Word: aquinos
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...ended a two-week tour of the Pacific last week, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney concluded that the governments of Japan and South Korea still appreciate their U.S. protectors, despite anti-American sentiment among some political factions. Yet Cheney caught a slap from Philippine President Corazon Aquino. The U.S. Congress had recently cut $96 million from a $481 million military and economic aid package that Aquino apparently considered a precondition for negotiations on renewing U.S. leases to operate the huge Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base. Miffed, she canceled plans to meet Cheney. The Defense Secretary took the snub...
Both sides in the bases dispute may be just huffing, seeking an edge in the imminent bargaining. At the Pentagon, a Navy captain insisted that Philippine officials "have cried wolf one time too often" over Subic and that the U.S. might pull out. Aquino, who was saved from a military coup last December when U.S. jet fighters from Clark kept rebel air power grounded, caught a lot of domestic heat over her dependence on the U.S. She may have used Cheney's visit to show some distance. While the U.S. bases are often picketed by leftists, polls show that...
...tradition hardly absolves the President. By failing to attack corruption head on and thus clear up a growing list of allegations, Aquino risks damage to her most valuable asset: her moral authority...
Critics often denounce Aquino's first creation in office, the Presidential Commission on Good Government, as a bastion of ineptitude. Charged with the recovery of up to $10 billion that Marcos is said to have looted from the treasury, the commission has recovered nearly $1 billion so far but has been accused of abusing its powers. In one case, for example, Ricardo ("Baby") Lopa, an Aquino brother-in-law who controlled a profitable Nissan auto- assembly plant and 38 other companies before they were seized by the Marcos regime in the early 1970s, was allowed to buy the firms back...
...That Aquino has at least partially delivered on her "no favors" pledge is generally overlooked. She has cut into Marcos' "crony capitalism" by dismantling sugar and coconut monopolies and beginning -- however clumsily -- to privatize government-owned companies that produce everything from cars to cement. But she has been unable to dispel some well-entrenched assumptions. "For any average Filipino, if he gets a good job, his family would expect to benefit," explains Jose Luis Alcuaz, a longtime ally of Aquino's assassinated husband Benigno...