ARMY COL. Danilo Lim, who figured prominently in the siege of the Makati business district during the December 1989 coup, thinks there is no point in commemorating "a failure" committed 10 years ago.

But with persistent rumors of a coup plot against the present administration circulating since early this year, a look back at the event and what has transpired since may well be instructive on what to expect.

As it is, scholars say questions that ask if the 1995 peace pact with the Rebolusyonaryong Alyansang Makabansa (RAM) reduces the likelihood of any coup in the future, or if the Estrada government is in its proper place when it boasts of a "controlled situation" in the armed forces, are assuming the wrong thing: that coups are solely dictated by the dynamics in the military.

Even officials of the Ramos administration admitted that the peace agreement with RAM merely achieved cessation of hostilities.

Political science professor Felipe Miranda, meanwhile, said that while the agreement merely reflects the country's political culture, it nonetheless reinforces the view that any group within government aspiring for change can use all options, including armed, and still get away with it.

The settlement with RAM could send the wrong signals to the next generation both in and out of the military, agreed Professor Carolina Hernandez, member of the Davide Fact-Finding Commission that looked into the causes of military rebellion in 1990. "It's like saying, we even rewarded them for staging coups," Hernandez said.

In the end, she added, the nation suffers for the "cumulative effects of the things" policymakers and decision-makers do.

When the 1995 agreement was hammered out, however, then President Fidel Ramos was bent on buying peace to boost his economic agenda. This may be why he accommodated RAM's demand that it be treated as a political movement - like the National Democratic Front, for instance - during the talks.

Hernandez said Ramos might have chosen to be "practical," knowing the damage that a coup could do to the economy. Financial losses after the December 1989 coup, after all, were estimated to be anywhere between P800 million to P1 billion.

Thus, it did not seem to matter that RAM had a peculiarity that set it apart from other political movements fighting the state: it was composed of soldiers who had aimed their guns at the civilian power they were tasked to protect.

RAM leaders feigned indifference to the issue of amnesty during the talks. This was apparently because the back channel settled the amnesty question for them.

During the talks, RAM presented its agenda for peace: Good, honest, pro-people and efficient government for national renewal and transformation; implementation of electoral reforms to ensure clean, honest and orderly elections; implementation of nationalistic economic development policies and programs; actualization of social justice programs to positively address poverty, unemployment, and criminality; review and realignment of national defense and security concerns to attune these with the nation's fundamental requirements and aspirations.

Yet the main points of the 1995 agreement referred to the government's commitment to grant all RAM members a "general" and "unconditional amnesty" for all offenses committed "in the pursuit of political beliefs." The offenses covered include those committed from 1986 up to the 1995 signing of the peace pact.

The pact also stated that all dismissed from service should be given the right to apply for reintegration into the military and police.

For its part, RAM vowed to stop all plots against government. It promised instead to "pursue peaceful democratic processes in the attainment of its political goals; renounce violence and (the use of) arms against the state; and avoid proposing or conspiring to undertake activities inimical and injurious to the security and stability of the state."

On the supposed key agenda items, the pact stressed the government's commitment to implement RAM's proposed economic and political reforms "within legal processes." In Philippine politics, that's a euphemism for putting the issues on the backburner.

In its published report in 1991, the Davide Commission had recommended long-term reforms in government and the military organization as the antidote to coup plotting.

It proposed the punishment of the principal coup plotters, based on existing military laws. For instance, violation of Article of War 96, which is conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, merits dismissal from the service. Those found guilty of sedition or mutiny under Article of War 67 are subject to harsher punishment, even death, under military rules.

The commission strongly advised against any unconditional amnesty for the rebels; it proposed instead that government grant selective amnesty to the coup participants. Opposing a "generalized program to start a clean slate," the commission said there were "incorrigible rebels" who deserved to be weeded out of service. Amnesty, it declared, "may cure the symptom but not the disease."

But the Ramos government apparently deemed the recommendations inappropriate for its peace agenda. It did not even invite any of the commissioners to the peace negotiations with RAM.

For in truth, both sides went to the negotiating table with organizational interests at heart: on the part of government, to cease hostilities; on the part of RAM, for its members to return to the status quo.

Miranda likened this to a tactic of balancing terror. "The basic rule there is you don't annihilate the enemy," he said. "(You) probably just have to exact penalties like what they have done to (Lt. Col.) Victor Corpus, who joined the communist movement but was accepted back. "

"Corpus," he pointed out, "lagged behind all his batch mates in promotion." Yet in the case of the RAM leaders, their promotions have been fast-tracked partly as a result of the peace process.

After the signing of the pact, Ramos justified his amnesty program. "Amnesty," he said, "tempers the retribution of the state against (rebels), erases culpability.and opens the way for reintegration into the.community." He also described it as "a tool for national reconciliation and empowerment."

Many who agree to this strategy insist it was the best choice under the circumstances. It was better to put these soldiers under military control, said a senior defense official, than let them out of the system and risk their involvement in criminal or rebel activities.

But the decision on granting amnesty to the rebel soldiers was not unanimous. Officials of the Ramos government had been divided on the issue.

Those staunchly against it were the senior generals who fought for the government during the coup-prone years of the Aquino government, led by former defense secretary Renato de Villa who was Armed Forces chief of staff during the December coup.

"Unconditional amnesty erases everything.it's undoing what has been done. Look, they even got back pays for destabilizing the government," lamented retired Lt. Gen. Alfredo Filler in an interview in April this year. A close ally of de Villa, Filler was named AFP intelligence chief after the December coup.

De Villa had opposed unconditional amnesty. But a former member of the government peace panel admitted: "(In) the need to settle this as soon as possible, some compromises were made."

RAM later accused de Villa of delaying the reinstatement of its members.

Then Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., whom Ramos later supported for the 1998 presidential race, also did backchanneling efforts, assuring RAM of amnesty, back pays and government funds for its livelihood projects. RAM campaigned for de Venecia in the elections.

As for the rebel alliance, it vowed to return all the weapons and ammunition it had stolen from the military. So far, though, sources from both RAM and the government said RAM has managed to give back only a dozen of the 36 light anti-tank weapons it admitted to have stolen from the armed forces.

But those who fear that the organization may use the remaining weapons for another attempt to take over the government may take heart from one particular element in the last decade that had been excluded from previous studies on the coup-prone armed forces: the election of soldiers into public office.

After the 1989 coup, many analysts had warned about the rise of a rebel military faction that had metamorphosed into a social movement. As a movement, they said, RAM would reach its peak and ebb depending on the country's socio-political conditions.

Yet the impact of Ramos's election as president on the military psyche cannot be underestimated. It showed the politicians in the armed forces there was another - and probably more effective - way of gaining power.

Many other generals followed Ramos's electoral path, like Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, de Villa, former AFP chief of staff Lisandro Abadia, and even current National Security Adviser Alexander Aguirre.

"Ramos coopted the reform sector of the AFP," said Joel Rocamora, executive director of the Institute for Popular Democracy. "He was in effect telling them, I can implement everything you're fighting for without a coup...Ramos took the wind from the sails of RAM."

Scholar S.E. Finer had argued that power-playing military factions disengage from their "arbitrator"mode in the same way that they resort to it: in protest of bad government or when their interests are threatened. This, the Philippine military had proven under dictator Ferdinand Marcos (bad government) and former president Corazon Aquino (threatened interests).

In Finer's view, the key factor to a military disengagement from an interventionist mode would be a friendly regime, to which coup plotters could relate and under which their interests are not threatened. With Ramos at the helm, and despite his role in crushing the RAM-initiated coups, his government was perceived as - to borrow Finer's words - "friendly."

Today, Miranda said, the "hurt feelings" that ran deep between rebels and defenders of the state are no longer as intense as before. He observed, "The period of feeling left out, say under the Cory government, or of being victors, say among those who defeated the coups under Ramos.that period has passed."

But, he cautioned, to use this as basis for making any conclusions about future coup attempts is to miss the entire point. As political scientists have noted, coups are contextual, and the context is different under President Joseph Estrada.

A former movie actor, Estrada is the first elected president since 1986 who was not a key player in the 1986 plot that ousted Marcos. He is the first president since 1986 to name a civilian to the defense department. He is the first president since 1986 to initiate a wholesale probe of the military's financial institutions.

While the military is not a power bloc under him, its interests are so far neither threatened under his government. In fact, on his side now are the very brains of the previous coup attempts against the Aquino government.

In addition to the standardization of soldiers' salaries and the doubling of their subsistence allowance, the present Chief Executive has also been quick to dispense favors to the armed forces. According to Army Col. Marcelino Malajacan, Estrada last year released P700 million from the President's fund to help improve the logistics of troops in Mindanao.

And with RAM leaders already having penetrated the mainstream corridors of power, there seems to be no reason why they would go back to violence.

To be sure, in the wake of the coup rumors, RAM leaders have been first to say that no unit in the military has the motivation or the capability to strike now. Officers have also noted that there are no manifestations of recruitment in the military. According to a senior general, the rumors are coming from the outside.

Still, Miranda said that Estrada has shown a management style that could provoke a crisis of confidence in the presidency. The political expert cited the problems besetting the Philippine National Police where, he said, there is no clear established chain of command.

He added, however, that Estrada should be thankful that the current chief of staff, Gen. Angelo Reyes, is not of the "coup-oriented" mode. Commented Miranda: "That is an accident of history.and this nation has survived due to accidents of history."

The President thus has a choice: to give reason for yet another rebel faction to gain legitimacy as a power broker or to perform well so his government would not give birth to that group. As retired Filler said, "The military will always like to think itself as an arbiter of sorts. Because they talk to civilians, they listen to them."

Indeed, if there would be no coups in the immediate future, it would not be because the boys who left the barracks 10 years ago had pledged not to stage any.