Marcos’s Phone Bill

One of the big beneficiaries of Ferdinand E. Marcos’s hasty move from Manila to Honolulu last February has been the phone company. No sooner had he settled into exile than the deposed Philippines president began burning up the lines to his homeland with exhortations to his followers and attacks on President Corazon Aquino’s government. The United States, as some testy remarks by Secretary of State George P. Shultz have made clear, is frustrated. When he was persuaded to go into exile Marcos was assured of honorable treatment. The unwritten corollary was that he would behave himself. Instead he has become a pest, abusing his guest privileges by working to undermine a government the United States supports.

That’s why Washington would like Aquino to restore Marcos’ passport. With valid documents Marcos might be persuaded to relocate someplace where it might not be so easy to stay a troublemaker. Aquino’s response, not unreasonably, has been nothing doing. She doesn’t want Marcos to go anywhere, lest his first stop prove to be Manila, where the question of what to do with him would only create problems. Most of all she doesn’t want him to leave U.S. jurisdiction.

So long as he stays put Marcos will be within reach of the various legal investigations that are trying to determine how he illicitly obtained his vast wealth and where he now has it stashed. Give him the chance to fly the coop, the Filipinos say, and chances of recovering most of this loot would probably fly with him.

Filipino officials say that it’s not Marcos on the transoceanic phone that worries them, but the economic and security mess that he left behind. The Reagan Administration is trying to help by asking Congress for an additional $150 million in emergency aid, and now Shultz says that Washington will take the lead in an international effort to raise $2 billion that Aquino says is urgently needed if the Philippines is to work its way back to solvency. A lot of countries have a stake in the stability of the Philippines. Marcos is an annoyance, but not for now a major threat to the Aquino government. The legacy of his two decades in office is the real threat. The Philippines needs more help, and fast.