EDSA 20

MANILA, Philippines -- They were in the chain of command with the dictator Ferdinand Marcos as their Commander in Chief. But their hearts went out to the cornered mutineers after civilians came to the rescue and mounted what became known as Edsa I, the first People Power revolution.

As yet another political controversy engulfs the country, the inevitable question is being asked: Will soldiers break the chain of command and reprise their role in the 1986 revolution and the Edsa II revolt in 2001 which ousted President Joseph Estrada for obstructing his impeachment trial for plunder and which ironically installed Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?

"We unleashed the genie in the bottle," says a retired general and a member of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), the elite group of officers that spearheaded the coup attempt against the Marcos dictatorship. Speaking on condition of anonymity because he remains in government, the general says the original plan was for the troops to go back to the barracks.

"The boys are still out," he says, pointing to soldiers disillusioned by scandals that have hounded Ms Arroyo and her family--the 2004 election fraud and "Hello Garci" wiretapping controversy, the multimillion-peso fertilizer scam, "jueteng" protection payoffs allegedly to her son and brother-in-law, cash gifts of up to P500,000 to lawmakers to kill a move to impeach her, while troops await approval of a paltry increase in combat pay.

Lim and Querubin

Among those out of the barracks are Col. Ariel Querubin, 51, and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, 52.

Querubin was a Marine captain who led in the arrest, in a little-known Edsa I episode, of 19 security men assigned to Trade Minister Roberto Ongpin on the night of Feb. 21, 1986, that nipped in the bud the putsch planned before dawn the following day.

The security men were on loan from then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile. With the arrests, Enrile and his 200 co-plotters knew their cover was blown. He decided to break away and make a last stand at his ministry office in Camp Aguinaldo.

As tens of thousands of Filipinos summoned by the charismatic Jaime Cardinal Sin massed at Edsa in support of the rebels led by Enrile and Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos, then vice chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Querubin wavered.

"Though I wanted to join them, I didn't want to change horses midstream," Querubin recalls.

Lim was a math instructor at the Philippine Military Academy in 1986. He was then also aide-de-camp to the urbane and well-respected PMA superintendent, Brig. Gen. Jose Maria Carlos Zumel, once an aide-de-camp to Imelda Marcos.

Marcos loyalist but...

"General Zumel was perceived to be a Marcos loyalist but he had the integrity of more than 10 generals combined," says Lim. By association, Lim was also regarded as a Marcos loyalist.

But when Lim learned about the breakaway, he, too, wanted to rush to Edsa. Because he was up in the mountain academy in Baguio, the only thing left to do was sign a manifesto drawn up by PMA officers expressing support for the mutineers.

Today, Lim and Querubin are incarcerated, caught in the web of demons let loose in those four days in 1986 that ousted Marcos after 20 years in power and installed Corazon Aquino, widow of assassinated opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, and which became an inspiration for peoples in oppressed countries that yearned to be free.

Lim and Querubin were arrested in the aftermath of a failed coup in February 2006 triggered by claims that Ms Arroyo stole the 2004 presidential election in an operation that allegedly involved the current AFP chief of staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr.

'Not like robots'

General Lim says there were high hopes of good things to come after Edsa I.

He says officers who reason that the military should not intervene in a political crisis because the sworn duty of a soldier is to remain loyal only to the Constitution and the commander in chief are simply resorting to "a cop out."

"Being politicized is different from being engaged in partisan politics. We are asked to swear allegiance to the country, salute the flag, love our country. But it doesn't mean that you're left behind by society. We live in the same economic, political, and social milieu. It's unfair to make us immune to our environment," he says.

"It's not right when the men in uniform are used in electoral fraud and when our vote is tampered with, especially by our fellow men in uniform," he says. "Treat us like other sectors of society, not like robots who are not thinking and will just fire at the crowd when given orders. We don't want that kind of military."

Recurrent revolts

By their own account, Lim and Querubin have been involved in some of the dozen or so revolts mounted by disgruntled elements in the Armed Forces that have roiled the nation since 1986 for a host of reasons, including corruption, poverty and the handling or mishandling of communist insurgents.

Querubin suffered a near fatal gunshot wound in the 1989 coup attempt--the worst ever mounted against President Aquino that cost nearly 100 lives.

In spite of the turmoil, the two officers kept their professionalism and reputation as among the country's finest soldiers. Lim became one of the youngest officers to earn the star rank. In a 2000 campaign in Mindanao, Querubin led a team of Marines that fought Moro insurgents and received the Medal of Valor--the highest AFP award given to a soldier.

Manifestos circulating

Manifestos are again circulating among members of the 120,000-strong AFP as security elements have been dragged into the alleged abduction of Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr., a whistle-blower in the scuttled $329-million broadband deal with China.

Lozada was spirited away from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on his return from a weeklong stay in Hong Kong, allegedly part of an elaborate Malacañang cover-up to prevent his testimony before a Senate inquiry into the China project that implicated Ms Arroyo's husband in reported massive kickbacks.

'Break the chain'

One manifesto signed by the jailed plotters of the alleged coup attempt led by Querubin and Lim in 2006 urged officers and soldiers "to break the chain of command" that had been used "to cheat, lie and oppress the people." It said the AFP leadership had "lost all its moral claim as protectors of the people."

Restiveness among officers and men also stems from government failure to address long-festering internal problems, including such issues ranging from modernization to systemic corruption.

Querubin specifically points to recurring problems in the AFP, diligently outlined by the Davide and Feliciano commissions which investigated the 1989 coup and 2003 Oakwood mutiny, respectively. "The same old issues are brought up again and again," Querubin says during a break in his court martial hearing at Camp Aguinaldo.

Cause of unrest

The Feliciano commission blames the "politicization of the military amid the erosion of civilian political institutions," the enlistment by politicians of military support for their political ambitions, graft and corruption in government, failure to enforce laws, among many others, for the continuing unrest in the Armed Forces.

Some reforms followed after 1989 and during the administration of Fidel Ramos, but the floodgates opened again in 2001 in the agitation against the Estrada regime . The restiveness continued as Ms Arroyo tiptoed from scandal to scandal.

"There were reforms being done after 1989. The peace talks (with the Ramos administration) became a positive move. For a while, (the problems) were being addressed. We were okay," Querubin says.

When rumors circulated in late 2002 to early 2003 that there was unease again, it occurred to Querubin that if the military did not shape up "something might happen."

After the Oakwood mutiny on July 27, 2003, Querubin was ordered to visit some of the detained officers. "I told them, 'I came here not to tell you that what you did was wrong ... If only you were patient'," Querubin says.

Pacifiers
Querubin and Lim again found themselves pacifying soldiers after the allegations of fraud in the 2004 presidential elections carried out with some generals surfaced.

"We didn't want violence, that's why we intervened. We settled for a withdrawal of support," Querubin says of the 2006 incident that ended in the highly charged Marine standoff in Fort Bonifacio.

Querubin dismisses critics who call him a recidivist. "I am being consistent," he simply says. He warns that the junior officers he and Lim had tried to placate two years ago are not even among those detained in connection with the failed coup. "There are many of them still out," he says.

Bloodier coup

Querubin worries that "the kids today are more radical" and are capable of staging a coup bloodier than the one staged in 1989.

Retired Navy Commodore Rex Robles, a former RAM officer, says if there is continuing tension in the Armed Forces, it is because of the perception of pervasive corruption in Philippine society. "If there's no radical surgery, the cancer will grow worse," he says.

Another ex-mutineer offers a different insight. As he watched the "Mass for Truth" on Sunday for Lozada, he says he saw the same cast of characters that had pushed RAM to move against Marcos 22 years ago.

The country is "back to square one," he says. "These politicians wasted all the golden opportunities we gained from Edsa ... Now they want us to do it again!"

The so-called destabilization attempts are creations of "politicians who try to manipulate things for their own selfish motives," he says. "They call it 'restiveness', the definition of which is highly dependent on what their own personal agenda is," he said.

RAM legacy

On hindsight, says Robles, 1986 showed that the military can intervene in a problematic civilian government but he says it must have the "sophistication to know its powers and limitations."

RAM was formed in the early 1980s at a time when Enrile was locked in a bitter power struggle with Imelda Marcos and Gen. Fabian Ver, then AFP chief of staff, amid reports that the dictator was terminally ill with kidney problems. After Edsa I, a faction of the RAM went back to barracks, but another group sought to recover perks lost in Edsa I's aftermath, ruing the handing over of power to a "plain housewife."

"The Feliciano Commission itself acknowledged that we have young officers who are reform-minded," says this RAM officer. If there was any legacy that RAM left the Armed Forces, it would be teaching the officers and men that they can be "politically and socially aware."

Esperon, an Army major in 1986, says that Edsa I was "really a time for us as a republic and as a people to redeem ourselves."

"Some say 1986 should never have happened. But that was the will of the people. So what is important to me is not what you did after Edsa I, whether you were there or not. Did you do something good for the republic, for the community? If you did not do anything, then that's a shortcoming," Esperon says.

Opportunists

But this time, Esperon, touted as one of the loyal generals of Ms Arroyo, says he does not want "opportunists to be agitating the Armed Forces" to grab power.

"The AFP is not supposed to solve political problems of this country," Esperon says.

One of the RAM officers says that days before the junior officers who called themselves Magdalo marched on Oakwood, he had the chance to try to talk them out of their planned uprising. He says the officers were all idealistic, but they were also "misguided."

Up to now, he has difficulty expressing and explaining the causes and reasons given by the mutineers.

"I told them, 'We've been there. You wake up one day holding an empty bag. You will ask yourself, what fundamental reforms did you achieve from what you did?'"