Chess Player Enrile Lining Up His Next Moves

CEBU, Philippines — In the midst of a deepening political crisis, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile looked up Monday from his morning paper and laughed. It was not just a giggle or a chuckle. It was a belly laugh. And the news was not the least bit funny.

Reflecting the widening division between Enrile and President Corazon Aquino, the headlines blared:

“Enrile Ouster Move Snowballs.”

“Enrile: My Ouster Will Dissolve Coalition.”

“Enrile Sees Government Fall If He Resigns.”

Suddenly Enrile stopped laughing. His eyes narrowed and he stared intently at the handful of reporters who had been traveling with him for three days.

“The problem with this country,” he said, “is that everybody is playing chess, and my problem is that I have no queen. I’m playing only with bishops and knights.”

Laughing again, he added: “But that’s OK. I like playing with bishops and knights.”

Lining Up Pieces

Juan Ponce Enrile--known as Johnny--enjoys playing chess. It is the only game, he says, that he really knows how to play. And in the past three days, on a swing through the central and southern Philippines, the man who brought off the February coup that ousted President Ferdinand E. Marcos and put Corazon Aquino in his place was again lining up his pieces and plotting his moves.

Enrile talked for hours with military commanders on the islands of Cebu and Mindanao, who gave him personal commitments of support. They promised him guns and men if he splits with the Aquino government.

Near the end of the swing, a commander in the south estimated that if Enrile makes the break, he will have 70% of the military behind him.

Enrile, a Harvard-educated lawyer, also talked with civic groups, businessmen, religious leaders and reporters, trying to lay a legal foundation for bringing down another government.

Enrile made it clear that he and his core group of military officers, the 400 men who carried out the uprising against Marcos, feel that Aquino has shortchanged them and failed to satisfy their demand that she provide a “good, stable government.” He said the rest of the 200,000 men in uniform feel the same way.

On radio talk shows, in speeches to civic groups and in informal chats with reporters, Enrile criticized Aquino for voiding the constitution and establishing a “revolutionary government” a month after she took power.

He also criticized her talk-first approach to solving the Communist insurgency that has left 2,000 Filipinos dead--more than half of them soldiers--since she came to power.

Position Threatened

Throughout, Enrile was clearly aware that Aquino’s most powerful asset is the popular support that brought her to power. Yet, an Enrile strategist warned, “Mrs. Aquino may have conquered Marcos at the polls, but, even now, she has not conquered the armed forces of the Philippines.”

Behind all the rhetoric, another Enrile aide said, the defense minister feels that his position in the government is threatened, and he feels that he has been hurt by what he sees as arrogance and ignorance on the part of Aquino and her inner circle of advisers and Cabinet members.

One by one, the Cabinet ministers have been calling for Enrile’s resignation, although Enrile insists that he will never resign. In turn, he has been openly challenging Aquino to dismiss him. Several Aquino advisers say that privately she wishes he would just resign.

Publicly, Aquino has said nothing directly about Aquino, though Monday, in a speech marking the establishment of a development commission for the war-torn Mindanao-Sulu region, she seemed to challenge Enrile. “In everything I do or say, I am the president of all our people,” she said. “It does not bother me to be spoken of as weak by some, but let them not make the mistake of putting to the test my commitment to democracy and to the safety and well-being of my people.”

An official at the presidential palace said Aquino has no intention of dismissing Enrile.

In outlining the president’s strategy for dealing with Enrile, the official said Aquino has been largely ignoring her defense minister. She believes, he said, that there is nothing even approaching a political crisis in the country and that it is Enrile who is the aggressor, that she has done nothing to provoke him and that the Cabinet ministers who have been attacking Enrile are doing so not at her orders but out of loyalty to her.

Security Concerns

But officials in charge of protecting Aquino are taking Enrile more seriously.

Aquino’s head of security and the chief of intelligence both traveled to Cebu on Sunday to monitor Enrile’s meetings with the military leaders. The strength of the Presidential Security Group has been more than doubled at key government installations in Manila in the past week.

The government television station, which Enrile’s men seized in the February rebellion, has been crowded with members of the Presidential Security Group.

Aquino has also met personally with key generals and colonels in the last week in an apparent effort to ascertain where their loyalty lies. She has been pictured in the newspapers with the air force commander, Gen. Antonio Sotelo, and her military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos.

Ramos, who was deputy chief of staff under Marcos, joined Enrile at the last minute in the February uprising, and many military analysts now see Ramos, a West Pointer, as the key to any future attempt by Enrile to take power.

In the chess terms that Enrile likes to use, there is a stalemate, and strategists under Enrile at the Defense Ministry refuse to speculate on when, or if, Enrile will turn to what one of them called “the defensive offensive” that he organized in his weekend meetings.

Trying to Force Negotiations

Still, Enrile made it clear over the weekend that he thinks he has the capability to remove Aquino’s government. Several political analysts in Manila said this could be a pressure tactic to force Aquino to negotiate with him.

Again and again, Enrile reminded the reporters of the words Aquino’s justice minister used in announcing the dissolution of the Philippine constitution: “This government is revolutionary in origin, democratic in essence and transitory in character.”

He told a radio audience Sunday morning that he is “very happy” that members of the Cabinet are calling for his resignation.

“Back in the old regime,” he said Monday over breakfast, “when I was talking about the same problem, I was castigated by the first lady (Imelda Marcos). I said, ‘Ma’am, I am only telling the truth. The truth hurts.’ Now people are reacting to what I am saying, perhaps because it is the truth.”

If the four Cabinet ministers who have publicly called on Enrile to resign persist, Enrile said on the radio, there will be dire consequences.

“The government is a coalition government,” he said, “and if they ask for the resignation of any member of that coalition, it would mean the coalition has to be dissolved.”

Warnings on Communism

Enrile’s trip to Cebu, the second largest city in the Philippines, was more than a search for military support. He is first of all a politician--he concedes that in the military he rose only as high as sergeant--and his advance men had arranged a Sunday rally at a downtown plaza, where he preached for 15 minutes against the evils of communism. He warned that unless the government adopts a strategy of peace talks combined with military force the leftists will take over the country.

The speech was reminiscent of the speeches that Marcos delivered in his campaign against Aquino in January. Marcos warned that the Communists would take over if Aquino won the election. Also, Enrile appeared in a red-striped polo shirt, the same sort of shirt Marcos wore at his rallies, and many of the organizers were former Marcos loyalists who were thrown out of office when Aquino took power.

Enrile denied that he still has any ties to Marcos, in whose Cabinet he served for 20 years.