LEANDRO ALEJANDRO, general secretary of the New
Patriotic Alliance, Bayan, was murdered on September 19.'
A hundred thousand people marched in his funeral procession on September 29, in the most massive popular protest since the installation of the Aquino government.
He was one of the outstanding figures of his generation of political activists, and played a fundamental role in the leadership of the legal National Democratic movement.
PAUL PETITJEAN
EAN WAS SHOT down by kill-
L ers hidden in a truck as he was returning from a press conference, where he announced that
Bayan was building a series of mass actions to protest militarization of the country.
A hard blow to the mass movement,
Lean's murder was also designed to reduce the radical left's capacity for legal activity through terror and to sharpen the crisis of the regime, which has been acute since the August 28 attempted coup. [See IV 126, September 28,
1987.]
This brutal act illustrated dramatically the gravity of the general remilitarization going on in the islands.
It was precisely this process that Alejandro denounced in the news conference he held just before he was killed.
International solidarity has to be stepped up at a time when death squads are murdering leftists and repression by the government, the military and parallel-police gangs is on the rise.
Aquino's concessions to the military
Corazon Aquino has just dismissed seven officers, including three generals and Colonel Gringo Honasan, the leading figure in the August 28 coup. She is still refusing to impose martial law, despite pressures from the General
Staff. Nonetheless, she has made many concessions to the military's demands.
General Montano has been put at the head of the Manila regional command.
He had been suspended at the end of
1986 because he was responsible for internal security in the capital at the time of the Mendiola bridge massacre.
28 This slaughter occurred when the army opened fire on a peasant demonstration
International Viewpoint • October 12, 1987 in November.
Although formally dismissed, Colonel Honasan and most of the leaders of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM) who were implicated in the August 28 putsch remain at large. "Underground," Honasan has been giving more and more interviews to the media, waging an intense propaganda war. The soldiers jailed for participating in the mutiny have now been judged "not responsible" and released
The weakening of the president's positions is manifest, internationally, regionally and domestically. The US government condemned the August 28 putsch. But although the State Department denounced the rebel officers' er grab, the Pentagon, while denying any responsibility in the coup, is mak-
La show of "understanding" mutineers' demands.?
The reaction of several members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), especially of Thailand and Indonesia, was more than prudent on Friday, August 28, when the survihang in the balance regime seemed to
In the Philippines itself, the Church did not rush to Aquino's aid as it has done before. The House of Representatives is dominated by the political clans of the big provincial families with their shifting alliances. The vice-president, Salvador Laurel, publicly broke with Aquino, resigning from his post as minister of foreign affairs. He is flirting shamelessly with the army.
Former finance minister Jaime Ongpin has also distanced himself from Aquino. Challenged over the way he negotiated the payment of interest on the foreign debt, Ongpin still has ma-
Finally, and most importantly, the ly arms traders, he became the pet hate of the military and the right-wing politicians.
Aquino had to get rid of her two closest advisors, her executive secretary, "Joker" Arroyo and Teodoro Locsil, despite the fact that they had made quite a few demonstrations of anti-communism. The hard core of the presidential staff has thus largely been broken up.
After the ministerial reshuffle, the new government looks quite weak relative to an army that remains strong despite its divisions, whose long arm already extends into the executive branch.
Militarization is on the advance
Also a champion of civilian government Corazon Aquino is a prisoner of her own choices — her refusal to undertake radical social reforms and to commit herself to "people's power"; her determination to seek support first of all from the army and Washington; her declaration of "total war" against the communist guerrillas; and her counterinsurgency policy. Militarization of the country is on the advance both inside the regime and outside it.
When Leandro Alejandro gave his last press conference, he announced the mass actions that Bayan was building for September 21, the fifteenth anniversary of Marcos proclamation of martial law. This date has today become as symbolic as any day could be, given the threat that the military has left hanging over the civilian regime and democratic rights.
On September 21, only about a dozen military officers demonstrated for defence of the country's freedoms and to condemn Lean's murder. The left organizations refused to be provoked into staging an immediate test of strength. They turned toward building a march for Lean's funeral and continuing the fight for democracy. * September 25, 1987 • Messages of solidarity - page 27 1. Bayan is a coalition of popular organizations making up a section of the union federation KMU and the peasant federation KMP. 2. Nayan Chanda, Far Eastern Economic Review, Sep tember 24, 1987. 3. As well as the Philippines, members of ASEAN include Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei. See Jane Clade, FEER, September 10, 1987.
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PHILIPPINES militant