The Philippines Mean Momma

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

For the first time in many months, Corazon Aquino wore her fighting color: yellow. It had been adopted as a trademark hue by the gigantic crowds that participated in her greatest triumph, the 1986 overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos. Now the Philippine President was taking up the color again as she launched a campaign against her gravest threat, a deep national malaise brought on by government ineptitude and the continuing threat of violent rebellion from left and right.

Speaking to a gathering of 1,300 supportive but nervous businessmen in Manila, Aquino was feisty, sarcastic and uncommonly firm. Said the President: "The question you all really want to ask is Can she hack it? Isn't she weak?" She proceeded to argue that she was strong. "Henceforth, I shall rule directly as President," said Aquino. "To the ad hoc committees and commissions created to inform me on their special areas, I add one more: an action committee of one member -- me."

Responding to charges that she had no coherent policy to battle Communist insurgents, the President said her methods have "always been clear. First talk, and then fight." When the talks failed last February, she said, "it was time to fight, and it is still fighting time. Am I also expected to take up an M-16 and do it myself?" To respond to criticism that she was soft on the militant labor movement that had shut down numerous factories, she issued orders for the police to take down illegal strike barricades immediately. She castigated the military mutineers who sparked the current crisis with their nearly successful August uprising. "They fought me, I fought back. Surrender would have been neater, but it is not in me to yield." As she issued rapid- fire orders for road repair, garbage collection, telephone-line maintenance and an end to the constant power brownouts that afflict the capital, her listeners interrupted the speech with at least 27 rounds of applause.

Some Manila newspapers that had been foretelling doom since the August rebellion had a change of heart. "This could be the turning point of the Aquino presidency," wrote the Manila Chronicle. Other papers rushed to publish Aquino's full text. Despite her rightward swing against labor and the Communists, even some of the President's supporters in the moderate left applauded the speech's implications. Indeed, many had felt that her aura of saintliness had got in the way of her politics for too long.

Aquino immediately set about personally surveying her domain. Amid threats of imminent coups and assassinations, she visited Davao City on the strife- torn island of Mindanao. By week's end the police were tearing down strike barricades. The moves are proving to be popular, so much so that even Aquino's disaffected Vice President, Salvador Laurel, has begun to soften his criticism of her leadership. Earlier, Laurel admitted there was a tactical alliance between some of his supporters and those of Aquino's archrival, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. After the President's speech, Laurel said his differences with her had "started to narrow." Enrile, however, dismissed her pronouncements as "beautiful platitudes on garbage disposals."

Aquino's mean-momma posture is unlikely to produce results unless she gets some help. Unfortunately, she must still rely on a corrupt, underpaid and dispirited bureaucracy to carry out her plans and a bankrupt treasury to finance them. She has to go to a bickering Congress for approval of major initiatives. But Aquino now realizes she will have to work hard to keep the popularity that has buoyed her through the travails of the past 19 months. Said the President bitterly last week: "The honeymoon is over, isn't it? But I am not sorry. The sooner we get over the fantasy of the honeymoon and face the hard work of marriage -- the marriage of President and nation -- the better." Otherwise, the divorce will be shattering.

With reporting by Jay Branegan and Nelly Sindayen/ Manila.