We recall that in February 1986, Ferdinand E.

Marcos was deposed from the

presidency via the non-violent "people power" revolution and forced into exile. In his stead,
Corazon C. Aquino was declared President of the Republic under a revolutionary
government. Her ascension to and consolidation of power have not been unchallenged. The
failed Manila Hotel coup in 1986 led by political leaders of Mr. Marcos, the takeover of
television station Channel 7 by rebel troops led by Col. Canlas with the support of "Marcos
loyalists" and the unsuccessful plot of the Marcos spouses to surreptitiously return from
Hawaii with mercenaries aboard an aircraft chartered by a Lebanese arms dealer [Manila
Bulletin, January 30, 1987] awakened the nation to the capacity of the Marcoses to stir
trouble even from afar and to the fanaticism and blind loyalty of their followers in the
country. The ratification of the 1987 Constitution enshrined the victory of "people power"
and also clearly reinforced the constitutional moorings of Mrs. Aquino's presidency. This did
not, however, stop bloody challenges to the government. On August 28, 1987, Col. Gregorio
Honasan, one of the major players in the February Revolution, led a failed coup that left
scores of people, both combatants and civilians, dead. There were several other armed
sorties of lesser significance, but the message they conveyed was the same a split in the
ranks of the military establishment that threatened civilian supremacy over the military and
brought to the fore the realization that civilian government could be at the mercy of a
fractious military.
But the armed threats to the Government were not only found in misguided elements
in the military establishment and among rabid followers of Mr. Marcos. There were also the
communist insurgency and the secessionist movement in Mindanao which gained ground
during the rule of Mr. Marcos, to the extent that the communists have set up a parallel
government of their own in the areas they effectively control while the separatists are
virtually free to move about in armed bands. There has been no let up in these groups'
determination to wrest power from the government. Not only through resort to arms but also
through the use of propaganda have they been successful in creating chaos and
destabilizing the country.
Nor are the woes of the Republic purely political. The accumulated foreign debt and
the plunder of the nation attributed to Mr. Marcos and his cronies left the economy
devastated. The efforts at economic recovery, three years after Mrs.