An Uncertain New Era

By John Nielsen.

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, "Ninoy! Ninoy!" 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 analysts, 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 at 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 mayor 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.

Then 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 lYi 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 1896. 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 as 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 plane were nowhere to be seen, and the area was swarming with blue-uniformed AVSECOM 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-HSA, 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 throughout 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 Ibs. He carried no identification. The only clues were a gold ring, engraved with the letter R, nd the name Roily 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 ere 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 tie 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, an 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

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Manila, Ross H. Munro/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.