The Philippines Alive But Far From Well

By Pico Iyer

President Ferdinand Marcos strode briskly into the bright lights of the ceremonial hall of Malacanang Palace. Ruddy-faced and holding himself erect, he scanned the faces of the assembled journalists, then turned a politician's smile to the television cameras. Conducting his first press conference since last June, Marcos delivered a peculiarly hopeful reading last week of the state of his nation 18 months after the assassination of Opposition Leader Benigno Aquino Jr. The President also offered reasons for his absence from public view since last November. "I was hit by probably the worst virus anybody could have," he explained, and went on to mention a cold, an allergy and pieces of shrapnel left over from a wartime wound. In short, the wily Marcos, 67, was sticking to an earlier assertion: rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

Marcos may be alive, but he and his country are far from well. During the President's prolonged bout of ill health, both his supporters and bickering members of the moderate opposition have been jockeying for the unofficial position of heir apparent. The debt-racked ($26 billion) economy has just suffered through its worst year in almost four decades, adding to the strength of the Communist guerrillas of the New People's Army. Above all, serious repercussions could flow from the current trial of one civilian and 25 military men, among them a Marcos intimate, Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Fabian Ver. If the suspects are acquitted of having conspired to kill Aquino and his alleged assassin, Rolando Galman, cries of a whitewash are certain to rise.

In Manila, fears that justice might not be done in the case multiplied last week. After the court upheld a petition that the 17 principal suspects be placed under military custody rather than sent to jail, four relatives of the slain Galman refused to testify. Two days later, five civilian witnesses whose initial accounts of the assassination had thrown doubt on the military description of the crime mysteriously failed to appear in court.

The most reverberant issue at stake in the trial is the fate of General Ver, 65, once considered to be the second most powerful man in the Philippines. At his press conference, Marcos announced that "there is a formal agreement among senior officers that if Ver is acquitted, he will be returned to his office." Vindication of the general would, however, severely damage the government's credibility abroad, particularly in the U.S. "I think it would be an unmitigated disaster if Ver were reinstated," said Stephen Solarz, Democratic Congressman from New York and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. Such an eventuality, he added, would be "exceeded only by the unmitigated disaster that would ensue if Imelda Marcos succeeded her husband."

When that perennial rumor was aired before the President last week, he tried, with a characteristic blend of subtlety and pugnacity, to squelch it. "We have agreed that she will not run for Vice President or President or any other public office," said Marcos. "I don't know of any change in this plan." Skeptics noted that in his first sentence the President had dodged the possibility of his wife's succeeding him without benefit of elections, and in his second had acknowledged that there might be developments with which he was unfamiliar.

The most pressing problem before the government is the swift rise of the Communist insurgents, who have brought civil war to many regions of the country. Capitalizing on the government's tarnished reputation and the military's widespread corruption, the armed guerrillas now number some 12,000. Over the past nine months, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile has been helping to organize a concerted counterinsurgency campaign. "I am happy the leadership accepted that we had a problem to address," Enrile said last week. Others disagree. Said a staff report prepared last year for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: "There is doubt that the Marcos regime either understands fully or can cope effectively with the Communist threat." Such claims do not deter the President. "I deny the premise that the insurgency is growing," he said last week. "I think we have hit the Communists in so many places so hard."

The correctness of that assessment will be the central issue next week when Reagan Administration officials appear before the Solarz committee in an effort to win approval for an increase in U.S. economic and military aid to the Philippines for fiscal 1986 from $225 million to $275 million. Much of the funding will come out of a five-year, $900 million package agreed to by Washington in 1983 in exchange for the maintenance of two vital U.S. installations in the Philippines, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. That commitment complicates Washington's difficulties in weighing its reservations about the Marcos regime against its worries about the insurgency. "I think the Americans have made up their minds that the incumbent government may have spent its moral force," says Marcos' Labor Minister Blas Ople, "but at the same time they are more fearful of the unpredictable consequences of a Marcos exit at this time. So American policy is in a kind of stalemate."

For the time being, the U.S. will continue supporting Marcos while urging him to resuscitate the democratic institutions that fell into neglect during almost a decade of martial law. The U.S. wishes to encourage as much reform as possible while Marcos is still strong enough to hold the fractious elements of his nation in check. As the moderate opposition continues to squabble, Filipinos find themselves caught in a dilemma: the man they hold responsible for many of their woes, Ferdinand Marcos, also looks to be the only man who is in a position to help solve some of those problems.

With reporting by Sandra Burton and Nelly Sindayen/Manila