Prescription for Revolution

Over the Sibuyan Sea in the central Philippines, two long-haired young Filipinos last week barged into the cockpit of a BAC-One-Eleven jet bound from Manila to the southern island of Mindanao. "This is a hijack," said one, pressing a pistol against the pilot's neck. "Head north--to Peking." A second youth nervously fingered the aircraft's fire ax, while three others guarded the passengers. Told that the Philippine Air Lines plane could not make it to Peking, 1,500 miles away, the hijackers agreed to a refueling stop at Hong Kong, where the plane landed with just three minutes of fuel to spare.

After allowing 20 of the 44 passengers to disembark, the hijackers ordered the pilot to take off again, but agreed to a closer destination: Canton, 90 miles away. Surprised officials at White Cloud airport fed the passengers, including four Americans, and put them up overnight in a nearby barracks. The next morning, Chinese authorities sent plane and passengers winging home --minus the six hijackers.

Subdued Scourges. The incident, the first successful skyjacking to China, was symptomatic of the heightened violence that seems to have overtaken the often violent Philippines. The country is more than usually beset by economic, political and social ills--and by the guns of extremists. The old scourges of the islands, the Huks, have been so cut up by government raids that they now amount to little more than a Mafia-like bunch of "protection" racketeers. But on Luzon, several hundred members of a Maoist New People's Army wage intermittent guerrilla war against the central government. On Mindanao, some 2,000 people died during the past year in clashes between private armies of Christians and Moslems over land and timber holdings. In Manila, during the last three months, leftist students allied with striking workers have staged a series of demonstrations, which left nine people dead and hundreds injured.

Probably most significant for the long run is the rapid growth of the Kabataang Makabayan, or Patriotic Youth, which is directly linked to the Maoist guerrillas. In just a year the K.M. has mushroomed to at least 30,000 members, many from upper-middle-class families. The youths who hijacked the Philippine Air Lines plane last week were later identified as K.M. members.

The 400. At times Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, 52, tries to minimize the growing unrest among the country's 39 million people. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Louis Kraar in Manila's Malacanang Palace, Marcos insisted: "There's not as much turbulence here, I would say, as in some Western countries, perhaps the U.S. and Belfast, Ireland." But at other times Marcos concedes that Philippine society is "sick, so sick that it must either be cured now or buried in a deluge of reforms."

Colonized first by the Spaniards in the 16th century, and then "Coca-colonized" by the Americans, who occupied the islands in 1898, the nation has a U.S.-style presidential form of government superimposed on an oligarchical society. Some 400 families control 90% of the country's wealth, while the average per capita income is only $150 a year. Far from redistributing income, governments have reinforced the riches and power of the oligarchs since independence in 1946. That might be a prescription for revolution, and many Filipinos fear that their society is being strained near the breaking point. What still holds the system together, and gives it a basically conservative cast, is an all-encompassing web of loyalties and obligations, known in Tagalog as utang na loob (to owe a favor).

The Richest Man. One reason for the upsurge in radicalism is an economic crunch brought on in part by Marcos' own policies. Elected in 1965, Marcos embarked on an ambitious agriculture and development program to give Filipinos "rice and roads." He was re-elected in 1969 with an astounding majority of nearly 2,000,000 votes. The trouble was that his high-spending administration emptied the treasury. To refinance the Philippines' international debts, he was forced, in effect, to devalue the peso by a drastic 40%, tightly restrict imports and slow down economic growth. The result has been a rate of unemployment and underemployment totaling roughly 25%, and a rate of inflation that was officially admitted to be 21% last year.

Marcos himself has been sufficiently freewheeling with government funds to be labeled "the richest man in Asia" by the noisy local press. In 1969 alone, he transferred $10 million from the armed forces budget to his own office for unexplained "intelligence purposes." The President's critics in the press also accuse him of having been imprudently involved with an American movie starlet named Dovie Beams. Not that such stories will necessarily harm Marcos. As one politician noted: "We still believe very much in machismo."

From the Top. Marcos has promised Filipinos a "democratic revolution" from the top, directed, of course, by Marcos himself. Because he is barred by the constitution from a third term, his comely wife Imelda, a onetime Miss Manila, is being built up as a possible candidate to succeed him. Marcos could also invoke martial law before his term expires in 1973 and continue in office. As one Western diplomat puts it: "If Marcos is still alive, he'll be President in 1974. He intends to solve problems with an authoritarian approach." The most likely possibility, however, is a constitutional change. Marcos has called a constitutional convention for June, and aides are promoting the notion of a semiparliamentary system--so far undefined --that would allow him to continue in office. Critics charge that Marcos has already bought the votes of most of the delegates.

At any rate his opponents are left with a Hobson's choice. They can accept the prospect of Marcos' continuing in office, or they can take to the streets in protest, which would give the President cause to invoke martial law.

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