The Philippines: Gringo Jumps Ship

Lieut. Colonel Gregorio ("Gringo") Honasan is a master at manipulating military frustration. Last August thousands of underpaid soldiers joined him in an uprising that nearly toppled Philippine President Corazon Aquino. Last week Honasan apparently took advantage of unrest in the armed forces again. With the help of a reserve lieutenant said to be angry because he had not received a regular commission, Honasan escaped from a navy ship on Manila Bay, where he had been detained since his capture last December. Escaping with him on two rubber rafts were 13 of his guards. It took the government four months to capture Gringo after his failed coup, a time filled with destabilizing rumors of the Aquino regime's imminent collapse.

Earlier in the week Aquino had received some very good news. In a major raid in a suburb of Manila, soldiers rounded up five top Communist insurgents, including Romulo ("Rolly") Kintanar, the commander of the 25,000-member New People's Army, and Rafael Baylosis, the No. 2 man in the party. The arrests amounted to the single largest roundup of Communist rebels since Aquino came to power in 1986, and could create a crippling power vacuum within the N.P.A. -- at least for a while.