Aquino Shuns Harsh Security Measures

MANILA —  Philippine President Corazon Aquino pledged Friday that she will not impose martial law or a national state of emergency despite the country’s deteriorating state of law and order.

Instead, she called for “fearlessness” in the face of continuing death threats against high-ranking members of her government.

In delivering her solemn church eulogy beside the coffin of her slain local government minister, Jaime Ferrer, a grim-faced Aquino pledged, “We shall continue to fight anarchy with law, and murder with justice.”

Aquino said that last Sunday’s ambush slaying of Ferrer, the first Cabinet-rank official to be killed in Philippine history, symbolized “the most serious challenge that faces us today: Can we have order without tyranny and peace without oppression?”

Rejects Repressive Action

Her answer was an implicit yes. Rejecting such solutions as a declaration of martial law, which was the option used by her predecessor, Ferdinand E. Marcos, amid similar social chaos 15 years ago, Aquino said, “Democracy can survive the death of Jaime Ferrer, as it can survive the deaths that may follow, although I pray that his will be the last. But democracy cannot survive the adoption of the ways of its enemies.”

Senior presidential aides said Aquino’s speech Friday afternoon from the altar of St. Andrew’s Church in the Manila district of Paranaque was an important policy statement intended to answer hard-liners in her government who have been pushing her to crack down on crime and the country’s burgeoning Communist insurgency.

Military authorities still have no concrete leads to the identity of Ferrer’s assassins, whom many police and intelligence sources have privately identified as urban guerrillas of the Communist New People’s Army, a 23,000-member nationwide insurgent force. Two men arrested earlier in the week for questioning in the case have been released.

Ferrer, an outspoken anti-Communist who had been the chief sponsor of a national citizens-based vigilante army to combat the Communists, was just the latest government official to be killed since Aquino took office during the February, 1986, rebellion that overthrew Marcos.

‘No Constitutional Shortcuts’

But in her coffin-side eulogy Friday, Aquino made it clear that regardless of the number of policemen or politicians who are slain, she will not abandon her commitment to democracy.

“Let every flagstone in the road be the grave of a servant of the people,” she declared. “For, as long as the imminent danger is only to public officials, there will be no constitutional shortcuts to public safety.”

Senior military leaders confirmed in a briefing Wednesday that several other Cabinet secretaries and political leaders have received death threats, and they cited “intelligence reports” indicating that targets of Communist hit squads include the armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, several other key generals and leaders of the newly elected national Congress.

493 Slain in July

On Friday, the military also released figures indicating that last month ranked among the most lethal in the 17-year Communist rebellion, with 493 people slain, more than half of them government troops and civilians.

In addition, law-enforcement authorities and members of Aquino’s Cabinet have been under intense pressure throughout the week from Congress and the Philippine media to solve not only the Ferrer killing but a spate of unsolved murders that include the execution-style slaying of labor leader Rolando Olalia last year and the bombing last March of a Philippine Military Academy grandstand just a few days before Aquino was to deliver a graduation speech there.

In an interview with the news agency Reuters, Defense Secretary Rafael Ileto described the Philippines today as more unstable than in 1972 when Marcos imposed martial law.

“In 1972, the threat was not as large as we have now. It has increased,” Ileto said.

“The threat to stability is greater than in 1972 and, at the same time, the budget for the police and the military has gone down,” he said.

He said the military and police budgets make up 7.2% of the national budget, compared to 22% in 1973 just after martial law was declared.

Political satirist Luis Beltran, a longtime Aquino supporter, added his voice to the criticism this week, for the first time publicly attacking the president personally in his weekly newspaper column.

“It is time President Cory Aquino stopped being ‘shocked,’ ‘embarrassed’ or ‘dismayed’ at what is happening to the country’s peace and order environment,” Beltran wrote in the daily Philippine Star. “It is perhaps time for her to stop acting like a professional mourner and lead us to some victories against the Communists and criminals alike.”

During Friday’s ceremony, Aquino wore white. But, as she has done with nearly a dozen celebrated widows in the past year, the president tried to console Ferrer’s wife and family by citing her own personal tragedy.

Referring to the assassination of her husband, former Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who was shot at the airport on his return from the United States four years ago this month, Aquino declared that Ferrer had taken the bullet “in his head, as the best of our race have taken it in the past few years.”