Managing the end of the Marcos regime
(Stephen Bosworth served as US ambassador to the Philippines from 1984 through 1987. In his February 2003 interview with Michael Mahoney, Bosworth reflected on the shifting US policy toward the Philippines during Marcos’ final months, his personal experience with Corazon Aquino during her rise, and the initial stages of establishing US relations with a new Filipino government.)
CNN finally, the first time, had the capability to telecast directly via satellite and they had a cameraman and a reporter at the camp where the military people were holed up. So, I alerted Washington; it was early morning back there. They
were watching it on CNN. They knew more about what was happening on the ground there than I did in the embassy because I didn’t have access to
CNN.
That evening I was in contact with Mrs. Aquino’s camp and her directly. She had been down in the central Philippines. We were very concerned about her safety and I offered her refuge on a US naval vessel that happened to be in the vicinity.
I told Washington afterwards that I was quite confident that they would approve. I had been in contact with her brother who was one of her principal advisors during the political campaign because they were very concerned that Marcos would try to knock her out by basically assassinating her, which was not by any means unthinkable.
Washington had given its approval with the notion that if everything else failed I could invite her to come to the embassy residence. I couldn’t do that because she was not in Manila, but I did offer her refuge on the ship. She wisely concluded that she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to appear to be under US sponsorship, so she took refuge for the night in a convent and then early the next day came back to Manila.
In the meantime Jaime Cardinal Sin had gone on Radio Veritas which was a very small transmitter sponsored by the Catholic church when he learned that Enrile and Acting Chief of Staff General Fidel Ramos and their supporters were in the military camp and he said to the Philippine public that you’ve got to go help them, take them food. Of course at that point people began to pour out into the streets and once that happened it became clear that this may have started as a military coup, but was much more than that now.
Corazon Aquino came back the next morning and she sort of took visible control… which was very important because I was very conscious of the need not to be seen as to be putting the US behind a military coup attempt. Since we had by this time pretty much concluded publicly that she had basically won the election, there was nothing wrong with putting our support behind her.
For the next two days my role consisted primarily of 1) keeping Washington fully informed and 2) warning Marcos directly on the phone that he should not move by force against Enrile and Ramos in a military camp. He should not do anything that would jeopardize the safety of hundreds of thousands of Filipino civilians who were out in the streets supporting Mrs. Aquino and demanding Marcos’ resignation. Finally, over the next couple of days the situation played out so that we issued a statement, the US from Washington, which I then transmitted, to Marcos and others saying in effect the time has come you should leave…
The time has come. With that we had removed the sign of heaven from him, the mandate of heaven. He was done. Then it was a question of how to get him out safely… His first words to me were, “I’m terribly disappointed. You don’t understand. Your government doesn’t understand. This is a military coup and I have to resist it.”
I said, “Well, we don’t agree that it’s a military coup any longer. We think that it is something bigger than that. Anyway, these are my instructions.” I then got back to him the next day. He was in the palace with his family and his grandchildren.
We offered him three alternative routes out, basically by land and by sea and by air. He opted for the air route and he sent some of his minions and his baggage out by boat. We took him out by helicopter. We took him to Clark where he spent a few hours and then we put him on a plane and he went out first to Guam and then to Hawaii. Of course, he died in exile…
There is a big Filipino presence in Hawaii. He knew Hawaii. It was very important to us and to President Reagan in particular that we not allow him to be harassed, that we would give him safe haven basically in the United States, but we wouldn’t let him go back to the Philippines. Well, he never really had a complete safe haven because the legal people began coming after him very quickly. Eventually, even after his death they continued to go after the estate. He never went back to the Philippines until after his death.
Mrs. Aquino comes to power amid a great upsurge of national spirit and good feeling. The US for a time at least was, we were heroes, because we had taken him out. I remember going down to call on her the day after Marcos had left. She was not yet living in the palace. She was in her office in her family’s building.
As I came out having exchanged statements of good feeling with her and her principal aides, a big crowd of people on the outside all started cheering for the US and me. It was really kind of an extraordinary experience since I previously used to go into my office at the embassy driving through large crowds of demonstrators all saying, “Bosworth go home.” Some of them had little clips underneath saying “Bosworth go home and take me with you.” Filipinos had a sense of humor if nothing else.
I had a very close relationship with Mrs. Aquino in many ways, personally of course. It was incumbent upon me, just because of circumstances, to try to interpret her to Washington and interpret Washington to her. This was of course the normal role of an ambassador, but in this case it was more demanding because she had so little experience. She was a woman of tremendous integrity and great courage and I liked her generally and personally. She liked me and she liked my wife. Her great supporter turned out to be George Shultz. Others in the Reagan administration were less enthusiastic about her and many questioned her ability to run the country effectively. I always considered that she was sort of the mother of the Philippines.
Her role essentially was to oversee the reestablishment of democratic institutions. There were missed opportunities. The government was not very coherent. It was torn from the right and from the left. There were great divisions within the government so that particularly in terms of economic policy, there were opportunities that were lost that were not regained until she finished her presidency and Fidel Ramos became president. That was a time of considerable consolidation and forward movement economically. Under her the Philippines became a democracy again, with all of its imperfections.