new breed of rebel in the Philippines. Although the group is an offshoot of the rightist Reform the Armed Forces Movement, or RAM, its young officers call themselves the non-Communist Left.

In interviews and manifestoes, they espouse an often-contradictory ideology that calls for a “national revolution” to free the country of feudalism, poverty and foreign domination. They especially stress “Filipinism,” a nationalist movement popular in the 1930s, when the nation was an American colony.

Vague promises of land reform and social justice sound like those of the outlawed Communist New Peoples’ Army. Indeed, the YOU has offered to join forces with the NPA if the latter renounces communism. While that’s unlikely, analysts say the YOU is the first military faction to reach out for mass appeal.

“They’re more likely to compete for the same ground than to collaborate,” said Francisco Nemenzo, a University of the Philippines chancellor who has studied both groups.

Still, the YOU has adopted Communist-style jargon and organization. It builds “cells,” coordinates “plenums,” and holds “self-criticism sessions.” It seeks civilian fronts, recruiting among students, labor and other groups. And it claims 198 “collectives” with three to seven members each.

Military officials scoff, saying they’ve identified only 40 core members in an officer corps of nearly 15,000. “But we really don’t know exactly how big it is,” says Rafael Ileto, head of the National Security Council. “It’s one of those nebulous things. It’s more a movement than an organization.”

One senior officer said the group has a strong appeal, however. “How can we fight nationalism?” he asked. “How can we fight Filipinism? It is very difficult. . . . The majority of my men are probably sympathizers.”

By its own account, the YOU was secretly launched in August, 1988, by six captains and lieutenants disillusioned with the fugitive colonels and generals leading RAM. The so-called Ramboys helped bring Aquino to power in 1986 but then tried and failed six times to overthrow her.

In the most recent attempt, rebel junior officers of the Scout Ranger Regiment, an elite army commando unit, took over Manila’s Makati financial district as the coup was collapsing, trapping thousands of terrified tourists and residents for five days.

Intelligence officials now say the leaders of that siege, particularly Maj. Abraham Purugganan, acted without consulting senior officers in RAM who had organized the coup. Purugganan is now a leader of YOU. He is also a fugitive who carries a telephone beeper on his belt and a $40,000 price on his head.

The group finally went public in April this year, claiming credit after 15 hooded commandos carrying cases of beer for the wardens raided the city jail and freed Lt. Col. Billy Bibit, a key coup plotter. Military officials suspect that Bibit, now in the underground, has directed the Manila bombing campaign.

Until recently, Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos denounced the YOU as either a phantom organization or a RAM-controlled political front designed to revive RAM’s sagging credibility. If so, the YOU has consciously rejected much of RAM’s style.

Unlike RAM’s well-known and flamboyant fugitive leader, Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan, all YOU spokesmen and leaders use the same anonymous nom de guerre: “Capt. Carlos Maglalang.” In a May meeting with Philippine reporters, all six ostensible rebels identified themselves as Carlos Maglalang.

“They want to avoid a cult of personality,” said one local reporter who attended the session.

And unlike RAM, the YOU warns it will “conduct military actions” to force the United States to close military bases in the Philippines. Some diplomats suspect they were responsible for grenade attacks earlier this year on a U.S. Embassy residential compound and a U.S. Information Service library, both in Manila. Damage was slight and there were no injuries.

Officials say the YOU has mostly recruited 1978 to 1988 graduates of the Philippine Military Academy, which is modeled after West Point. They are under age 35 and mostly below the rank of major. That makes them too young to be tainted, as RAM leaders are, for having enforced Draconian martial-law decrees for former President Ferdinand E. Marcos.

“There seems to be a generation gap,” said Nemenzo. “I think there is a process of alienation from RAM. But their links are still strong.”

At least one YOU recruiting session was held in the officers club at Camp Aguinaldo, headquarters of the Defense Department, according to testimony before a presidential commission studying last December’s failed coup.

Maj. Erasto L. Sanchez, commander of a paramilitary police station south of Manila, told the panel that a fellow PMA graduate tried to recruit him at his house last October. He said officers were targeted “if they think . . . you are, shall we say, subversive minded.”

While Sanchez said he did not join, a young Scout Ranger patrolling recently on a provincial road north of Manila clearly had. He had penned his sympathies in large letters on the canvas top of his boots: “Makati Warrior.”

Asked where he was during the December siege, he replied, “I was a sniper in the Twin Towers,” a plush condominium complex. Asked about his current plans, he grinned under his dark Ray-Bans and fingered the grenades on his belt.

“I’m waiting for the next one,” he said.