Monday, Mar. 10, 1986
By William E. Smith.
"Senator,
what do you think? Should I step down?"
It was the
second time that Paul Laxalt, the Nevada
Republican and personal friend of Ronald
Reagan's, had spoken that day with Ferdinand
Marcos, the beleaguered President of the
Philippines. At 2 o'clock (EST) last Monday
afternoon, Marcos telephoned Laxalt, who had
visited Manila in October as a special
emissary, with an urgent question: Was it
true, as U.S. Ambassador Stephen Bosworth had
told him, that President Reagan was calling
for a "peaceful transition to a new
government" in the Philippines? While the two
men talked, Laxalt said later, it became
apparent that Marcos was "hanging on, looking
for a life preserver. He was a desperate man
clutching at straws." He asked whether the
reference to a "peaceful transition" meant he
should stay on until 1987, when his current
term was originally supposed to end, and he
wondered whether some sort of power-sharing
arrangement with the Philippine opposition
could be worked out.
Marcos spoke
of his fear that his palace was about to be
attacked, but seemed determined to stay on as
President. At Marcos' request, Laxalt then
went to the White House, where he discussed
the conversation with Reagan and Secretary of
State George Shultz. The President repeated
his desire for a peaceful, negotiated
settlement in the Philippines and said once
more that Marcos would be welcome if he
decided to seek sanctuary in the U.S. But
Reagan said he thought the idea of power
sharing was impractical and that it would be
undignified for Marcos to stay on as a
"consultant."
At 4:15 p.m.
Laxalt called Marcos, who immediately asked
whether Reagan wanted him to step down. Laxalt
said the President was not in a position to
make that kind of demand. Then Marcos put the
question directly to Laxalt: What should he
do? Replied the Senator: "Mr. President, I'm
not bound by diplomatic restraint. I'm talking
only for myself. I think you should cut and
cut cleanly. The time has come." There was a
long pause that to Laxalt seemed interminable.
Finally he asked, "Mr. President, are you
still there?" Marcos replied, in a subdued
voice, "Yes, I'm still here. I am so very,
very disappointed."
In Manila it
was after 5 o'clock in the morning of the
longest day of Ferdinand Marcos' life. Before
it was over, he would attend his final
inauguration ceremony, a foolish charade
carried out in the sanctuary of his Malacanang
Palace. That evening, a ruler no more, he
would flee with his family and retainers
aboard four American helicopters to Clark Air
Base on the first leg of a flight that would
take him to Guam, Hawaii and exile.
That same
night, to mark the end of his increasingly
authoritarian 20-year rule, millions of his
countrymen would stage one of the biggest
celebrations in the Philippines since its
deliverance from the Japanese in 1945 and its
independence from the U.S. in 1946. At the
Malacanang Palace, giddy with excitement,
hundreds of Filipinos would scale fences and
storm their way through locked doors in order
to glimpse--and in some cases to loot--the
ornate Spanish-style palace that had served as
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos' seat of almost
absolute power.
If there was
something inexplicable about the mass
phenomenon that rescued the island nation from
a failing dictatorship, enabling thousands of
unarmed civilians to protect one faction of
the armed forces from the other, there was no
doubt when the process began. It was Aug. 21,
1983, on the tarmac at Manila international
airport. On that day, Opposition Politician
Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino Jr., 50, returning
from three years of self-imposed exile in the
U.S., was slain by a single bullet as he
stepped off a jetliner into a crowd of
soldiers and well-wishers. Though Marcos tried
to put the blame on Communist agitators, one
Filipino civilian and 25 members of the
military, including General Fabian Ver, the
armed forces Chief of Staff and Marcos
stalwart, were indicted on charges of
conspiracy to commit murder. The defendants
were acquitted in December after a yearlong
trial, but few Filipinos doubted their guilt.
The Aquino
murder shocked and angered the country,
sparking popular demonstrations and
intensifying the disaffection with Marcos. It
infuriated thousands of professional military
men, who bitterly resented the politicization
that the armed forces were undergoing and the
hatred that this process was engendering. Of
the assassination, Colonel Gregorio Honosan
says today, "From a military viewpoint, it is
technically impossible to get inside a cordon
of 2,000 men, so this reinforced our belief
that nobody in government could be safe."
The
assassination produced a sharp increase in the
size and intensity of Communist guerrilla
activity by the military organization called
the New People's Army. Though the insurgency
is concentrated on Mindanao and some other
southern islands, it spread after the Aquino
assassination to 60 of the country's 74
provinces. In addition, the killing of Aquino
created a nationwide crisis of confidence that
caused the already stagnant economy to spiral
downward, even as most other Southeast Asian
nations were prospering. After the
assassination, says an American official, "all
these concerns took a quantum leap."
Two of the
most important elements of Philippine society,
the church and the military, began quickly
turning against Marcos. The Archbishop of
Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, is a powerful
figure in a country nominally 85% Roman
Catholic, and his opposition to Marcos was
clear. He increasingly and openly encouraged
opposition political figures.
The revolt
in the armed forces began to take shape as
long ago as 1977, when a power struggle within
the Marcos government eroded the influence of
the President's longtime political ally
Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. "It began
as a self-defense action," recalls Navy
Captain Rex Robles, a spokesman for the Reform
the Armed Forces Movement, which Enrile now
confirms he clandestinely helped establish.
Realizing that he was being pushed aside in a
power struggle with General Ver, Enrile, a
Harvard-trained lawyer, began to work secretly
to protect himself and lay the groundwork for
the inevitable post-Marcos period.
Late last
fall events began to move rapidly. In
November, Marcos declared that he would hold a
special presidential election to convince the
Reagan Administration that he still enjoyed
popular support. A month later, immediately
following the acquittal of Ver, Corazon Aquino
announced that she would challenge Marcos for
the presidency. Cardinal Sin then helped
persuade former Senator Salvador Laurel to
join the Aquino ticket. In the meantime Enrile
had been building his reform-movement, a
highly visible band of about 100 well-trained
soldiers whose aim was not to topple Marcos
but to pressure him to reorganize the
military. Throughout the election campaign,
while Enrile publicly supported Marcos, his
reformers conducted a crusade for honest
voting that angered the President and the Ver
faction in the military. The reformers in turn
were enraged by the strong-arm methods used by
the pro-Marcos forces in the vote counting,
and even more by the assassination of Evelio
Javier, a leading opposition figure.
Nonetheless they remained inactive because
they wanted to appear impartial. The military
men had already established links with Corazon
Aquino, and before the campaign had helped
train her security detail.
Once the
voting was over, the reformers prepared to
take a more active part in the efforts to
topple Marcos. By this time they had won the
support of some of the Marcos family's closest
security forces. Says one reformist: "I don't
think the President thought that so many of
his praetorian guards would turn against him.
He thought money could buy loyalty. He
underestimated the basic decency of
Filipinos." The group tested palace security
by smuggling cars filled with empty boxes into
the palace grounds. Since nobody bothered to
stop them, they realized they would be able to
bring in explosives if they should choose to
do so. Two weeks ago the reformers learned
that they were in imminent danger. As the
first step in a byzantine crackdown, Marcos
arrested a group of soldiers. Though these
troops were not members of the reform
movement, the reformers theorized that the men
would be used to incriminate them. The rebels
suspected that the threatened crackdown was a
maneuver by Ver and his supporters to
reinforce their links with Marcos. At the same
time, however, there were reports that some
sort of coup might actually be in the making.
Immediately
the reformers decided to accelerate their
plans. They reached Enrile, who was sitting in
the coffeehouse in the Atrium building in
Makati, and informed him of what was
happening. On Saturday, Feb. 22, Enrile
resigned from the government and announced
that he was joining the opposition forces.
Some of Enrile's reformist colleagues tried to
convince him that such a move would merely
forewarn Marcos of the group's intentions, but
he insisted, "I just cannot do this to the
President otherwise."
The decision
made, he sought Lieut. General Fidel Ramos'
help. "I called Eddie. I had never discussed
anything with him over the years, except in
terms of the reform movement's general lack of
aggressive intentions and its interest in
institutional change. I told him, 'My boys are
in this predicament, and I will have to be
with them. I would like to find out whether
you will join us or not.' General Ramos said,
'I am with you all the way.' "
At the
moment of showdown, Cardinal Sin again played
a crucial role. He publicly praised Enrile and
Ramos, and called on the Philippine people to
take to the streets in peaceful support of
them. Radio Veritas, the Catholic station,
became the unofficial broadcaster of the
rebellion, reporting on military units that
had joined the opposition and giving
instructions to crowds.
In the end
the ailing Marcos, who is reported to be
suffering from a form of systemic lupus
erythematosus, a disease in which human
antibodies attack the body's tissue,
especially the kidneys, was woefully
uninformed as to what the reformers were
really up to and how much support they had
gained. Says Enrile: "Evidently the President
was a captive of a group in the military. That
was the sad thing about it."
Reagan
Administration policy during the final hours
of the Marcos reign was set during a meeting
last Sunday morning in the Bethesda, Md., home
of Secretary of State George Shultz, at which
the President's special envoy, Philip Habib,
who had returned from Manila only hours
before, presented a report on his trip. In
attendance were Caspar Weinberger, the
Secretary of Defense; Admiral William Crowe
Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Robert Gates, deputy director for intelligence
of the Central Intelligence Agency; and John
Poindexter, the National Security Adviser.
Also present were three officials who had been
preoccupied with the Philippine crisis for
months: Michael Armacost, Under Secretary of
State for Political Affairs; Paul Wolfowitz,
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian
and Pacific Affairs; and Richard Armitage,
Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Policy.
The group
agreed on four principles, which were
subsequently presented to President Reagan:
Marcos' ability to govern with the consent of
his people had ended; any effort by him to
crush the reform movement would only worsen
the situation; it was of great importance to
the U.S. that force not be used; and it would
be damaging to U.S. standing in the world if
Marcos were treated like the Shah of Iran, who
was admitted to the U.S. for medical treatment
but was not permitted by the Carter
Administration to remain. As it turned out,
Marcos was less worried about the fate of the
Shah than about what happened to Ngo Dinh
Diem, the South Vietnamese President who was
assassinated during a 1963 coup. Says one
senior American official: "He wanted to make
sure he did not leave with a bullet."
President
Reagan, who had once solidly supported Marcos,
quickly accepted the four-point policy.
Reagan's views had already been shifting
during the previous three weeks. Indeed, in
response to Marcos' deteriorating situation,
he had moved rapidly from his dismaying remark
after the election that there had probably
been voting fraud on both sides to a White
House statement condemning the election as
fatally flawed by fraud, most of it on the
part of the Marcos forces.
At a
Sunday-afternoon meeting of the National
Security Council, Special Envoy Habib reported
flatly, "The Marcos era has ended." Shultz
summarized the views of the participants by
saying that "not a person here" believed
Marcos could remain in power, adding, "He's
had it." President Reagan agreed but remained
concerned about the fate of Marcos. Said
Reagan: "We'll treat this man in retirement
with dignity. He is not to wander."
By then the
Administration was emphasizing as strongly as
possible that Marcos should avoid a military
showdown. On Saturday, Reagan sent the
Philippine leader an appeal not to use force
to remain in power. Next day he dispatched a
second message, advising Marcos that he as
well as his family and close associates was
welcome to live in the U.S. White House
Spokesman Larry Speakes announced that
American military aid to the Philippines would
be cut off if troops loyal to Marcos used the
army against the Philippine reform movement
forces led by Enrile and Ramos. On Sunday
evening, Shultz and Under Secretary of State
Armacost met at the State Department with Blas
Ople, Marcos' Minister of Labor, who had come
to Washington to plead the Philippine
President's case. According to Ople, the
American diplomats gave him a blunt message:
Marcos had lost control of his army, the
troops under General Ver were ineffectual, and
if Marcos did not step down, the country could
be heading for civil war. A similar statement
was sent to the U.S. Ambassador in Manila,
Stephen Bosworth, who took it to Marcos.
It was early
Monday morning before Ople finally managed to
talk to Marcos by telephone. The Philippine
President was angry that while his palace was
being threatened and his television station
taken over, the U.S. was telling him not to
defend himself. He told Ople that Mrs. Marcos
was there beside him and "she doesn't want to
leave." Later that day, at about the same time
Marcos was calling Senator Laxalt, Imelda
Marcos telephoned Nancy Reagan. The message
was the same: Mrs. Reagan urged the Marcoses
to avoid bloodshed, expressed concern for
their family, and assured Mrs. Marcos that
they were welcome to come to the U.S.
The
Administration was worried about General Ver,
who on Monday was still in a position to
attempt a last-gasp military move. There were
reports that he was about to send tanks to
attack the reformers. Accordingly, the
National Security Council sent a message to
Ver advising him that it would not be in his
"interest" to make a military move.
Translation: if he called out troops, he would
forfeit his chance of being included in the
Marcos rescue operation. The warning was
heeded.
In the
period following the Aquino assassination,
American policymakers had become increasingly
concerned about the Philippines' rapid
political and economic decline. One particular
concern was the future status of the two large
U.S. military installations in the
Philippines, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay
Naval Base. The leases on those facilities
will run out in 1991, but the U.S. hopes that
they can be renegotiated. Following a 1984
policy review by the National Security
Council, which concluded that Marcos would
"try to remain in power indefinitely," the
Administration began to work for economic,
political and military reform in the
Philippines. Shultz laid down the overriding
principle: the U.S. must be loyal to the
institutions of democracy, not to Marcos.
In October,
Reagan sent Senator Laxalt to Manila to tell
Marcos that changes had to be made. Said
Laxalt last week: "He was getting messages
through State, but he just wasn't believing
them." Laxalt told him that the Philippine
army had to spend more time dealing with the
Communist insurgents.
Pressure on
Marcos was also building in the U.S. Congress.
Senator Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican and
chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,
who headed an official American team of poll
watchers that observed the elections,
concluded that there had been many instances
of fraud, vote tampering, violence and
intimidation by Marcos partisans. In a
telephone conversation with Marcos just after
the voting, Laxalt observed that certain
aspects of the elections had been "rather
strange," such as reports that Marcos had
carried one province by a vote of 13,000 to 0.
That was not a province, it was a precinct,
said Marcos, and "it was family." When Laxalt
answered, "I doubt very much if I ran in my
home district I would get all the votes of my
family," Marcos, who knew that the Senator's
parents were French Basque immigrants,
replied, "Well, Filipinos are more clannish
than you independent Basques."
Washington's
fear of a bloodbath was not unfounded. Early
Monday morning a crowd of Marcos supporters
armed with batons and tear gas moved toward
Camp Crame, where the reformers were gathered.
Over transistor radios, Marcos was ! heard
vowing, "We'll wipe them out. It is obvious
they are committing a rebellion." And over
Radio Veritas came Enrile's reply, "I am not
going to surrender."
Tanks
arrived. When helicopters from the 15th strike
wing of the air force began circling overhead,
it looked as if the reformist rebellion was
all over. If the choppers had fired into the
Enrile-Ramos headquarters, the reformers would
have been helpless. But then the choppers
landed, and out came airmen waving white flags
and giving the "L" sign for laban (fight), a
symbol of the opposition. Suddenly the crowd,
realizing that the air force was now
defecting, went wild.
Perhaps the
most ominous moment came that same morning,
shortly after Marcos announced on a televised
news conference that he was declaring a state
of emergency. At that point his armed forces
Chief of Staff, General Ver, whispered to
Marcos in a voice that was audible to the
whole nation, "Sir, we are ready to annihilate
them at your orders . . . We are left with no
option but to attack." Marcos did not respond.
Whether he knew it or not, his failure to move
swiftly against Enrile and Ramos, one of the
more honorable acts of his tarnished
presidency, had already cost him the office he
was fighting so desperately to retain.
Instead he
went on with his press conference, but at 8:47
he was interrupted in mid-sentence as the
government-run television station, Channel 4,
suddenly went off the air. When it reappeared
three hours later, the newscaster jubilantly
declared, "This is the first free broadcast of
Channel 4 . . . The people have taken over."
Beside him was Colonel Mariano Santiago, who
until last year had been the Marcos-appointed
chairman of the country's Board of
Transportation. To many Filipinos, the seizure
of Channel 4 was one of the most remarkable
events of an endlessly astonishing week.
Tuesday was
the day of the twin inaugurals. Aquino had
wanted a daylight ceremony because, as she
said in her address, "it is fitting and proper
that, as the rights and liberties of our
people were taken away at midnight 14 years
ago (when martial law was declared), the
people should formally recover those rights
and liberties in the full light of day." An
hour later Ferdinand Marcos stepped onto the
balcony at Malacanang Palace before a crowd of
4,000 cheering supporters and took the oath of
office. "Whatever we have before us, we will
overcome," he promised, while Imelda vowed to
serve the people "all my life up to my last
breath." Though she was choked with emotion,
few people outside the palace sensed that this
was to be the Marcoses' farewell. Then the
Marcoses sang favorite songs, at one point
offering a duet to the cheers of the invited
guests. Conspicuously absent was Marcos' Vice
President, Arturo Tolentino, who later said
that he had not wanted to take the oath of
office because he hoped to play an
intermediary role between Marcos and the
reformists.
An hour
after the ceremony, Marcos telephoned Enrile
and demanded that he "stop firing at the
palace." Enrile said he had no troops there.
Marcos asked him to call Ambassador Bosworth
to find out if the U.S. could provide the
Marcoses with security in flying out of the
palace. Enrile promised to do so. Marcos had
previously raised the possibility of retiring
to Ilocos Norte, his home province in the
northern Philippines, but had been discouraged
from doing so by his family and by the new
government. At 9:05 p.m., four American
helicopters picked up the President, Imelda
and a contingent of relatives and aides,
including General Ver, and flew them to the
U.S. air base.
As the week
ended, Reagan Administration policymakers
breathed a great sigh of relief that their
plans and strategies, so painstakingly worked
out over the past two years, had gone so well.
Both Republicans and Democrats praised the
handling of the Philippine crisis. Officials
counted themselves incredibly lucky. Noting
that events had passed without appreciable
bloodshed, a senior U.S. official in
Washington ruefully remarked that the Lord
surely looks after "fools, children, the
Philippines and the U.S.A."
After its
initial concern about how the inexperienced
Corazon Aquino would fare as President, the
Administration was relieved that she gave
important jobs to Laurel, Enrile, Ramos and
other centrists, and adopted so conciliatory a
tone toward her former opponents. Already
there were hints of trouble ahead over the
Marcoses' relocation, whether they decided to
settle in Hawaii, California, New York or
elsewhere, and over the legal status of
Marcos' properties abroad. Though Marcos' only
known income was his presidential salary of
$5,700 a year, the Central Intelligence Agency
has reportedly estimated the value of his
family's worldwide holdings at perhaps $2
billion. New York's Democratic Congressman
Stephen Solarz observed mildly last week,
"There is a strong presumption that he had a
very good financial adviser ^ or acquired the
millions of dollars he has through
presumptively improper means." Aboard the
plane that carried Marcos to Hawaii, federal
authorities found $1.2 million in Philippine
currency, and another planeload of Marcos'
personal effects arrived at week's end. Solarz
said that while he thought it was appropriate
for Reagan to offer Marcos sanctuary, the
President had certainly not offered Marcos
"immunity against civil proceedings brought by
the government of the Philippines to recover a
fortune stolen from the Philippines."
But for the
moment the Administration was relieved to have
passed the center of the storm. Even as he
praised Marcos for his "difficult and
courageous decision" to step down, Reagan
congratulated Aquino on the "democratic
outcome" of the elections and promised to work
closely with her government in rebuilding the
Philippine economy and armed forces.
With
reporting by
Sandra Burton/Manila, and Johanna McGeary and
William Stewart/Washington
