Reagan to See a Tougher Leader : 7 Months in Office Forge a ‘Presidential’ Aquino

JOLO, Philippines — The president came unarmed, accompanied only by her most trusted military commanders. The rebel leader packed a pistol and arrived in a convoy of 20 jeeps with about 3,000 armed Muslim partisans.

The rebel leader wanted to meet in a mosque, fortified by mounted machine guns and rocket and grenade launchers. The president picked a Roman Catholic convent--no guns, no guards.

And so, in a quiet office of the Carmelite Convent on the extreme southern Philippine island of Sulu, President Corazon Aquino, a housewife until just 10 months ago, met Sept. 5 with the leader of the fiercest insurgent force in the nation, an Islamic army whose secessionist war has left more than 50,000 soldiers, rebels and civilians dead in the past 14 years.

“What I think is most important is that you be convinced of my sincerity,” Aquino told rebel leader Nur Misuari sternly. “What I want is peace. We cannot progress if there is no peace.”

That is why, she told him, she had defied almost all of the 26 members of her Cabinet and overridden the protests of the four armed services chiefs to travel 600 miles to meet him on his own turf.

“My only claim is that I have always been honest,” she said, without a trace of softness in her voice. “I have always been sincere. And, most important, you must realize that when I am convinced of something, no one can dissuade me.”

It was a rare moment, according to Aquino’s closest aides, friends and family, which said much about what the leader of this nation of 55 million has become since she assumed the presidency last Feb. 25. In seven months, they said, 53-year-old Corazon Cojuangco Aquino has become presidential.

She has toughened politically. She has grown intellectually. She has hardened emotionally. And, although she has learned to compromise on morality when it conflicts with the needs of government, she has remained deeply religious and morally above the reproach of even her harshest critics.

By all accounts, the president’s most-trusted personal adviser is the nation’s Roman Catholic cardinal, Jaime Sin. She attends Mass every Sunday, and sometimes during the week. And her top priority in government has been ferreting out official corruption.

Yet Aquino has learned to horse trade. She has used her growing political savvy to balance the forces of her powerful, 200,000-man right-wing military against her increasingly fractious political coalition, which spans the political spectrum from extreme left to right.

Most of all, Aquino--who once said that the best years of her life were spent as a housewife in exile with her husband in a middle-class home near Boston--has become a singular symbol of peace and reconciliation in a nation still deeply torn by war and political differences.

Matures in Office

The woman who will meet with President Reagan in the Oval Office on Wednesday during an eight-day official visit to the United States is, in short, far more politically astute and mature than the one who abruptly became president of the Philippines when Reagan’s friend, Ferdinand E. Marcos, suddenly fled in the face of an unprecedented civilian and military revolt, ending two decades in power.

One of President Aquino’s close aides noted last week that a watershed in Aquino’s development as a leader was her meetings last month with the authoritarian leaders of Indonesia and Singapore, President Suharto and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

“She is up there already. She now understands that she is one of those with power and that those with power see things differently,” the aide said. It was the same attitude that she took with Nur Misuari in Jolo.

“It’s not an infatuation with power,” the aide said. “It’s just an awareness. And I think it is this, more than anything, that has made her into a strong leader.

“She is hard. She is forthright. She is stubborn. And I think she is starting to enjoy it.”

Confidence Level Grows

Aquino herself says no, she is not yet enjoying a job that she took reluctantly.

“I wish I could say I’ve enjoyed it,” she told reporters during a press conference Thursday. “I’m hoping that once our problems are solved, I will be able to enjoy it.”

But she did agree that the job is much easier for her now than it was in the beginning, when her knowledge of issues was inadequate and the spotlight of world attention was sharply focused on her and her nation.

“I guess I am more confident now. And now that we have reorganized, it is much easier for me,” she said.

In her first month in office, Aquino conceded, she made many mistakes. When an interviewer asked the president on television Wednesday night if she had done anything she considered wrong during her presidency, Aquino replied, “In the first month or so, I guess I should have already stated very clearly that I was going to do it my way and not be influenced by anyone or any other way.”

It was a telling comment, her top advisers say. When asked to describe the President Aquino they see in her office and away from the glare of television lights, those who have easy access to Aquino use words such as “stubborn,” “assertive,” “courageous” and “self-assured.”

“She has grown much more self-confident,” said a senior Western diplomat who has watched Aquino grow into her new job. “Before, whenever she saw an issue coming at her, it was the first time she saw that issue. Now, you feel as if you’re talking to somebody who has a reservoir of knowledge on almost any given issue.

“She has tested herself in many ways, not just in the past several months, but in the past several years, and she has realized she can hold her own with anyone.”

Sustained by Faith

And Aquino’s tests have been enormous: first, as a widow whose husband, opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., became an international martyr when he was assassinated at Manila International Airport three years ago; then, as a political novice anointed as the last hope for freedom and democracy by the nation’s most prominent leaders, and, finally, as a head of state who, before Feb. 25, had never had so much as a part-time job.

In all of her challenges, Aquino has said time and again that it is her deep Catholic faith that has sustained her. Her speeches now are often heavily laced with religious references, and she has recommended to her Cabinet ministers and countrymen that they, too, look to their religious faith for strength to withstand the nation’s economic and political crises.

“Like the Jews in the desert, hardships have dimmed our memories and shaken our faith,” she declared in a speech last month. “I, too, can become prone to such moments; to times when the problems of our country seem beyond solution. Yet I wake and step forward each day, strengthened by Christ’s promise: ‘Seek and you shall find; knock, and the doors shall be opened; ask, and you shall receive.’ ”

Believes in Miracle

Indeed, Aquino believes she owes her presidency, and Marcos’ ouster, to God. And, her top advisers say, one of the few unquestioned dogmas of the Aquino administration is her belief that the three-day revolt that brought her to power was a divine miracle.

“If you want to annoy her, just tell the president that what happened at EDSA (the local abbreviation for the Manila street where the revolt began) was not a true miracle,” one aide said. “And, in fairness to her, she really does have the right sense that what took place in those days (does) have miraculous potential. The miracle for her and most of us is that this country finally found its guts.”

Aquino, her Cabinet aides and even Cardinal Sin have used the religious element time and again to maintain the “crisis mentality” that many political analysts believe Aquino needs to keep the people’s support and their commitment to austerity and reform.

“By working the miracle of our deliverance through us, God conferred on us a greater honor than if he had carried us out to freedom on his hand,” Aquino said in a recent speech. “. . . Please pray that in the midst of our quest for national peace and recovery, we may not become discouraged, peevish, rebellious and un-Christian.”

Friendship With Reagan

Concluded one senior Western diplomat in Manila last week: “I think she is convinced she has a religious mission. She may not succeed, but she will kill herself trying.”

It is perhaps that more than anything that has led American diplomats, Filipino political analysts and Aquino’s close advisers to believe that there is great potential for a strong friendship between Aquino and Reagan. Such a friendship is her primary goal in this week’s trip, she has said.

“Cory Aquino is not so different in that respect from President Reagan,” one diplomat said. “He, too, has a religious mission--perhaps not an organized religion like President Aquino’s--but he has a vision of how he feels the world should be. Similarly, President Aquino has a vision of how her model society should be.”

Noting that Reagan, too, is given to making biblical references, one Aquino aide added, “Well, at least the two of them are reading from the same text.”

On the surface, though, there also appears to be ample ground for disagreement between the two leaders.

Reagan, perhaps more than any other American President in recent history, has declared war on communism worldwide, and already reports have leaked out of his Administration that he thinks Aquino has been too soft on the 17-year-old Communist rebellion in the Philippines.

Fueled by criticism from Aquino’s hard-line defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, the popular perception in the Philippines, too, is that Aquino has somehow favored the Communists since she took office.

Some See Harder Line

Aquino’s first significant act as president was to free hundreds of political prisoners, among them the founders of the Communist Party and its military wing, the New People’s Army. She has begun cease-fire negotiations with the current Communist leaders, and members of her Cabinet have continued to publicly criticize the military for alleged human rights abuses in fighting the rebellion in the countryside.

A very different picture of her approach to the insurgency emerges from interviews with advisers and aides who discussed the issue on the condition that they not be named.

As long ago as her presidential campaign late last year, Aquino’s chief strategists were privately conceding that she was growing increasingly angry and impatient with the leftists in her political coalition.

After she took power, that sentiment grew even stronger, they said. Increasingly, Aquino has quietly looked to her senior military commanders for advice on the insurgency. Most Filipinos, for example, do not know that Aquino’s hard-line military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, ranks among her closest advisers and either meets the president in person or phones her every day.

Rather than a sign of softness or sympathy, the presidential aides say, Aquino’s overtures to the Communists have been deliberate attempts to put them on the defensive during the current peace negotiations.

“She has to have a moral basis to unleash the military (against the Communists), and that’s what she’s been doing,” said one official in the Malacanang presidential palace. “She always does that with everything. She gives you rope, and then she just jerks it.

“I think President Reagan is going to be pleasantly surprised. . . . I don’t think the two of them are that far apart on the Communist issue.”

Aquino’s own background will provide an even broader basis for friendship with Reagan. The American influences in her life run deep.

The daughter of a wealthy landowning family that enjoyed considerable political power in its own right, Aquino was educated largely in East Coast American religious schools. The 3 1/2 years that she and her late husband lived in self-imposed exile in the Boston area, she has said, had a profound influence on her and her five children, most of whom speak English with an American accent.

Puritan Life Style

Commenting on President Aquino’s social manner, one of her personal aides said recently: “It is not really an Asian grace at all. It is an American, Eastern Seaboard grace. At times, it seems there’s no real compassion there. She has a charm, but it is a hard, almost impenetrable charm.”

Aquino’s style of life has an almost Puritan morality as well. She does not drink or smoke. She never stays out late at night. Unlike her predecessors in Malacanang, Marcos and his wife, Imelda, who were a common sight in Manila’s posh restaurants and nightclubs, Aquino confines her social life to state functions and early evening parties for her close friends.

Aquino tries to keep to a 9-to-5 schedule, and, when she is not working, she is with her family. She cooks many of the family meals herself. Lunches in her office are Spartan; peanut butter sandwiches and chicken salad are not uncommon. And when her staff submits proposals for state banquets for dignitaries, she looks only at the bottom line, choosing the cheapest menu regardless of quality.

“I will never ask any sacrifice of my soldiers or my countrymen that I am not willing to make myself,” Aquino declared during her recent peace mission to the Muslim battleground in Sulu, where she signed a truce agreement with the rebels.

“And that really is the essence of Cory Aquino,” commented one aide soon after that trip. “Hers is a mission of faith and sacrifice, both for herself and her country.

“And it is not just a mission she has super-added to her life. It is her life. That’s why you don’t see any of the strain of the job in her. . . . She and her mission have completely merged, and that is why most of us believe she will be president of this country for many years to come.”