TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/83/83capts.3

Text File | 1990-12-01 | 22KB | 366 lines

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/                                                3««An Uncertain New Era

September 5, 1983

With Aquino dead, the chances for post-Marcos stability grow dim

The journey had begun in the hope of political reconciliation.  It
ended in a puddle of blood on the tarmac at Manila International
Airport.  Yet there was nothing quixotic in the final odyssey of
Philippine Opposition Leader Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino Jr.  He may even
have known that his murder (if such were to be his fate) would
galvanize his countrymen.  And so it did.  Hour after hour, for three
long days last week, the mourners, eventually 300,000 in all, filed
past his glass-covered coffin at the Aquino family home in a suburb of
Manila.  What they saw was not pretty.  Aquino's body had been
embalmed, but the marks of the assassin's bullet were still horribly
visible on his face.  When the body was moved to a nearby church,
where it would lie in state until Saturday, some 30,000 people joined
the procession, chanting, "Ni-noy! Ni-noy!" and, in scattered
instances, "Himagsikan!" (Revolution!).

Suddenly, violently, Philippine politics had entered an uncertain new
era, and the 17-year-old regime of President Ferdinand Marcos seemed
vulnerable.  Many in Manila have believed for some time that Marcos,
65, is chronically ill--a kidney ailment and lupus erythematosus are
the most common rumors--and a peaceful succession is by no means
certain.  Marcos' authoritarian rule, coupled with a deepening
economic crisis, has fostered widespread apathy and cynicism, and
driven many young Filipinos into the country's small but increasingly
troublesome Communist movement.  That has weakened the nonviolent
center and raised the chances of a post-Marcos military takeover.  To
many analysis, Aquino was the only opposition figure capable of
uniting a broad spectrum of political opinion and, perhaps,
engineering a peaceful return to democracy.  That, in fact, was his
purpose in returning home after three years of exile in the U.S.  His
assassination has created a serious leadership vacuum in the
opposition and dimmed the chances for stability after Marcos.

The prospect of turmoil in the strategic islands sent a shudder
through Washington.  After damning the "cowardly and despicable"
assassination, the Reagan Administration called for a thorough and
independent investigation of the killing.  Even officials who knew and
liked Aquino took pains to point out that nothing must jeopardize the
special relationship between the two countries and, specifically, the
vital U.S. bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay in the Philippines.  The
problem was doubly sensitive because Reagan is scheduled to visit
Manila in November as part of a five-nation asian tour.  Despite calls
for its cancellation by individuals including Senator Edward M.
Kennedy of Massachusetts, some Congressmen and Filipino Americans, the
visit was still on a week's end.  But American officials made no secret of
their anxiety over the future of the Philippines.  For it was the charismatic
Aquino who had personified U.S. hopes that a post-Marcos government could be
popular and pro-American.

Aquino was both.  The scion of a prominent family, he seemed destined
for the presidency of his country.  At age 22, he was the youngest
major in the Philippines.  At 29, he was its youngest Governor and at
34, its youngest Senator.  By his 40th year, in 1972, Aquino was the
clear front runner to succeed Marcos, who was finishing his second
term under the old, democratic constitution and could not run again.

The Marcos declared martial law, extending his rule by decree, and
began jailing his political opponents, starting with the man widely
known as "the boy wonder from Tarlac."  Aquino was convicted of
murder, rape, illegal possession of firearms and "subversion," charges
few took seriously, and sentenced to die.  He spent 7 1/2 years in
prison, maintaining a complex love-hate relationship with Marcos (see
box).  In 1978, while in solitary confinement, Aquino very nearly
defeated the President's wife Imelda in an election for the National
Assembly.

Aquino's imprisonment ended in 1980, when, amid pleas from the Carter
Administration, he was allowed to go to the U.S. for heart surgery.
He remained for three years, settling with his wife Corazon and their
five children near Boston, where he took up research fellowships at
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During his stay in the U.S., Aquino freely granted interviews,
testified before congressional committees, and kept in touch with
exile opposition groups.  Gradually, the yen to return grew stronger,
and last spring he began openly discussing the possibility of going
home.  That, in turn, prompted a special meeting with Imelda Marcos in
New York City last May.  Alternately pleading, threatening and
cajoling, Imelda pressed Aquino to stay where he was, warning him that
his life would be in danger in Manila.  "Ninoy, there are people loyal
to us who cannot be controlled," she reportedly said.

Aquino persisted.  Remaining in exile, he believed, would mean
allowing events in the Philippines to pass him by.  The Philippine
consulate in New York refused to issue passports to his family,
however, prompting an exchange of public statements across the
pacific.  Aquino stood on his right as a Philippine citizen to return
home.  The government reiterated the old subversion charges against
him and maintained that it could not guarantee his safety, claiming
that assassins were waiting for him.  At times, Marcos seemed almost
irrationally determined to keep him out, and Aquino was just as
irrationally determined to return.  When Aquino announced that he
would be arriving in Manila aboard a Japan Air Lines flight on Aug. 7,
the government threatened to revoke the landing rights of any carrier
bringing in undocumented passengers.  JAL backed out, and Aquino's
homecoming was delayed.

By that time, it was clear that the dangers facing him in the
Philippines were real.  Friends pleaded with Aquino to stay in the
U.S.; he seemed almost fatalistic in his insistence on returning,
convinced that he was destined to play a crucial role in the post-
Marcos transition.  "I'm committed to return," he told a friend from
childhood.  "If Fate falls that I should be killed, so be it."  Aquino
liked to recall Jose Rizal, a Filipino patriot who returned from exile
before he was executed by a Spanish firing squad in 1986.  Rizal's
death sparked the Philippine war of independence.

Aquino left the U.S. on Aug. 14 and spent a week visiting several
Asian capitals.  Though the first part of his trip was kept secret,
Aquino's arrival in Manila was widely expected.  The city was
festooned with yellow ribbons hung out by Aquino supporters, and an
estimated 20,000 of them, including his 75-year-old mother Aurora, had
gathered at the airport to greet him.  So had government security
forces.  The airport was cordoned off by the Aviation Security
Command, AVSECOM, a special unit created to guarantee the security of
the nation's airports.  Two weeks earlier, AVSECOM had been
transferred from the control of the airport authority to the personal
command of an air force brigadier general.  Inside the terminal, the
passenger lobby was closed.  Outside, on the tarmac, a phalanx of
soldiers armed with M-16 rifles waited a China Airlines Flight 811
taxied toward Gate 8.  By then, Aquino's ebullience had vanished.
Dressed in a white safari suit and a bulletproof vest that he had put
on just before landing, Aquino waited calmly as three soldiers in
khaki uniforms entered the plane.  He was aware of the threat of
General Fabian Ver, the armed forces chief of staff, to send him "back
on the same plane he arrived on."

Instead, the three men muscled past passengers standing in the aisle
and, surrounding Aquino, moved him toward the exit jetway.  When
reporters, who had accompanied Aquino on the journey from Taipei,
tried to follow, they were halted at the door by two men in white
uniforms.  By then Aquino was already outside on the metal platform at
the top of the stairs leading to the tarmac.  He was surrounded by at
least five uniformed men.  Reporters tried to open the door to follow,
but were rebuffed by the guards, one of whom reached back and shoved a
television cameraman, forcing the rest of the group back against the
jetway's opposite bulkhead and closing the door.

At that moment, a shot rang out, then two more.  The reporters rushed
to the windows in the plane's first-class compartment and saw Aquino
lying face down on the pavement, a gaping hole in the back of his
head.  The khaki-clad guards who had taken him from the plan were
nowhere to be seen, and the area was swarming with blue-uniformed
AVESCOM troops.  Next to a van, two of the troopers looked on as a
third pumped at least eight bullets into the body of a man dressed in
a blue Philippine Airlines maintenance worker's shirt and jeans.  With
other soldiers outside firing rifles into the air, the reporters dived
for cover, but not before seeing Aquino's limp body being loaded into
the van, which then sped off.  In all, less than 30 seconds had
elapsed.

At the terminal building, Aquino's well-wishers waited, carrying
banners with slogans like We Love You, Ninoy and Hindi Ka Nag-Iisa,
Ninoy (You're not alone, Ninoy).  As dazed passengers from Flight 811
filed into the terminal, one of them recounted the shooting to former
Senator Salvador Laurel, an opposition leader who headed the
welcoming throng.  "I have sad news for you," Laurel quickly told the
crowd of Aquino supporters through a bullhorn.  "Ninoy, our beloved,
is back, but you might not be able to see him.  Eyewitnesses say he
has been shot."  Aquino's sister Tessie broke into sobs; his mother
took the news stoically.  The crowd dispersed, and the Aquino family
arrived at home in time to hear a radio announcement that Ninoy was
dead on arrival at Fort Bonifacio military hospital.

In the absence of any coherent accounts of the shooting, the capital
began buzzing with rumors.  Marcos was seriously ill or already dead,
went one version, and the military had killed Aquino as part of a coup
d'etat.  A power outage through out much of the island of Luzon, where
Manila is located, was attributed to sabotage.  There were reports of
bombings and arson, a run on the banks, even a spree of panic buying
in grocery stores and at gas stations.  Finally Marcos, whose absence
from public view for two weeks had helped fuel all the speculation,
called a news conference Monday night, 30 hours after the killing.
Reiterating that he had "practically begged" Aquino not to come home,
the President asserted that the airport security guards had tried,
using their bodies, to shield Aquino from the assassin.  The still
unidentified killer apparently was a professional and, Marcos said got
"within 16 to 18 inches" of his victim.  He was armed with a Smith and
Wesson .357 magnum and fired one shot.  Later, officials provided more
details.  The assassin was 5 ft. 6 in. tall, between 30 and 35 years
old and weighed 170 lbs.  He carried no identification.  The only
clues were a gold ring, engraved with the letter R, and the name Rolly
sewn in his shorts.

Given the extraordinary security around the airport, the explanation
raised more questions than it answered.  "How was it that the assassin
knew exactly where to wait for Senator Aquino?"  demanded Laurel in an
emotional speech before Parliament.  "How was it that he was allowed
to approach the plane?"  Laurel also wondered about the three men who
escorted Aquino off the plane.  "What are their names, to what units
do they belong, and who are their commanders?"

Still, it seemed absurd that Marcos himself would order his old enemy
to be killed so clumsily.  Most speculation centered on two sources:
the radical left, which would stand to benefit from a weakening of the
moderate opposition and a brutal blow to Marcos' reputation; and, more
plausibly, some of the President's senior aides.  While still in the
U.S., Aquino had told TIME that he feared the loyalist forces around
Marcos more than he did the President.  The reason:  in the long run,
Aquino felt, he would be an obstacle to their political ambitions.
Aquino was known to fear Armed Forces Chief Ver above all others in
the Marcos circle.  A four-star general who was once Marcos' driver
and bodyguard, Ver is considered to be totally loyal to the President
and is widely regarded as the second most powerful man in the
Philippines.

Wherever the guilt lay, Aquino's death has fundamentally altered
Philippine politics at a time when Marcos  can least afford it.
Parliamentary elections are to be held next year, and in recent months
it seemed there was a chance they would be fair, which boded well for
future stability.  If, at the same time, a spirit of reconciliation
could be fostered among the country's major forces--Marcos, the Roman
Catholic Church, the army and the opposition--the elections might have
been credible.  That, in turn, could have led to open debate, brought
more young people into the political mainstream, improved the
country's economic climate and generally bettered the prospects for a
peaceful power shift when Marcos eventually departed from the scene.

If that process has been derailed, Marcos faces the prospect of
spending his final years in power without any clear direction.  Under
martial law, the Philippine military has been transformed from a
small, apolitical force into a bloated guarantor of Marcos' power.
The country's institutions, from city halls to the courts to the
press, have been emasculated.  The economy has been crippled by "crony
capitalism," a system that saw the government pour hundreds of
millions of dollars into a handful of companies controlled by the
President's friends.

When times were relatively prosperous, most of the 50 million
Filipinos tolerated martial law.  But like many developing countries,
the Philippines was hit hard by the worldwide economic slowdown and
the prolonged slump in commodity prices.  As the pie shrank, so did
public tolerance for repression.  Inexorably, the radical left, a
negligible force when Marcos took power, gained strength.

Western analysts estimate that the New People's Army (N.P.A.), a loose
association of radical nationalists inspired by Mao, now has 7,000 to
10,000 armed members, supported by a base of 100,000 sympathizers.
The movement's greatest strength is concentrated in northern Luzon,
Samar, and in eastern Mindanao, where N.P.A. bands, sometimes
numbering as many as 200 guerrillas, have attacked military outposts
and where the organization claims to control 200 villages.  The
government has dealt harshly with the Communist insurgents, publishing
lists of the most wanted leaders and offering rewards for their
capture, and jailing Catholic clergy suspected of helping them.

The Reagan Administration had been quietly pressing Marcos for some
time to institute democratic reforms.  With the assassination,
however, Washington suddenly found itself facing an unexpected
dilemma:  How to keep the Philippine regime at arm's length without
compromising U.S. strategic interests.  The Administration quickly
rejected calls to send a delegation to Aquino's funeral.  Instead,
officials decided that the "proper" representative was Michael
Armacost, the U.S. Ambassador in Manila.  Likewise, Reagan decided not
to cancel his November visit too hastily.  Such a move, officials
argued, would amount to prejudging Marcos.  Washington, however, did
put considerable pressure on the Philippine President to appoint an
independent committee to investigate the murder and "swiftly and
vigorously track down the perpetrators of this political assassination
. . . and punish them to the full extent of the law."  The move put
some space between Washington and Manila and left open the possibility
that Reagan could say no to the visit at a later date, if the Marcos
government is indeed implicated.  At midweek Marcos announced the
formation of a five-member fact-finding judicial commission to probe
the assassination.  Critics charged at once that the commission, which
contained no opposition figures, is unlikely to be impartial.  Marcos
named the very independent Cardinal Sin to the panel, but the
respected prelate refused to participate.  Publicly, the Cardinal
pleaded conflicting religious duties.  Privately, and aide reportedly
claimed, he felt he would be a "voice in the wilderness."

As events took their course in Manila last week, there was an uneasy
feeling that the Philippines may have crossed a dangerous new
threshold, that perhaps the old, more civilized rules of politics no
longer applied.  As Governor Homobono Adaza of the province of Misamis
Oriental told TIME's Nelly Sindayen:  "If a guy like Ninoy can be
killed, then just about anybody can be killed now without qualms,
without conscience."

--By John Nielsen.  Reported by Sandra Burton/ Manila and Ross H.
Munro/Washington


"He Would Be Lonely Without Me"

During a four-hour conversation that began in Taipei and continued
aboard the flight to Manila, where he met his death, Benigno Aquino
discussed his hopes and fears with TIME Correspondent Sandra Burton.
Excerpts:

On his relationship with Marcos.  I would write him from jail, telling
him what my notions were.  Sometimes he would call me presumptuous,
but he would acknowledge the letter.  One day when I talked to him in
the palace, he said, "In a way, I envy you.  You have earned your
presence in history.  I'm still fighting for mine.  You have the
luxury of communing with the gods and with the writers in prison,
unmolested by anybody.  You can pick up your book and talk to Plato
one minute and to Toynbee the next, while I have to talk to all of
these jokers."

Four times Marcos asked me, "Brother,* what would you do if I released
you tomorrow?"  I said, "I don't know, because you keep me in the
dark.  I have not received any newspapers in five years.  If people
are happy, I'll just go home to my province and retire there, but if
they are unhappy, then you can bet I'll be mounting a soap box.  So if
you think you've done well, release me. If not, don't release me,
because it would only exacerbate the situation."  He wanted me to give
my word that I was throwing in the towel.  Finally he said, "The law
will have to take its course, suit yourself," and he gave me the death
sentence.  But they never carried it out.  I always felt that he might
not like me, but that I was a sparring mate for him, and he would be
lonely without me.

On the President.  Marcos is undergoing the tragedy of longevity in
office.  If he had  pulled off the economic miracle, he could have
gone down as one of the great Presidents.  Unfortunately, he had no
notion of the economic pitfalls, and he overborrowed and relied too
much on technocrats.  He was never an economist.  You can be
authoritarian in Asia, provided there is an economic trade-off.

I happen to believe that Marcos is the only man who can return
democracy peacefully.  Before martial law the army did not participate
in government, but they have tasted blood and power.  Marcos made them
partners.  As long as he is alive, it's O.K., the army is loyal to
him.  But he dies, they will take over.  If that should happen, there
would be polarization, and the left could come to power.

On how Aquino planned to campaign.  I am not saying if we move in, we
can solve the problems.  Even St. Peter could not do that, but it we
have a credible election in the Philippines, it will restore people's
faith in some kind of institution.  Today the people have no respect
for anything.  If you let this drift continue, then five years from
now the left will be a factor in the Philippines.  We can't win as
long as Marcos is counting the votes, but we can force him to spend
billions of pesos.

Some people have said I can be as  ruthless as Marcos.  I don't deny
that.  I admit you cannot run the Philippines with weak leadership.  I
believe in a strong presidency, but a strong presidency with checks: a
free judiciary and a free press.  I would call in the business
community, lock them up in the University of the Philippines, and tell
them, "O.K., you are the guys most concerned.  You work out your
program and then give me your recommendations."

On relations with the U.S.  Since Reagan won, the Americans have
really distanced themselves from me.  They look at me as a Dennis the
Menace.  I am a product of their system.  But at the same time, while
I may be a hard bargainer, they would much rather have me than the
Communists.  They may not love me, but they are stuck.  I am realistic
enough to know that you cannot demand removal of U.S. bases without
encountering the ire of the U.S.

On the Communist insurgents.  I would be ruthless and tell the
Communists, "You will be legitimized, you are going to have your
chance to speak out.  But don't forget:  if you pick up the gun,
you're illegal.  If I pick it up, I'm legal.  I can shoot you like a
dog, so don't force my hand like that."

* Marcos and Aquino were fraternity brothers at the University of the
Philippines.