'Toy napigket nga daga
Pitpitenmi nga umuna
Danggayanmi't kankanta
Takkiagmi a napigsa
Kettang ken bannogmi
dikam igingina 

     Mannamili
     Ilokano Folk Song

Vincent Pollard

FULL PAPER

         From the 1870s to the interrupted Philippine Revolution of 1896 and until today, the context and focus of competing Filipino nationalisms in each period have been contested. Advocates of each version of nationalism have struggled for the moral high ground, that is, to assert the political correctness of their perspective. During June-October 1986, proceedings of the Constitutional Commission of the Philippines erupted as yet another venue for this struggle.

Most of President Corazon Aquino's appointed Constitutional Commissioners were self-respecting nationalists in some sense. However, a minority of commissioners labeled the Nationalist Bloc in secret U.S. Embassy cablegrams and in the Manila-centric news media set and successfully pursued an agenda for clarifying the notion of isang malayang patakarang panlabas, that is, an independent foreign policy.

Concerned about challenges to her legitimacy, the U.S.-friendly president hesitated to undercut future Nationalist Bloc enthusiasm to campaign for the hoped-for new Konstitusyon. And in fact, the October 1986-February 1987 ratification campaign would partly be understood to be a proxy referendum on whether Aquino should continue as President of the Philippines. Meanwhile, an intelligence failure led otherwise perceptive and energetic U.S. operatives to be caught off-balance by having underestimated the size of the Nationalist Bloc by half! Discovery of the Americans' failure emerges from a close reading of cablegrams they sent to Washington from the U.S. Embassy’s Political Section on Rojas Boulevard. These cablegrams were declassified in response to a Freedom-of-Information request by Pollard during his dissertation research.

Taking advantage of these opportunities, womens organizations and anti-nuclear weapons coalitions in the Anti-Bases Movement, collaborated with Nationalist Bloc commissioners. Procedural and substantive language written into the draft Konstitusyon in 1986 gave substantive and procedural content to isang malayang patakarang panlabas. In the hands of elected Senators, these constitutional provisions ultimately prevented President Aquino and her pro-U.S. allies from having the Military Bases Agreement ratified on 16 September 1991.

Claims and inferences in this paper are documented with primary and secondary public, private and once-secret research journalistic, video, interview and scholarly sources in the Philippines and the United States.

______________________________________________________

During 1945-1991, apparently only one legislative body of a representative democracy stood up against the American Superpower and rejected a military bases agreement. That country was the Republic of the Philippines. To facilitate our understanding and to appreciate developments shaping the context of that event, three myths need to be dismissed at the outset.

Three myths. Early in the fourteenth year of martial law (November 1985), President Ferdinand Marcos announced a “snap” presidential election. His principal challenger was Mrs. Corazon (“Cory”) Cojuangco Aquino. Presidential candidate Aquino was the widow of former Senator Benigno (“Ninoy”) Aquino who was assassinated on 21 August 1983.  The political history of colonialism, the anti-martial law movement and the “snap” election generated a focus on the future of the Military Bases Agreement that, in turn, stimulated several myths. Each of these myths has an element of wishful thinking.

According to Myth #1, candidate (later President) Mrs. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino’s campaign phrase “keeping my options option” adequately summarizes the full range of her preferences for Philippines-U.S. military relations. According to Myth #2, Mrs. Aquino was elected president of the Philippines in 1986. And in Myth #3, the devastating eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano on 12 June 1991 ended negotiations on the Philippines-U.S. Military Bases Agreement. In the following paragraphs, I will address these three myths in turn.

Refutation of three myths. Myth no. 1: In the contentious anti-martial law street protests known as the “parliament of the streets,” many supporters and opponents of Mrs. Aquino believed—or wanted to believe—that her memorable phrase “keeping my options open” summarized the essentials of her military relations preferences towards the United States. It did not.

Instead, as an unwilling signatory to the 26 December 1984 “Convenors’ Group Statement,” Aquino certainly set herself up to be misunderstood! A careful analysis of campaign documents, print and videotaped journalistic materials, interviews by Pollard, and secondary sources, supports a different conclusion. Aquino’s “keeping my options open” phrase imprecisely summarizes just one of seven distinct military relations preferences outlined by the candidate in scattered fashion at different times and for different audiences during candidate Aquino’s election campaign, especially during 15 December 1985-6 February 1986.[i]

Aquino’s seven preferences may be summarized as follows: 1) Tacitly accepting two of the three legs of the continuing Philippines-United States military cooperation triad, namely, the Military Assistance & Mutual Defense Treaties; 2) Rejecting protests of the left-labor BAYAN coalition against the third leg of the RP-USA treaty triad and, instead, eschewing immediate abrogation of the Military Bases Agreement (MBA); 3) Apparently maintaining public silence over the presence of US nuclear weapons; 4) Withholding early explicit public reassurances on the likelihood of her seeking a renewal of the MBA—the "open-options" stance; 5) Continuing "to respect" the MBA in accordance with the reduced duration stipulated in the 1966 Ramos-Rusk Agreement (implementing the 1959 Serrano-Bohlen Agreement); 6) Declining to specify a terminal date for the MBA, instead endorsing a plebiscite and thereby keeping the door open to an extension of shorter duration than the original 99-year treaty; and 7) Expressing discomfort at the prospective "perpetual" presence of US bases and favoring their eventual removal.

Aquino articulated one or more elements of these seven military relations preferences for the following nine groups in two societies: 1) Filipino readers of newspapers as diverse in editorial policy as Malaya and the Manila Bulletin; 2) American readers of The New York Times; 3) MABINI (Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity and Nationalism, Inc) and FLAG (Free Legal Assistance Group); 4) Bishops-Businessmen's Conference; 5) Management Association of the Philippines; 6) Makati Business Club; 7) Joint Philippine and Foreign Chambers of Commerce; 8) American politicians; and 9) other viewers of Ted Koppel's television program "Nightline."

The underlying theme of candidate Aquino’s military relations policy towards the U.S. is fairly summarized as “mainstream continuity and managed change.”[ii] Naturally, the administration of U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan (1981-1989) focused on the future of the bases. In light of the seven-point summary above, overfocusing on that obvious fact runs the risk of misunderstanding Aquino’s position. As we will see, the tenor and context of candidate Aquino’s statements about the bases indicate that they were of middle-range priority for her. Again, it is worth emphasizing that candidate Aquino never issued a single campaign statement as broad as the seven-point summary above, although she agreed with the details at the beginning of my 1995 interview with her.[iii]

Myth #2: Corazon Aquino was elected President of the Philippines. Not quite! Aquino certainly became president. But how did this happen? She was not elected. The election of 7 February 1986 was marred by terrorism, courage, an ineffective boycott, and massive vote fraud. At least 25% of the votes were never counted. A majority of the Batasan voted to endorse President Marcos as the winner. Two weeks of protests culminated in an armed military mutiny led by Ramos and Enrile and a massive televised Church-inspired civilian demonstration during 22-25 February 1986. The 1986 election had failed. Asserting authority not on the basis of the 1973 Constitution but on the “power of the people,” Mrs. Aquino was sworn in as President. Within weeks, she locked out the Batasan and proclaimed her own constitution (Proclamation No. 3). She also promised to appoint a constitutional commission to draft and propose a new Konstitusyon to the voters.

Having taken this pathway to Malacañang Palace, throughout the first year of her presidency, Aquino was nagged by challenges to her legitimacy. Even though she bristled at charges of dictatorship, Aquino herself characterized the early period of her rule as “semi-dictatorial” in a 1993 speech in Rome. She included this in an edited collection of her writings. And as the former President prefaced a tape recorded answer to Pollard in her Makati corporate headquarters on 10 August 1995, “If I had been elected…”[iv]

In Myth No. 2, those who claim that Corazon Aquino was elected President of the Philippines conflate Aquino’s having become president with a failed presidential election, mistakenly believing that the usual outcome of elections with the result of the events of February 1986. But the election failed. Although at least 25% of the vote in the election of 7 February 1986 was never counted, a strong case can be made that Aquino received a narrow majority of the votes cast by Filipinos. Despite massive cheating (mostly by Marcos supporters), the Batasang Pambansa (“National Legislature”) under Prime Minister Cesar Virata certified Mr. Marcos as the winner. Two weeks of protests ensued. In the third week, an armed military mutiny initiated by Fidel V. Ramos and Juan Ponce Enrile on 22 February 1986 would have been annihilated had not a massive protective Church-endorsed and internationally televised civilian demonstration sprung up to protect the armed mutineers. Marcos was forced out fourth days later—on 25 February 2006.

On the same day, Corazon Aquino pointedly had herself sworn in on the authority of “the power of the people” and not under the 1973 martial law constitution. More correctly, she became President of the Philippines. While not detracting from Aquino’s achievement, precision on this point underlines challenges facing Aquino from her first day in office. During her first twelve months, she understood very well that her legitimacy was in question. As the former President matter-of-factly prefaced her answer to an interview question of mine on 10 August 1995, “If I had been elected…..”[v] Corazon Aquino’s acute awareness of the limitations of her unusual pathway to Malacañang Palace and the presidency impinges directly on her ability to intervene against the anti-bases Nationalist Bloc at the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

Myth #3 is the most wrong-headed of the three misconceptions. But it is also the easiest to refute. Despite wishful thinking by pro-bases advocates (usually Americans), the volcanic eruption of long-dormant Mount Pinatubo during 12-16 June 1991 did not terminate renegotiation of the Military Bases Agreement. I personally was still hearing this odd assertion raised by American scholars with ties to the U.S. national security establishment who attended a conference panel at the 43^rd Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in 2002. And I have heard Myth #3 firmly asserted by an American colleague with military ties to the Philippines more recently.

As might be expected, the destruction of Clark Air Force Base complicated RP-US base negotiations in 1991. In my view, Mount Pinatubo removed a card from both sides. The destruction of Clark Field lowered the maximum rent that President Aquino’s negotiators could demand from the U.S.[vi] while also removing an opportunity for the U.S. side to appear magnanimous by simply withdrawing from Clark. But thirty kilometers southwest of Clark Field, the Americans definitely wanted to retain use of Subic Bay Naval Base. The American panel’s desire partly helps to explain why negotiations continued.

Simply put, true believers in the Myth #3 have an impossible burden: They are challenged to explain how it was that a Military Bases Agreement first was negotiated,[vii] then signed on 27 August 1991, and finally forwarded by President Aquino to the Senate of the Philippines with a request for ratification.[viii] In response to Aquino’s well-known desires, anticipation of the crucial Senate ratification vote triggered a new round of anti-bases protests in late July 1991 as far away as a North Michigan Avenue sidewalk in front of the Philippine Consulate General of the Philippines in Chicago.[ix]

Refuting the three myths facilitates our understanding of the constraints limiting President Aquino, her pro-American allies, and the Anti-Bases Movement, as well as opportunities that beckoned to each of them during the 1986 Constitutional Commission and during the 1986-1987 campaign to ratify Ang 1987 Konstitusyon ng Republika ng Pilipinas.

By 1991, President Corazon Aquino and her negotiating panel were already ensnared in an elaborate two-edged trap set by Aquino’s own Constitutional Commission during June-October 1986. During the first year of her presidency, Aquino was nagged by challenges to her legitimacy. Secret cablegrams in 1986 also reveal intelligence failures by U.S. Embassy “Political Section” staff. Meanwhile, imaginative tactical leadership by “Nationalist Bloc” Commissioners and allied anti-bases NGOs linked to the contentious “parliament of the streets” facilitated acceptance of strategic compromises by the President and her supporters.

Aquino’s first cabinet. Despite unusual challenges facing Aquino, did she fully utilize the leadership potential of her dramatic impetus to Malacañang Palace? In a taped interview with the author in 1995, former President Aquino still preferred to dwell on the divisiveness within her first cabinet but almost acknowledged that she had underestimated the potential of the impetus she had acquired and generated by taking the EDSA route to the presidency.[x] Elsewhere, Aquino has acknowledged underestimating the importance of choosing cabinet members who could work together effectively.[xi]

Nonetheless, Aquino gained room to maneuver in her cabinet and in civil society, thanks to her seizing the legislative power and perhaps to a temporary schism in the anti-bases camp. For a sharp debate erupted among anti-MBA groups in the Anti-Military Bases Agreement over whether or not to support her candidacy for president. The ensuing split among these potential Aquino supporters mirrored differences within the broader anti-Marcos camp over how heavily to weigh termination of the MBA as a campaign issue, although dissatisfaction with the prospect of continuing foreign bases was not limited to factions in the Aquino camp.

Anti-MBA forces supportive of Aquino’s candidacy certainly did not dominate her first cabinet. That cabinet included leaders of four opposition parties, as well as former Marcos administration officials, business people, persons close to the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, and individuals with intimate ties to activist cause-oriented groups. Aquino’s first cabinet included Marcos’s nephew-in-law and former head of the Philippine Constabulary Fidel Valdez Ramos, as well as Juan Ponce Enrile and others from the Marcos dictatorship. As of mid-1986, Ramos, routinely subject to pro-American bases influence in the Joint US Military Advisory Group,[xii] reportedly favored a seven-year phase-out of the bases.[xiii] The importance of Ramos’s loyalty and influence during those early years is perhaps best underlined by reference to that fact that six of seven major anti-Aquino coup attempts—two of them led by the Reform the Armed Forces Movement and two others supported by the RAM—occurred during her first eighteen months in office.[xiv]

Four other political parties had representation in a cabinet characterized as “chop suey” by one historian using a culinary trope with the double meaning of halu-halo (“mixed”) and pangit (“ugly”).[xv] The parties were as follows: Aquino’s LABAN; Vice President Salvador “Doy” Laurel’s eight-party United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO); Nene Pimentel’s Philippine Democratic Party (PDP); and former (and future) Senator Jovito Salonga’s faction of the pre-martial law Liberal Party (LP). Executive Secretary “Joker” P. Arroyo, described as the “utak” or “brains” of the administration[xvi] and Minister of Good Government Jovito R. Salonga were identified with the anti-MBA cause; the former was simply less vocal on the issue.[xvii]

During its first year, however, “Aquino’s ruling coalition began to disintegrate,” observes Belinda A. Aquino.[xviii] Often overshadowed by debates over land reform and the external debt,[xix] incompatible preferences on the future of the MBA were never far below the surface in President Aquino’s cabinet. The composition of the first post-election Aquino cabinet roughly paralleled the earlier three-way split within her “group” of key supporters divulged during a campaign interview with the New York Times.[xx] For example, “Aquino’s inner circle—and specifically Joker Arroyo—had shut Enrile out of the decision making process,”[xxi] but probably not for reasons primarily associated with the future of the Military Bases Agreement. So long as Enrile held the defense portfolio, he had the opportunity to profit from the US-RP Foreign Military Sales program.[xxii]

Almost three years later at the Rotary Club of Batangas West in Batangas City 1 September 1989, Juan Ponce Enrile, never a close ally of President Aquino, exaggeratedly characterized her “open-options” policy as anti-MBA, asserting, without specifying a precise date, that Aquino later “embraced the pro-bases banner.”[xxiii] Enrile, whose own views on the MBA evidently transmuted only after he was forced out of Aquino’s cabinet in November 1986, declined an opportunity in 1995 to pinpoint the time of Aquino’s change of heart.

Senator Juan Ponce Enrile received a written request for an interview on this matter in early October 1995. A member of Enrile’s staff responded, leaving a telephone message for this researcher on 26 October 1995, indicating that the Senator declined to be interviewed. Although Senator Enrile voted against the extended Military Bases Agreement in 1991, some observers consider Enrile pro-bases during his tenure as Aquino’s Secretary of Defense in 1986, in part perhaps because of potential income he was assumed to be siphoning from the Foreign Military Sales program.[xxiv]

However, Alejandro Melchor, Jr., Marcos’s Executive Secretary and President Aquino’s former ambassador to the USSR, has, more precisely than Enrile and in a journal article[xxv] and an interview with this researcher,[xxvi] specified mid-September 1986 as the critical turning point. Certainly, the events of September 1986 during Aquino’s visit to the United States were crucially important. However, as will become increasingly clear, the claim that Aquino experienced a change of heart is very weak.

A Cabinet split over the Military Bases Agreement. Only once, apparently, did Aquino’s first cabinet debate an issue explicitly linked to the future of the Military Bases Agreement. Shortly before her visit to Indonesia, Aquino triggered that discussion,[xxvii] having sought and obtained an invitation to a September 1986 official visit through her Democratic Party contacts in the United States Congress and having declined Ronald Reagan’s invitation to a November 1986 state visit to Washington, D.C.[xxviii] Anti-bases Cabinet members reportedly expressed their views at the cabinet meeting where Aquino’s proposed US visit was debated, itself held just before her trip to Indonesia. No vote was taken. But “from the number of people speaking on either side [of the question], her cabinet was evenly split,” according to observer Alicia “Alice” C. Villadolid. Anti-bases ministers opposed an early trip to the United States on the grounds that “it would subject her to pressure on the future of the U.S. bases.” Aquino “broke the tie by saying, ‘All right, I’m leaving’.”[xxix] Subsequently, in the view of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines and as stated in its Ang Bayan newspaper on 11 September 1996, the second of four US objectives for the Aquino visit was “to.....exact a commitment for allowing the US military bases to remain beyond 1991.”[xxx] The CPP/NDF knew how to use the new “democratic space” to propagate its views, but it was much weaker in the second half of 1986 than might have been expected.

CPP/NDF electoral blunders, an opportunity for Aquino. Although the Communist Party of the Philippines remained firmly opposed to foreign military bases in the country, that Party’s influence had slipped greatly during the first several months of the Aquino administration. The boycott of the February 1986 elections by major elements of the national democratic left momentarily pre-empted influential advocates of a fourth position—immediate termination of the MBA in 1986—from channels of influence to Aquino’s inner circle. In the most important instance, BAYAN (acronym for Bagong Alyansang Makabayan or New Nationalist Alliance) had pressed unsuccessfully for its MBA-related demand to be included in the joint PDP-Laban/UNIDO opposition election platform: “[T]o immediately remove all U.S. military installations in the country.”[xxxi]

Meanwhile, in 1986, the National Democratic Front (and especially, the Communist Party of the Philippines [CPP]) committed major tactical and strategic blunders. In my analysis, these errors flowed from its distrust of mass demonstrations and political movements that it could not dominate. That distrust, in turn, sharply limited the CPP’s ability to express itself in a nonsectarian, nonmilitary fashion during January-February 1986. Far more damaging, in my view, to the prestige of the national democratic left than its early February 1986 election boycott was its abstention later that month from the post-election EDSA revolt ending the Marcos dictatorship.[xxxii]

Not surprisingly, Aquino’s reaction to the boycott and abstention of the national democratic left was one of relief. “‘Thank God, they didn’t help. Now I don’t owe them anything’,” she said, according to her aide Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin, Jr., in a 2 January 1987 interview.[xxxiii]

However, as will become clear, organizations committed to women’s issues and to removing nuclear weapons from the Philippines filled the political gap more than adequately.

This shift in the Anti-Bases Movement is also reflected in a shift in the lyrics and messages of political protest songs from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. “Ang Masa” (“The Masses”) emphasized great faith in the ordinary Filipino[xxxiv] but was associated with a Communist Party whose ideology inclined it to use the masses as a battering ram for social change (Pollard 2004a). In contrast, the lyrics of anti-bases songs by Joey Ayala’s “Santa Filomena,” Ani Montano’s “Babae Ka” and Edru Abraham and Karina David’s “Base Militar” explicitly centered on the liberation of women as activists freeing the Philippines from American weapons of mass destruction[xxxv].

Looking back to late 1985, Aquino’s perceived reluctance “merely increased pressure on her to run for the presidency,” according to the view later expressed by Arturo M. Tolentino, Marcos’s vice-presidential running mate during the 1985-1986 “Snap election.”[xxxvi] If that inference is correct, her reluctant stance also gave her greater discretion and leeway regarding the future of the bases agreement. On the other hand, although one may argue that Aquino was not beholden to anyone since her followers had begged her to run against Marcos,[xxxvii] anti-MBA forces among the same followers could (and later did) remember and remind both Aquino and their fellow Coryistas of the anti-bases clause in the historic 26 December 1984 Convenor Group Statement.

Struggling to emerge from the shadow of its massive blunder, the NDF emerged from temporary marginalization. Rebounding in late 1986, it became a partner to peace talks with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines. Prominent then among the NDF’s demands was the immediate removal of the United States military facilities. However, if one argues that the NDF was thereby well positioned to affect popular preferences concerning the future of United States military facilities in the Philippines, it is also true that, by the time the peace talks began, the RP governmental panel argued that the future parameters of bases negotiations (as reflected in the Transitional Provision of the new Konstitusyon) were for Filipino voters to decide at the 2 February 1987 plebiscite. To that extent, Aquino was simply consolidating her momentarily gained upper hand.

On the other hand, Satur Ocampo, Chief Negotiator for the National Democratic Front during the 1986-1987 peace talks with the Government of the Philippines, characterizes raising the demand simply as a way of pressuring President Aquino to oppose an extension of the Military Bases Agreement in 1990-1991.[xxxviii]

BAYAN, however, was momentarily caught off-balance in 1986. It had manifestly failed to maintain internal discipline among its members during the Marcos-Aquino Snap Election campaign. BAYAN’s controversial electoral boycott policy stimulated splits within its member-federations. Fifteen years later, former NDF spokesperson Ocampo explained their error this way:

The dominant view was that Marcos would manipulate the election to show that he still enjoyed popular support. It was mainly that and the perception that elections were an instrument of the ruling classes to fool the people.[xxxix]

Nonetheless, points of indirect influence persisted. For example, the Makati Business Club, mentioned above, had left the door open to feelers from the anti-MBA National Democratic Front (NDF), having formally initiated an opening to the NDF just before the Snap Election campaign began.[xl]

Further, when GABRIELA, the anti-Marcos/anti-bases national federation of women’s organizations, boycotted the snap election, FILIPINA, a member-organization, “got out of GABRIELA,” according to Remy Rikken, one of its officers.[xli] However, this split did not occlude other channels or networks of influence by anti-bases forces on Aquino’s MBA policy during 1986. Groups such as the Kilusang Mayo Uno (“May First Movement”) labor federation, local affiliates of GABRIELA, and other nongovernmental organizations subsequently pursued the anti-bases cause at the 1986 Constitutional Commission.[xlii]

Assuming dictatorial powers as presidential initiative. The “EDSA Revolution” of 22-25 February 1986 forced Marcos out of the government. One month later, on 25 March 1986, President Corazon C. Aquino issued Proclamation No. 3.[xliii] Known as the “Freedom Constitution” in pro-Aquino Filipino and American newspapers, the document voluntarily limited her use of international executive agreements, commonly resorted to her predecessors, most especially former President Marcos. The tentatively retroactive reach of these restrictions had an anti-Marcos flavor,[xliv] leaving the door open to a reexamination of international agreements executed under martial law. Some of these restrictions would also reappear a few months later in the debates of the Constitutional Commission of the Philippines and in the language of its final document.

“Not a normal constitution.” President Aquino’s Proclamation No. 3 remained in force until the subsequent Konstitusyon gradually superseded them during February-July of 1987.[xlv] As Aquino’s Jesuit advisor wrote on 30 March 1986, the document “does not pretend to be a normal constitution.”[xlvi] Ex-President Corazon Aquino has expressed herself in similar language. Indeed, one could, with little stretch, argue that her Proclamation No. 3 was similar to the martial law-era Amendment 6 to the 1973 Constitution. Speaking to the UNIV Conference in Rome, Italy, on 5 April 1993, she stated, “I assumed the powers of the dictatorship, but only long enough to absolve it.” Emphasizing the point in different language during the same speech, the former president stated, “I had absolute power, yet ruled with restraint.”[xlvii] And as she relived the experiences of 1986 in an interview with this researcher nine and a half years later, the purpose of Proclamation No. 3 was “to impress on the people that we must start over.”[xlviii] In the contemporaneous summary of advisor Bernas, “She turned her back on the 1973 Constitution whose officials had denied her the presidency.”[xlix]

Aquino retained Article VII (“The President”) from the 1973 martial law-era Constitution, as amended.[l] She dismissed the Batasang Pambansa,[li] harshly referring to the legislature elected in 1984 as “’a cancer’.”[lii] As Art. II of her decree states: “Until a legislature is elected and convened under a new Constitution, the President shall continue to exercise legislative power.” Thus, she cut herself loose from any possible legislative opposition[liii] until late July of the following year, including from among her own supporters since anti-Marcos politicians elected in 1984 were among the dismissed Batasan members. With no legislature and with a self-proclaimed revolutionary constitution, Aquino also obviated greater power-sharing with Vice President Laurel who otherwise might well have been elected Prime Minister by a Batasan operating under the 1973 Constitution.[liv]

Opportunity costs of abolishing the legislature. Unilaterally abolishing the Batasan also obviated its likely obstructionism[lv] towards writing a new constitution. However, since President also chose to appoint the constitutional commissioners. As an unintended consequence, many of her appointees would reflect not the views of the majority of mildly pro-bases Filipinos but the anti-bases perspectives of the nongovernmental “cause-oriented” organizations campaigning for their appointment by President Aquino.

With such executive-generated laws and other initiatives, Aquino conducted foreign relations by decree[lvi] for another sixteen months during 1986-1987. Those months further subdivide into five distinct phases: a) from Proclamation No. 3 until Aquino’s appointment of the Constitutional Commissioners; b) while the ConCom was drafting and debating a new constitution (June-October 1986); c) during her “Vote Yes” campaign to ratify the new constitution (16 October 1986 - 2 February 1987); and d) until Filipino citizens voted for their representatives and Senators (11 May 1987); and e) from that date until Congress was seated (27 July 1987).

The Aquino regime: Rule-by-decree for 17 months. For example, for 25 February - 31 December 1986, I count 264 presidential decrees (almost daily) partly or wholly involving foreign policy matters. In addition, she issued another 27 during 1 January - 27 July 1987 for a total of 291 decrees.

In terms of subject matter, Aquino’s foreign affairs-related decrees implemented both routine and extraordinary matters of foreign affairs. In that period, she issued five different types of decrees, as classified in Table 2, below.

Source: Arroyo and Frianeza (1987:passim; 1990:passim); subtotals, totals and percentages computed by the author.

Even so, this count of presidential decrees does not account for all relevant developments since Aquino made important decisions not included in the decrees totaled above. Most relevantly, none of the decrees she issued during those seventeen months specifically referred to the MBA or, more broadly, RP-USA military relations. A sharp drop-off in the use of foreign policy-related decrees occurs after the Constitutional Commission had finished its work and as the 27 July 1987 opening of Congress approached. Most importantly, the numbers do not tell of one decision Aquino did not make—giving early public explicit reassurances to the United States of what her preferences would likely be concerning a military bases treaty after 1991. Conversely, the numbers also do not tell of Aquino’s decision, in September 1986, to arrange for a private meeting. At that juncture, Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council Advisor for Southeast Asia was told by Dr. Jesse Estanislao that she was not opposed to the American bases, a matter to be discussed below. The numbers in Table 2, above, may be a better index, however, of efforts by Coryistas to limit the influence of presumed Marcos loyalists within the Department of Foreign Affairs.

President Aquino’s use of decrees had strong precedent. Referring to Presidents Aguinaldo and Marcos, Isabelo T. Crisostomo notes, “The concentration of executive and legislative powers in the President during the transition period as provided under the ‘Freedom Constitution’ is not without precedent in Philippine history.”[lvii] The most appropriate analogy may be with the interlude between Aguinaldo’s Dictatorial Government and the (constitutional) Malolos Republic. Marcos’s reliance on presidential decrees, of course, is well known. However, upon ratification of the 1987 Konstitusyon on 2 February 1987, Aquino’s government metamorphosed from a provisional revolutionary government to a power sharing caretaker interim government. This terminology, but not necessarily the isomorphic concepts, is that of Allison K. Stanger.[lviii]

Turning aside American pressure. Aquino momentarily benefited from the uneven adjustment of US politicians to her and her first cabinet. Withholding early explicit public reassurances of support for a renewed MBA from US President Reagan and Senator Robert Dole, she unsuccessfully sought a change in ASEAN’s public policy towards the bases. The former colonial government’s executive and legislative branches had been speaking with more than one voice to Corazon Aquino during the period leading up to her presidency. After the 21 August 1983 assassination of former Senator Benigno Aquino, the State Department gradually warmed to his widow Corazon Aquino. It did so earlier and more readily than some elements in the White House.

A more broadly based shift within the US government was underway well before the 7 February 1986 elections. On the one hand, interviews by Leslie Gelb in late January 1986 revealed a growing consensus in the White House, Departments of State and Defense, and intelligence agencies that “the departure of President Ferdinand E. Marcos is critical to a non-Communist future for the Philippines and American interests in that country.” With little enthusiasm, US President Ronald Reagan himself reportedly approved the “policy of distancing.” “Essentially passive” is how several officials interviewed by Gelb characterized Reagan’s participation in formulation of that policy. Perhaps Reagan’s passivity was a reflection of “his longstanding concern about undermining allies.”[lix] Indeed, Reagan did not quickly reconcile himself to the fall of his personal friend, Ferdinand Marcos. Friendship aside, there was political consistency in Reagan’s tardiness since his 1980 presidential election campaign criticized incumbent US President “Jimmy” Carter for abandoning US allies Anastacio Somoza of Nicaragua and the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, of Iran.

In contrast with Reagan, the US Department of State emphasized much earlier how massive electoral fraud had cheated Aquino of many votes.[lx] Only on midnight of the first day of the EDSA military mutiny, led by West Point graduate and Armed Forces Acting Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Fidel V. Ramos and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, did President Reagan issue a statement blaming Marcos for massive vote fraud in the February 1986 election.[lxi]

Delaying public personal reconciliation with Aquino, Reagan first granted safe haven to Marcos in Honolulu, Hawai’i, and later made a publicized personal telephone call to Marcos in Honolulu while stopping over on the island of O’ahu in early April 1986. Reagan tardily sent Aquino his personal congratulations on 25 April 1986—eight weeks after the EDSA revolt,[lxii] having earlier transmitted formulaic congratulations to the new government of the Philippines.[lxiii]

One influence of the United States on the Filipino style of foreign policy making, especially the preference and rationale for unratified international executive agreements, may be traced to the landmark Commonwealth-era United States Supreme Court decisions like the Belmont and Curtiss-Wright constitutional precedents for international executive agreements. That trend is summarized elsewhere by the author.[lxiv]

Some forms of American influence suggest that anticipatory democratization also opened up new RP governmental processes to foreign influence. Evidence of overt American pressures in 1986, for example, has come to light. US government officials directly involved themselves in ConCom activities during 1986. Filipino reporters “alleged that some U.S. officials have been discreetly inviting Con-Com members to discussions on the ‘necessity’ to retain the bases.”[lxv] And, indeed, Filipino journalists easily fingered Richard Holmes and Sylvia Lopez Alejandro, two US Embassy political section officers attending the Constitutional Commission’s plenary sessions and committee hearings.[lxvi] Nine years later, former Constitutional Commissioner Dr. Wilfrido V. Villacorta[lxvii] still remembered Mr. Holmes’s activity, as did Commissioner Jaime Tadeo, then a leader of the left-agrarian Kilusan ng mga Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Farmers’ Movement of the Philippines). In an interview otherwise conducted in Tagalog, Tadeo credited Holmes with “100% attendance” at sessions of the Constitutional Commission of the Philippines.[lxviii] Although Holmes and Alejandro apparently were doing nothing illegal, their efforts to buttonhole commissioners may have been insufficient or even counterproductive.

The following two paragraphs are the core of my 1992 Freedom-of-Information Act (FOIA) request concerning American views of the Constitutional Commission and efforts to influence the proceedings. The FOIA request led to declassification of 833 pages of once-secret cablegrams sent from the American Embassy on Roxas Boulevard to the U.S. Department of State during 1986-1987:[lxix]

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], I am requesting a review and declassification of all relevant files and records related to the 1986 Constitutional Commission of the Philippines during April 1986-February 1987. Specifically, I need to study cables, transcripts and analyses that elucidate (1) the foreign affairs-related discussions and debates of that constitution-writing body, (2) the contemporaneous views of these issues, topics and devel­opments by departments and agencies of the United States Government, and (3) efforts by the US to comment on, participate in, or influence the course of these constitutional discussions and debates.

…The topics of interest include the following:

a.   Stringent requirements for Senate ratification of proposed treaties and international executive agreements;

b.   Restraints on presidential initiatives in international executive agreements;

c.   Selective reconsideration of Marcos-era international executive agreements;

d.   Reinterpreting the expiration  date and extension  or "phase-out" clause of the Military Bases Agreement;

e.   A ban on the storage of nuclear weapons in the Republic of the Philippines (and their transport over the land, sea or air of the RP);

f.    Economic provisions affecting US nationals; and

g.   Transcending a Cold War perspective on regional and world politics.[lxx]

Roland Simbulan, then as now with the Nuclear-Free Philippines Coalition, suggested that the American officials’ lobbying tactics at the ConCom were obtuse.[lxxi] The declassified U.S. cablegrams underline US governmental awareness and even surprise that augmented limits on presidential treaty making power would complicate renegotiation of the MBA for the Americans. And former Minister of Information “Teddy Boy” Locsin, who spoke freely in a 1996 audiotaped interview with the author about Aquino’s advisors’s close ties with the US intelligence community, also expressed surprise nine and a half years later, upon learning from this researcher that the 1984 Convenor Group Statement had been circulated to the Constitutional Commissioners on days when key votes were scheduled.[lxxii] Evidently, Locsin underestimated the ingenuity of the Nationalist Bloc!

However, the former Minister of Information should have been aware that former Senator Lorenzo Tañada had, on 17 June 1986 and on behalf of the BAYAN coalition, submitted anti-bases constitutional recommendations. In so doing, he quoted the anti-bases 26 December 1984 Convenor Group Statement cosigned by Mrs. Aquino. In a declassified 27 June 1986 memo to Mr. Richard Holmes attached to Ambassador Bosworth’s cablegram to United States Secretary of States George Shultz, Sylvia L. Alejandro of the United States Embassy’s Political Section commented that Tañada’s “mention of the Declaration of Unity as having been signed by President Aquino is an indicator that he and his group intend to ensure that she [Aquino] keeps her word on this signed document despite press releases [from Malacañang Palace] to the contrary.”[lxxiii] And indeed they did.

However, former Constitutional Commissioner and Aquino advisor Father Joaquin Bernas, S.J., later downplayed the effect of the Convenor Group’s “Declaration of Unity” during 1986. In response to the author’s e-mailed question on that point, Bernas replied, “In my dealing with Mrs. Aquino and in my conversations with people around her, the “Declaration of Unity was hardly ever referred to.” Bernas continued:

Those seriously working with her just went on working not paying much attention to whatever carping there might have been about the Declaration. In fact, I do not recall any carping that was taken with any seriousness.[lxxiv]

The views expressed by US Embassy employee Alejandro and Aquino advisor Bernas, respectively, apparently underestimated two closely related but different uses for the “Declaration of Unity,” namely, 1) to energize anti-bases forces during the Constitutional Commission’s proceedings and 2) to influence wavering Commissioners.

Greater risks taken by leaders of democratization movements. Diplomat Sylvia Alejandro’s comment comes close to capturing the essence of the dilemma faced by Aquino and the Americans on how to react to anti-bases initiatives by cause-oriented groups in league with similarly inclined nationalist Constitutional Commissioners.

Aware of President Aquino’s pro-MBA orientation, Embassy personnel nonetheless believed that, having stated her commitment to restoring a version of representative democracy, President Aquino risked undermining confidence in herself if she explicitly, repeatedly and publicly repudiated the 1984 “Declaration of Unity.”

An unstated assumption in this context, I believe, is that the leader of a democratic transition is likely to pay a higher political price for deviating from her public commitments than the dictator she helped drive from office.[lxxv]

Presidential initiative in Washington. In mid-September 1986, the draft ConCom transitory provisions compounded the difficulties facing American politicians inclined to pressure Aquino for explicit public reassurances of support for an extended MBA. In her lionized address at the 18 September 1986 Joint Session of the United States Congress, President Aquino avoided direct reference to the MBA. Her avoidance, arguably, put the ball in the Americans’ court, deferring pressure from those American politicians who would have her modify the policy of withholding early explicit public reassurances about the future of the Military Bases Agreement. She did so, again, by hinting at the dangers of interfering with the writing and ratification of the new post-Marcos constitution:

We have swept away absolute power by a limited revolution that respected the life and freedom of every Filipino... A jealously independent Constitutional Commission is completing its draft which will be submitted later...to a popular referendum. When it is approved, there will be congressional elections... Given the polarization and breakdown we inherited, this is no small achievement.[lxxvi]

By 12 September 1986, the conservative Heritage Foundation had shifted ground. A lengthy article “What Ronald Reagan Should Tell Cory Aquino” by a policy analyst at its Asian Studies Center was recommending to the US President to avoid pressuring Aquino to make public statements on the future of the military bases.[lxxvii]

U.S. conservatives divided on how to deal with Aquino. But conservatives were not all of one mind. Nor did all of them accept the advice of the Heritage Foundation. Developments at the ConCom certainly alarmed United States Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole.

Its proposed restrictions[lxxviii] limiting Aquino’s future authority to make executive agreements with the United States raised “a huge question mark,” in Dole’s view, over the ability of the US to maintain military bases in the Philippines.

In a speech for the Congressional Record, the Kansas Republican summarized his meeting with President Aquino one day earlier, reporting that he had “expressed appreciation for her commitment to abide by the bases agreement through 1991 and understanding for her desire not to address the issue in detail on this trip.” Nonetheless, on 19 September 1986, Dole remained “concerned” about the proposed constitutional provision which, unlike the 1947 MBA, “will require any extension of the bases agreement to be done by treaty rather than executive agreement.” Looking ahead four years to 1990 with perspicacity, the Midwestern Senator predicted, “[T]his whole procedure practically guarantees that the bases issue will turn out to be an explosive domestic political issue in the Philippines and subject to being made a hostage to the broader political struggle in the country.” Pessimistically reading the handwriting on the wall, Dole felt that Aquino’s Constitutional Commission seemed “to be taking major steps to shape—and shape may be much too weak a word—the options we have for dealing with this issue down the road.”[lxxix]

Senator Dole publicly articulated the dilemma of pro-MBA Americans better than most of his colleagues. But Aquino had adroitly presented Dole and his less outspoken co-thinkers with a hobson’s choice. On the one hand, in order to get the reassurances some conservatives desired, they would have had to criticize the ongoing democratization of foreign policy decision making by the Constitutional Commission! Pursuing that alternative would have incurred the risk of being perceived as meddling in Filipino politics.

If Senator Dole was aware of the September 1986 Estanislao mission to the White House National Security Advisor on Southeast Asia, evidently he did not consider Aquino’s private reassurances to be sufficient.

An alternative interpretation is that astute pro-bases individuals in the Department of State, Congress and elsewhere in the executive and legislative branches of the US Government simply did not want to apply potentially destabilizing pressure on Aquino’s government.[lxxx] This interpretation is not counterposed to mine. Indirectly, it augments mine in that those Americans felt that destabilizing pressure would have undesirably undercut the redemocratization processes also supported by key American political leaders. For example, in 1995, Frederick Z. Brown, a former aide to Indiana Senator Richard Lugar who accompanied Aquino and Lugar during most of the time she spent with the Senator during her 1986 visit, reports being unaware of any pro-MBA extension pressure being brought against President Aquino by Lugar during her visit.[lxxxi] Brown, not incidentally, claims authorship of Philippines-related chapters in Lugar’s election-year foreign policy book.[lxxxii] During the Aquino presidency, Alan Ortiz was her Executive Secretary of the National Security Council Secretariat.[lxxxiii] Dr. Ortiz demurs from such a benign interpretation, noting that the prospect of American economic assistance was dangling in the offing.[lxxxiv]

On the other hand, by muting their discontent, American politicians may well have undercut the future position of the US panel in the 1990-1991 MBA negotiations. During early redemocratization, some American officials seemed to assign greater value to public reassurances from Aquino than they had given to private reassurances from a former dictator who certainly did not have to answer to so many appointed commissioners or future senators. US officials were reluctant directly to acknowledge such criticisms. However, at least one of them did so indirectly. For example, after President Aquino had returned to the RP and while the ConCom was completing its work, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Michael H. Armacost praised President Aquino on 6 October 1986 for indicating “her intent to honor existing legal obligations while preserving policy options for the 1990s” and for her related advice to members of the Constitutional Commission.[lxxxv] Armacost was indirectly referring to the foreign policy section of Aquino’s pre-election “minimum program of government.”[lxxxvi]

Aquino’s presidential media blitz in Washington. President Corazon Aquino relied on the advice of her mass communications media advisors, skillfully playing to the US mass communications television and newsprint audiences with twenty-six well-publicized speeches and press statements during a ten-day period beginning on 15 September 1986. “Her speeches,” observed Francisco E. Nemenzo, “contained none of the obsequio[u]s oratory of her predecessors.” “Despite persistent probing by American journalists,” he tells us, “she evaded the bases issue.”[lxxxvii]

According to Alejandro Melchor, Jr., former Ambassador to Moscow during 1986-1989, President Aquino privately began pursuing a different course during the second half of 1986. From Melchor’s perspective, “overwhelming support on the part of the U.S. Congress for her personal leadership” led to “an apparent change of heart” by Aquino. Melchor cites Ambassador Emmanuel N. Pelaez alluding to an unnamed “someone in her Cabinet” who prevented Aquino from communicating her changed views to anti-bases cabinet members.[lxxxviii] Elaborating the prior point, Melchor has written that he arranged for a meeting between Dr. Jesus Estanislao, her future finance secretary, and Richard Childress, US National Security Advisor on Southeast Asia. Estanislao, in Melchor’s summary, told Reagan’s NSC advisor “that President Aquino was not opposed to the bases.”[lxxxix] Discussing this kind of meeting was, apparently, not a sensitive matter for President Aquino’s former Minister of Information. As far as Aquino was concerned, according to Theodore “Teddy Boy” Locsin, Jr., the Americans simply “had to make the case” for the bases.[xc] In an interview four years after publication of Melchor’s article and in response to this researcher’s direct question, the former ambassador to Moscow indicated that the Estanislao mission was undertaken at President Aquino’s initiative.[xci]

At the same time, Aquino readily turned aside probes and cajoling from the highest American politicians, although “the parameters” of “what you are supposed to say, what you are prepared not to say” was, according to her, “taken care of” in advance by the two countries’ foreign services.[xcii] In his 17 September 1986 joint appearance with Aquino on the White House South Lawn, United States President Reagan nudgingly interjected with a “side note”:

When talking about those bases, our two countries share common interests in the peace and stability of the Pacific region. I’m confident that we will continue to enjoy a strong mutual defense relationship for the foreseeable future.[xciii]

Unintended consequences of redemocratization. Even if some of the Aquino-Reagan exchange may have been choreographed,[xciv] Ronald Reagan who, from the early 1980s onward had been insistently calling for the democratization of the Soviet Union did not then fully appreciate the public reluctance of the leader of a redemocratizing Philippines to acquiesce in every nuance of his public preferences.

Ignoring Reagan’s “side note” and its reference to “a strong mutual defense relationship,” Aquino reminded him that Filipinos would be voting on the “new Constitution” in early 1987.[xcv] Even if irritated by anti-bases Constitutional Commissioners, President Aquino used their stance as a foil, turning it to her advantage before Secretary of State George P. Shultz at a dinner he hosted in her honor later the same day:

Yet now that there is a democratic and open government in the Philippines, I think you also understand that we reflect the people’s will. I don’t need to put your diplomats on warning, Mr. Schultz, that that means we can sometimes be difficult to deal with![xcvi]

In light of the secret Estanislao-Childress meeting, were President Aquino’s statements just palabas or “show”? Not necessarily. Reporting on Aquino’s official visit, political scientist and journalist Francisco E. Nemenzo, Jr. (shortly to become a sharp critic of President Aquino), quotes an unnamed US Department of State official’s description of her, “’She has a style all her own; call it grace under pressure but you can’t get around to her like you could with Marcos’.”[xcvii] After all, Aquino was concerned about a significant if diminishing minority in the US foreign policy community who still preferred to pressure her into tipping her hand publicly on the future of the bases.

There were other outcomes from Aquino’s visit to the United States. In Chicago where the anti-martial law movement had a visible pre-1986 presence, the author noticed that Aquino’s public relations blitz seemed to have briefly silenced Filipino-Americans and others favoring termination of the MBA; this manifested itself in reticence or what may have been self-censorship, that is, an unwillingness to criticize the popular woman president.

The day after meeting with Reagan and Shultz, Aquino reiterated the importance of the new constitution, again avoiding any mention of the MBA’s future before a joint audience of the US Chamber of Commerce, the US-ASEAN Business Council and OPIC in Washington, D.C.[xcviii]

Meanwhile on 15 September 1986, Commissioner Wilfrido V. Villacorta of De La Salle University and eighteen others had introduced Proposed Resolution 545 to the Constitutional Commission in the Philippines. The proposal called for deferring votes on any MBA-related constitutional provisions so as, in their words, to give Mrs. Aquino “full freedom in negotiating with U.S. President Reagan” and “much more leverage particularly on economic matters.”[xcix] Not all MBA-related debate and voting was postponed, but pro-bases commissioners defeated a proposal calling for the treaty’s termination. “What was perceived as the worst-case scenario for Aquino’s visit,” Debra Lynn Petersen summarizes, “did not occur because the Con-Com rejected a committee proposal banning the U.S. military bases.”[c]

And in Lewis M. Simons’ summary of the subsequently released Adaza copy of a bugged telephone mid-September 1986 conversation between President Aquino and Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo, “the two had meddled with the drafting of the national constitution in order to assure that nuclear weapons could continue to move in and out of the U.S. bases.”[ci]

Yet even the weaker provisions[cii] approved by the ConCom distressed leading conservatives in the US Congress.[ciii] At the same time, however, the source of their concern was a passing wellspring of added leverage for Aquino.

Survey research on citizen attitudes conducted by Ateneo de Manila University and Social Weather Stations in June and October 1986 reported 19-20% of the respondents (from national samples) taking a clearcut position against retention of the American bases.[civ]

Without prompting, Raúl S. Manglapus, Secretary of Foreign Affairs during 1987-1992, indicated to this researcher that he was aware of those percentages.[cv] In September 1986, Mrs. Aquino had, through an emissary, let the Americans know that she was not opposed to the bases.[cvi] The Social Weather Stations survey results would not have undermined her preference for a plebiscite on the issue. The survey results must also have been reassuring to the United States. Of course, as Aquino, Manglapus and the United States may have appreciated too late, unadorned percentages of opposition understate what proportion of the population was dedicated to organizing against the Military Bases Agreement.

Conflicting pro-bases motivations. “Fear of the People’s Republic of China sometimes flexing its muscles and dominating the area was,” as a former ambassador recollected, “the specific motivation” for supporting the presence of American military facilities in the Philippines.[cvii] That view, however, may well have been held by only a tiny minority of public opinion makers and shapers if one agrees with David Wurfel that “by the early 1970s, Manila’s foreign affairs cognoscenti were well aware of the warming alliance between the United States and China.”[cviii]

A contrasting interpretation emphasizes the role of the USSR’s bases in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, however. For example, an economist and former Constitutional Commissioner with the Center for Research and Communication stressed that the government’s inability to defeat the NDF/CPP/NPA politically and militarily led many business people to regard the bases as a source of stability;[cix] however, that interviewee and another pointed out that fear of the Soviet Union was the primary motivation for pro-bases business people during 1985-1986, whereas among RP military supporters of the bases, opportunities to acquire weapons and munitions from the United States were a more fundamental motivation.[cx]

But as noted above, however, both views are implicitly contested by a third well-placed business source,[cxi] suggesting that the perspectives in the business community varied widely in 1985-1986 and that not so many Filipino capitalists were all that concerned with retaining the bases.

In spite of her temporary ability to make foreign policy unchecked by a legislature, implementation of Aquino’s reactively anti-Marcos agenda triggered unprecedented constitutional checks and balance on presidential foreign affairs powers, some of which had been anticipated in her “Freedom Constitution.” On 25 March 1986, President Aquino’s Proclamation No. 3 announced the impending Constitutional Commission.[cxii]

Unintended consequences of the appointment process. Aquino appointed the Commissioners after seeking and considering over nine hundred nominations from individuals and groups throughout the Philippines.[cxiii] Nine years later, she gave this researcher three reasons for not ordering an election of convention delegates: 1) the expense; 2) the likelihood that the former dictator’s supporters would win a majority of the delegates; and 3) the delay in starting the drafting of a new constitution.[cxiv]

Although President Aquino may not fully have realized it at the time, her decision to appoint the authors of the constitution generated an unintended consequence. It increased her chances of getting a constitution with some kind of anti-bases clause. Given the large mildly pro-bases majorities reflected in public opinion polling, one might have expected constitutional convention delegates elected at the local level to reflect their respective constituencies on issues like the MBA. On the other hand, the constituency which nominated commissioners included media-savvy cause-oriented groups, many of which had explicitly anti-bases politics and platforms, campaigning for their nomination.

As if campaigning for a plebiscite as part of a yet-to-be written MBA-related constitutional transitory provision by a yet-to-be-appointed Constitutional Commission, Aquino told a Japanese television interviewer on 11 April 1986 that a national referendum would follow a renegotiation of the MBA with the United States. While some may point to Aquino’s statement and argue that she was privately for an extension of the MBA all along, her timing is the important aspect here. In the words of New York Times reporter Christopher S. Wren, Aquino’s comments, also carried briefly on government-run Channel 4 Television in Manila, occurred only “hours before [US] State and Defense Department officials told a Senate subcommittee in Washington that they saw good prospects for continued access to the Clark and Subic Bay bases after 1991 and there were no plans to relocate the bases elsewhere in Asia.”[cxv]