Lull in the Killing

The time out from war that President Corazon Aquino has sought since coming to power has begun in the Philippines with a truce--the first in the 17 years since a Communist-led insurgency began--that is supposed to last for 60 days. There are plenty of skeptics on both sides of the line who doubt that it will run its course. The distrust between the army and the rebels is deep and undisguised. So is the dedication of the Communists to seizing power rather than accepting reintegration into society as Aquino has proposed. The military is already gearing up for the next round. Under its pressure, Aquino has warned that if her olive branch is cast aside she will have no choice but to rely fully on the sword.

That threat was enough to get the Communists to agree to the cease-fire. But accepting an expedient truce is a far cry from abandoning revolutionary means to achieve revolutionary goals. Since the overthrow of the Ferdinand E. Marcos dictatorship last February the insurgency, after some initial defections, has actually gained strength. The insurgents operate in and draw their support from a countryside where Manila’s writ has never been strong. In that countryside children still die of hunger, peasants labor--when they can find work at all--for a pittance, the inequities and indecencies of an ancient feudal system go on.

Like her predecessors, Aquino comes from the class that benefits most from this feudal structure. Once upon a time she indicated that she would take the moral leadership toward essential land reform by breaking up her own family’s 12,000-acre estate. Now she has had second thoughts. The significance of those thoughts is not that a single huge holding won’t be parceled out among the landless, but that all the talk about producing a genuine land-reform program seems destined to remain only talk. Empty talk can be expensive. The key promise of the Communists to the countryside is the redistribution of land so that people can feed themselves and not watch their children starve. That is not abstract ideology but an appeal straight to the belly, and to the heart. The government has no real choice. It must either begin doing what the Communists say they plan to do, or it can see the insurgency deepen and spread.