Aquino aides want Enrile’s arrest for coup complicity

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 54

Aquino aides want Enrile’s arrest for coup complicity

By J

JOSEPH REAVES

Knight-Ridder

Newspapers

NZPA-KRD .. Manila Some of President Corazon Aquino’s closest advisers, while acknowledging firm evidence still is hard to come by, are urging that Senator Juan Ponce Entile be arrested.

They suggest he be charged with involvement in the bloody military rebellion that nearly, toppled her Government recently. The arrest of ; Enrile could lend new credence to the Aquino Government, which has been facing its toughest political crisis since the August 28 rebellion.

But aides say she would be unlikely to sanction the arrest solely for political gain - there would have to be hard evidence. One Cabinet member who favours arresting Entile almost seemed to dismiss the importance of building a solid case against the former de-

fence minister who helped bring Aquino to power, then became a leading figure among the opposition. “The very act of filing charges against him would have a tremendous psychological effect,” the Cabinet member said.

The Aquino Government, fearful that the coup attempt had touched some dangerous nerves, has launched a publicity counter-offensive aimed at shoring up its weakened position. Enrile denies any involvement in the mutiny, and even his most outspoken critics have failed to produce anything more than innuendo or circumstantial evidence to implicate him.

Still, the general perception in Manila and abroad is that, at the very least, Enrile knew in advance about the uprising - and at worst was its master mind.

A key reason for those

feelings is the long-term, almost father-son relationship Enrile has had with the young colonel who led the rebellion. Colonel Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan was Enrile’s. security chief when Enrile was Defence Minister. Even the United States Government seems to believe- Enrile may have had something to do with stirring the pot last month. A senior U.S. State Department official tried calling him during the peak of the mutiny to ask him to intercede with the rebels.

Now, hard-liners in the Aquino administration want to lend credence to those suspicions by arresting Enrile and formally accusing him of helping plan the mutiny. An open bid to uncover evidence came on September 4 when police an<l the pro-Aquiho Governor of metropolitan Manila raided a townhouse owned by Enrile and confiscated a large cache of

arms and ammunition. The raid caused a brief sensation, but investigators later confided that many of the weapons they found were unusable and hardly any of the ammunition matched the guns. Enrile claimed he knew nothing about the weapons. He said he had his own legal arsenal at his suburban home a few miles away and noted the weapons found in the townhouse were in a basement used by his family’s security agency.

“Even if he’s involved they’ll never pin anything on him,” a western diplomat said of Enrile. “He’s too slick.” Enrile lost the Defence portfolio ,in November after Honasan and several other close aides were implicated in a foiled coup plot against Aquino.

Honasan avoided capture during the latest rebellion and remains at large with an undetermined number of armed

supporters. Enrile has refused to praise or condemn the- rebels, whom many believe are winning the' psychological war against the Government since the mutiny. The rebels have issued several > communiques claiming to have’ established a revolutionary junta and outlining a number of problems they seek to correct v - Honasan himself in a taped broadcast echoed popular concerns when he criticized Aquino for failing to end the wholesale graft and corruption that marked the administration of the deposed president Ferdinand; Marcos, and when he accused Aquino of being too soft on Communist insurgents. As part of her counteroffensive, Aquino made an unscheduled national " television : appearance Recently to-say she needed the help of the people “very badly” to overcome the present political crisis.