Aquino trial spotlights Marcos' uncertain future

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18 SOCIALIST ACTION APRIL 1985 The trial of the accused assassins of former Philippine senator Benigno Aquino was postponed for the fifth time in early March because of the continued absence of five key witnesses. The testimony of the missing eyewitnesses to the Aug. 21, 1983, airport murder of Aquino was instrumental in destroying the "lone gunman" theory put forward by President Ferdinand Marcos.

As a result of the massive mobilizations which followed the murder, a government fact-finding commission was forced to file charges against 25 military personnel. Most prominent among them were armed forces Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian Ver and the head of airport security Gen. Luther Custodio.

The uncertain state of the Aquino trial ironically parallels the larger dilemma faced by Ferdinand Marcos in apartheid (continued from page 1: “Apartheid's multiplies”) face of apartheid.

Ronald Reagan tried to place some of the blame on the victims of the police massacre. «There has been increasing violence and there is an element in South Africa that does not want a ence.

Over the past year, 244 people have died at the hands of apartheid's repression. Hundreds of thousands more are faced with forced relocation, joblessness, and landlessness.

White-minority rule is sustained by foreign investment and foreign aid. We here in the United States have the obligation to demand that our government's shameful role in South Africa come to an end. coping with the aftershock of the murder of his most formidable political opponent within the Philippine ruling class.

On the one hand, Marcos is under heavy pressure to dispense justice in a "credible" fashion and thereby absolve his government of responsibility. Among those applying pressure is the United States, justifiably concerned about military and economic interests threatened by Marcos' inability to control the Filipino people.

On the other hand, the conviction of Ver would further undermine Marcos' authority because of Ver's well-earned reputation as the dictator's right-hand man. Ver, Marcos' former bodyguard, rose to power because of his loyalty to the Philippine president. Only the most gullible would believe that Ver could be independently involved in the assassination.

For now, the disappearance of key prosecution witnesses has allowed the regime time to decide how much and who to sacrifice to allow it to ride out the storm unleashed by Aquino's murder. Anticipating the results of the trial, Marcos has already indicated that Ver will return to his old job if acquitted.

But Marcos' dilemma is part of the larger problem faced by the Philippine capitalist class and its U.S. backers: Who will succeed the Filipino dictator?

This is not an idle question in a country that is in hock to the International Monetary Fund, faced by a working class whose work stoppages increased three-fold in 1984 over 1983, threatened by peasant insurrection in 50 provinces and a national liberation war in the Muslim south, and whose government lost almost all of its domestic and international credibility in the wake of Aquino's murder.

For its part, heightened repression and the "salvaging" (disappearance) of opponents has been the answer of a regime girding itself to defend the gains of two decades of corrupt rule.

After Marcos, what?

But the impending passage of the ailing dictator, rumored to have a terminal degenerative disease, has led to jockeying within the ruling clique for the position of heir apparent. Gen. Ver's predicament and the unpopularity of the marched on the presidential palace in late September to mark the anniversary of the declaration of martial law. The bloody repression of the September demonstration led to sizeable protest actions in October.

In the same month transit workers and Jeepney drivers struck to protest increases in gas prices. They were joined by other unions as well as student and other organizations in . solidarity actions. The transit workers repeated their action in January.

These popular mobilizations, the control of any sector of the class, continue to hold the key political future of the Philippines out of ruling to the

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peaceful settlement, that wants violence in the streets," he said at a news confer-