The Coup Attempt I Witnessed 35 Years Ago

In 1987, I witnessed a violent, nearly successful coup attempt in the Philippines. If someone had told me back then that a U.S. congressional committee would investigate an insurrection of our own 35 years later, I would have scoffed.

I knew that our own democracy was flawed. I never dreamed it might be fatally so.

But here we are.

The first day of hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol have painted a picture of an assault far broader than linking it to one day and place would suggest. Vice Chair Liz Cheney’s clear, compelling opening remarks feature incriminating video statements by members of Donald Trump’s inner circle. She implicitly though superbly makes a daunting case that stretches over many months and events: Donald Trump knew that he lost the 2020 election; he intentionally perverted our democracy in order to overturn it.

If you watch nothing else from the Committee’s presentations, Cheney’s account is Must See TV. But I hope you’ll tune in to the hearings this week. They’re that important. Large parts promise to be riveting.

But I digress…

Spurred by the hearings, I dug up a letter I’d sent friends shortly after the 1987 coup attempt in Manila. I’d arrived there a few months earlier to work for the Philippines office of the Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit funding democracy, civil society, human rights, legal aid and related initiatives across that continent.

Here are some excerpts, lightly edited for clarity. Unlike America in 2022, it discusses tanks rather than legal processes and political pressure. Still, judge for yourselves what to make of what transpired back then, and whether any of it relates to what we’re witnessing today…

As you might have heard, we had a bit of trouble here recently with the military. I recall chatting on the phone with a friend the morning of the coup attempt, on August 28, shortly after getting to work and as the first news filtered in. The reports were so fragmented and incomplete that that we half-chuckled at “yet another mutiny,” unaware that this was not simply another hopeless grab for power by some isolated military elements – number five or six or eight (depending on which paper you read) since Cory Aquino assumed the presidency after the February 1986 “People Power” revolution that affirmed her electoral victory and deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Now that the smoke has somewhat cleared, the country is seeing how close the rebels came to pulling it off…

As the news reports grew increasingly bleak during the morning of the 28^th, those of us who had made it to the office that day worked in a daze. The fall of the government was something most folks had never imagined could happen, at least not so soon, only 18 months after Aquino assumed office.

Yet the reports kept dribbling in. The rebels controlled parts of Manila’s air force base and at least two other military facilities. They’d seized three television stations. The presidential palace had come under attack. Commanders in other areas of the country were turning the rebels’ way.

The occasional pro-Government (?) tank or armored personnel carrier rumbled up Manila’s central artery, which runs just by our office. The surreal became possible.

Just the previous week, on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Cory’s husband, opposition politician Benigno Aquino, the papers had been full of proud articles and advertisements, celebrating his memory and the popular, anti-Marcos revolt with which that memory is now entwined. Efren, a fellow who works for the Foundation, had told me how in February 1986 he had joined the People Power throngs that had blocked Marcos’s tanks from attacking pro-democracy soldiers seeking his overthrow. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Now, but a week after beaming about those dangerous, joyful, electrifying days, Efren and everyone else in the office began to look broken. How had the dream become undone so quickly?

As you now know, though, the dream is not completely dead. The mutiny failed. By the night of the 28^th, it became apparent that the rebels would lose. People started to say that perhaps the revolt had been a good thing.

One metaphor I liked was offered by my boss, who saw this as a heart attack for the country, something that might make it change its diet and lifestyle, forcing it to address the corruption and irresolution that had increasingly characterized the Government.

A Philippine senator similarly likened the rebellion to a boil that had finally been lanced. The traitors and their sympathizers had revealed themselves. They could now be cleaned out.

Unfortunately, it now seems that purging the sympathizers would mean firing much of the officer corps. The Marcos dictatorship’s fourteen years of rule clouded the line between civilian authority and military professionalism. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, the revolt’s leader, had spent nearly his entire career in uniform serving under the despot…

So, what next? One key question concerns how the leaders who plotted this putsch will fare. A different, far less threatening attempt to seize power last year ended with the perpetrators punished with a few dozen push-ups. Just a week before the recent coup, another group of mutineers were released after but a few months in prison…

August 28^th was so strange, perhaps it’s only natural that my recollection of it should be similarly so. Here’s my last memory from that day: Driving home from work on nearly empty streets that evening, I stopped off at the Makati Commercial Center, to see whether the usually bustling shopping complex was closed. Sure enough, the well over 100 shops were all shut, with one exception: McDonald’s.

So what became of the Philippines, after beating back this and other coup attempts?

Well, McDonald’s is still there.

And to make a 35-year-long story short, many courageous, fine Filipinos inside and outside the government have continued fighting for their democratic dream. They elected a couple of good presidents along the way: the general who defended Cory Aquino’s administration against Gringo Honasan’s 1987 rebellion and, years later, Cory’s son.

But their countrypersons also elected an array of corrupt presidents who tolerated or even instigated large-scale human rights abuses. Just this year, they voted in Bongbong Marcos, the late dictator’s son, with 59 percent of the ballots. That made him the only candidate to secure a majority of the turn-out since before his father declared martial law 50 years ago.

As for coup leader Honasan? He was elected senator barely eight years after launching his rebellion. He served as such for all but three years from 1995 to 2018, before being appointed Secretary of the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

Pretty bizarre, huh?

Then again, who are we to talk?

Here’s who we are: People with the power to battle the assault on our democracy.

In doing so, we can learn from the many Filipinos who continue to fight for their freedom, people such as journalist and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, who resists her government’s efforts to harass, intimidate and silence her.

Amidst all that his admirable panel illuminated the other day and will highlight in days to come, Committee Chairperson Bennie Thompson briefly misspoke in one key way: He described the attack on the Capitol as “the culmination of an attempted coup.”

That attempted coup has not culminated. January 6^th was instead a historic, odious low point in an ongoing effort to gut our democracy, maintaining it in form while cutting out its core. Whether we end up in the same shape as today’s Philippines is up to us. So is our taking heart from heroes as diverse as Maria Ressa and the Capitol Police who served on January 6th, as we learn from and overcome that day’s political heart attack.