Word: aquinos
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...While Aquino sought to purge the Marcos legacy at home, others were intently pursuing it abroad. The Swiss government stunned its starchy banking community by freezing all assets in numerous bank accounts, rumored to total in the hundreds of millions of dollars, belonging to Marcos, his family and associates. Never before had Switzerland issued such a sweeping order without an explicit request from an aggrieved government. An estimated $1 billion of Marcos' assets abroad, mostly in the U.S., have also been frozen. No one, however, was ready to predict that the paper trail would come to an end soon...
...fashioning the provisional constitution, Aquino hoped to stake out a middle ground between those who urged creation of a "revolutionary government" and those who agitated for maintaining "constitutional" rule. In her nine-page proclamation, the President stressed that she would retain all the rights guaranteed in the 1973 constitution (among them freedom of speech and assembly). The infamous Amendment Six, which allowed Marcos to claim emergency powers under martial law, was rendered moot because the proclamation gives Aquino full legislative powers. Justice Minister Neptali Gonzales, who helped frame the provisional constitution, pronounced the new government "revolutionary in origin, democratic...
...from Marcos' New Society Movement remained unpersuaded, accusing the President of dictatorial tendencies and excoriating the new plan as a "Magna Carta of enslavement." Blas Ople, who had served as Marcos' Labor Minister for 17 years, went so far as to charge, with more than a little hyperbole, that Aquino was claiming authority "more absolute, more authoritarian and more arbitrary than the powers gobbled up by the former President...
...there were even murmurs of dissent from Aquino's inner circle. Under the new constitution, said one minister, "we have the same situation as before --the concentration of power in one person, even though that person happens to be an angel or a saint." Other loyalists were disgruntled that the new plan had been drawn up by a very small group of counselors working independently of the Cabinet. "I have strong reservations about this," protested Local Government Minister Aquilino Pimentel. "I was never consulted." Even Vice President Salvador Laurel was not fully involved in determining the contents of the final...
Such divisions within the new government could prove costly. One of Aquino's most urgent priorities is to end hostilities with the more than 16,000 guerrillas of the Communist New People's army. During her campaign, she promised a cease-fire as soon as she took office. But so far she has not addressed the issue formally. Meanwhile, under Chief of Staff General Fidel Ramos and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, the military has continued its operations against the guerrillas. According to the government, there have been 173 encounters between troops and rebels since Aquino took office, resulting...