Ferdinand Marcos' New Society

Reforms are ballyhooed, but martial law remains

We believe that those who wanted to create disorder have learned their lesson. We are going back to normal." That statement by a ranking Manila official typifies a new mood in the Philippines. After five years of martial law ostensibly imposed to restore order against terrorism and other political violence, some Filipinos are predicting a gradual return to constitutional government. Others warn that such optimism is unjustified.

With considerable fanfare, President Ferdinand Marcos began his reforms by releasing 157 of 1,000 prisoners he has promised to let out of the Philippines' military stockades. (Last January Marcos conceded that there were as many as 4,700 military detainees.) He has also promised to phase out the military tribunals created by martial law and to replace them with civil courts. He has ordered the arrest and trial of two military officers accused of torturing Civil Rights Leader Trinidad Herrera, who, after being visited by U.S. diplomats in Manila, was finally released from jail.

Such moves seem to indicate that Marcos has, as one diplomat told TIME Correspondent Richard Bernstein, "come to a pragmatic recognition of a new American mood on human rights." Even if one of the President's primary aims is to protect his $100 million in annual U.S. aid, he has raised general expectations that the Philippines is on the verge of a more liberal era. Says one church official: "International pressures have been building up, and Marcos has been forced to act."

Still, Marcos has stopped far short of relinquishing his autocratic power to rule by decree. In fact, a report on the Philippines published last week by the International Commission of Jurists* lambastes the President for continuing martial law to perpetuate his own power. Despite Marcos' two public promises this year to release any prisoners against whom no charges have been filed, hundreds of such prisoners remain in captivity.

Some of the President's most ballyhooed measures have also proved to be less significant than they first appeared. Few of the 1,000 detainees Marcos has promised to release, for example, are charged with political crimes. Civil rights investigators can find only 17 political prisoners on the list; the rest are charged with common crimes. Thus as a sign of political mellowing, the prisoner release has become, as one dissident churchman puts it, "basically meaningless and hypocritical." Moreover, though Marcos has promised that mistreatment of prisoners will be harshly dealt with, the Commission of Jurists charges that torture continues in Manila's "safe houses," where pre-detention center suspects are held.

Yet Marcos' gestures continue to have their supporters, who point out that the Philippines still has a far less repressive political atmosphere than many other regimes in Asia. "It's simply unfair to put the Philippines into the same category as Iran or South Korea as a human rights violator, not to mention most of the Communist countries," says one diplomat. True enough. But Marcos himself has promised that "any violation of human rights is one too many that may not be tolerated by the new society." That is a high standard for any government.

*A Geneva-based nongovernmental organization of lawyers from 50 nations, which reports on the status of civil liberties in various countries.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.