Coup Bid Thwarted in Philippines : Revolt: Men with drugged food and dynamite wrapped as Christmas presents hoped to blow up military jets and spark an uprising.

When Philippine President Corazon Aquino named a new armed forces chief of staff in a brass-and-bugles ceremony Friday, she boasted to the assembled soldiers and diplomats that the collapse of seven attempted right-wing military coups since 1986 “shows the strength of our democracy.”

On Saturday, her newly designated military chief, Maj. Gen. Rodolfo Biazon, was able to boast that he had foiled yet another coup attempt, perhaps the strangest yet.

Biazon said that four men drove into a major Philippine air base north of Manila on Friday night with a pot of barbiturate-laced goat stew and 26 bundled sticks of dynamite wrapped as Christmas presents. Their plan, he said, was to drug the troops at a party, steal their V-150 armored personnel carrier, and blow up the aircraft and 810,000 gallons of jet fuel stored at the base.

Thanks to a tip, the air force had flown all six F-5A jets out of Basa Air Base and had special troops on the lookout. The four men, including a renegade army captain convicted in absentia Wednesday with 80 others for a failed 1987 coup, were captured. Two other carloads of mutineers, parked outside the base, escaped.

“This was supposed to be a signal for another coup attempt,” Biazon said at a news conference. But he said that no other rebel troop movements had been noted and that no coup was likely to succeed.

“Considering that there was a party, with children and women, it could have led to a massacre of innocent civilians,” he added.

It was an auspicious start for a controversial general whose main qualification as military chief, according to his many critics, is his loyalty to Aquino’s ever-threatened government. He played a key role in crushing last December’s coup attempt, which left at least 113 people dead.

Aquino said that Biazon, 55, would serve only until he reaches retirement age next April. It was a face-saving measure, designed to thank Biazon but not to further divide the already fragmented armed forces. His replacement in April will be a less controversial figure.

“It was a very Philippine solution,” said one brigadier general, who, like many of his colleagues, considers Biazon too outspoken, too hot-tempered and too political. “It was a compromise we can live with.”

Filipinos are living with a lot of compromises this bleak holiday season.

The reasons are mostly economic. Facing soaring costs for oil from the Mideast and drastically shrinking foreign reserves, the government raised fuel prices by an average of one-third early this month. Within days, prices were up for rice, chicken, transport, fertilizer and other necessities.

The fuel hikes revealed remarkable government disarray. Prices actually were adjusted up and down three times in six days, the last two times after Aquino appeared on national TV to publicly appeal to her own energy board. At one point, gasoline prices were up by 130%, but then fell again.

“It showed incredible ineptitude,” said Rodolfo Romero, a lawyer and business columnist. Homobono Adaza, a lawyer allied with anti-Aquino politicians, agreed, saying, “I have never seen such a level of nincompoopery in government.”

The economic news has been almost all bad. Foreign investments have plummeted, the trade imbalance is worsening, and capital flight is growing, according to the Central Bank. The National Economic Development Authority forecasts more unemployment and inflation next year of 16% to 20%, compared to about 12% this year.

Partially to appease public anger, Aquino replaced her much-maligned executive secretary, Catalino Macaraig, with Transport Secretary Oscar Orbos, an energetic young politician with a flair for publicity. She also accepted the resignation of her unpopular trade and industry secretary, Jose S. Concepcion Jr., but has found no one yet willing to take his job. A further Cabinet revamp is expected.

For now, the usually glittering Christmas lights along Ayala Avenue, the bustling center of the Makati business district, are mostly dark. Hotels are strangely quiet, shopkeepers are selling fewer toys and more basic goods, and travel agents complain that fewer Filipinos are traveling. Companies are holding fewer Christmas parties and warning of layoffs.

While calls for a national strike have fizzled, small street protests are staged almost daily now to demand Aquino’s resignation. The protesters, led by supporters of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, claim to have collected nearly 1 million signatures for her ouster but have offered no proof. Former Aquino supporters also have rallied to demand price rollbacks.

And military leaders are hardly sanguine. Outgoing armed forces chief of staff Gen. Renato de Villa said recently that a spate of more than 40 bombings, most of them inconsequential, in Manila last fall involved “an operational alliance” between right-wing rebels and Communist guerrillas.