Life is a struggle for Milagros San Buenaventura. To feed her eleven children, she sells kalamansi, a bittersweet native lime, at market stalls in the city of Naga, 140 miles southeast of Manila. At night she prays hard, begging for protection against disasters that may strike at her, at her city, at her country. But the troubles keep coming closer. Two months ago rebels of the Communist New People's Army blew up four strategic bridges, severing rail lines between Naga and Manila. Soon after, the army escalated its war with the N.P.A., further disrupting the local economy. Then the market where San Buenaventura sold kalamansi burned to the ground. Crossing herself, the fruit vendor offers a prayer for President Corazon Aquino. "Cory is our guiding light," she says, "our savior. She has not sinned against her fellowmen. It's only the people around her who have wronged us."
The troubles have also arrived in Laoag, 300 miles to the north in Ilocos Norte province. Four weeks ago David Bueno, a human-rights lawyer, was getting into his car when two men on a motorcycle shot him dead. The murder remains unsolved, like almost all such cases in the Philippines. "After David died," says Bueno's brother Excel, "people in tattered clothes and bare feet came to say, 'Thank you for your brother. Without him no one would have fought for us.' " But not a word of condolence came from Aquino's Human Rights Commission. "I want to support Cory because I think she's sincere," Excel says bitterly. "But sometimes I hate her."
Nearly two years after Aquino won her war of good against evil, the forces of darkness are again threatening to overwhelm the Philippines. Aquino's once unassailable hold on popular support is slowly slipping, and the country is on the brink of chaos. Though she has painstakingly restored democracy, she has not been able to usher in paradise. Instead, the threat of apocalypse hangs over the Philippines. As Aquino tries to rid the country of the corrupt legacy of Ferdinand Marcos, an increasing number of Filipinos fear that her government is running out of steam. "We expected decency in government. We expected efficiency," says Antonio Oposa, a lawyer in the central Philippine city of Cebu. "Maybe that's too much to expect of one woman." He adds, "We don't need a saint for a President." Says Excel Bueno: "We need a strong President -- and discipline."
Aquino's problems came into sharp focus after the bloody August mutiny of Colonel Gregorio ("Gringo") Honasan. The unsuccessful uprising revealed a faction-ridden military envious of Aquino's power and unwilling to give up the political clout it had gained under Marcos. The mutiny's chief blow, however, was struck at the President's almost blind faith that the democratic institutions she had restored would lead the country out of its economic and political morass. The relative serenity of her first few months in power was, after Honasan's coup attempt, reinterpreted as weakness.