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Aquino to the Communists: More Carrot, Less Stick
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10027 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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4 / 1986 |
1,573 Words |
| Author
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David Rosenberg
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Despite the overwhelming popularity of Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino, her government faces a serious challenge by the communist insurgency.
The New People's Army now has over 15,000-armed guerrillas and a larger number of part-time irregulars. These forces are fighting on as many as 60 fronts around the country. The NPA reportedly has shadow governments in 10 to 15 percent of the country's villages. Some level of NPA activity now exists in almost all of the country's 73 provinces. It has supplied its guerrillas almost entirely with weapons captured, and occasionally purchased, from the Philippine Armed Forces.
U.S. intelligence estimates that, up to 1986, the NPA was growing at a rate of 20 percent a year, constrained by the shortage of arms and money, not recruits.
The growing Philippine communist insurgency was a major factor in the downfall of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos. He was found to be "unable and unlikely to make the necessary reforms to slow or halt the insurgency" and had only "about three years to effects fundamental reforms" to head off an all-out civil war," according to a U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Staff Report.
Committee chairman Dave Durenberger urged Marcos to resign and make way for free and fair elections to choose the next Philippine president. This prompted Marcos to call for an early "snap election" to demonstrate his popular support and his ability to handle the growing insurgency.
Corazon Aquino, popularly acclaimed as the leading opposition candidate to challenge Marcos, vowed to redress the grievances at the root of the insurgency. She said she would investigate Marcos's links to the assassination of her husband, Benigno Aquino, Jr., and to government corruption. She called for military reform and an end to "crony capitalism.' She also said she would call for a six-month cease-fire in the government's counter-insurgency campaign and invite the radical insurgents to lay down their arms and pledge support to the government in exchange for the legalization of the Communist party.
She promised amnesty to all political prisoners of the Marcos regime. Former Philippines President Diosdado Macapagal also proposed that the Communist party and the New People's Army be legalized to bring them "into the democratic political mainstream" of the country.
Campaign issues
The insurgency became a major campaign issue when Marcos accused Aquino of being "dangerously naïve" about the NPA. "The communists are fighting for control of Cory Aquino," Marcos said. He feared that Mrs. Aquino would share power with the rebels in a coalition government. Marcos also charged that armed communist rebels were campaigning for his rival and threatening to wipe out rural villages if residents voted for him in the February 7 election.
Communist party officials, however, said the election was "largely irrelevant" to the problems of the Philippines and that the rebels "do not have a policy of disruption of the elections." Instead, they chose to boycott the election as they had the 1984 National Assembly
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