<figure class="image-550">
<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-29/phil-daily-inquirer-1987-08-29.webp" alt="Archival news photograph from the aftermath of the failed August 28, 1987 RAM coup attempt against President Corazon Aquino." loading="lazy" />
<figcaption>News coverage in the aftermath of the August 28, 1987 coup attempt, when RAM soldiers led by Col. Gregorio Honasan attacked Malacañang Palace and Camp Aguinaldo before being repelled by forces loyal to President Corazon Aquino.</figcaption>
</figure>


<p>
Led by the charismatic <strong>Lieutenant Colonel Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan</strong> - a former security chief of ousted Defense Minister <a href="/kauswagan/articles/2869/the-life-and-career-of-juan-ponce-enrile-a-century-of-philippine-political-evolution" class="news_link">Juan Ponce Enrile</a> and one of the soldiers whose 1986 mutiny had helped spark the People Power Revolution - the rebels stormed <a href="/kauswagan/articles/2851/history-of-malaca-ang-palace-the-official-residence-and-principal-workplace-of-the-president-of-the-philippines" class="news_link">Malacañang Palace</a>, seized large portions of Camp Aguinaldo and Villamor Air Base, captured four Metro Manila television stations, and ignited simultaneous uprisings in Pampanga, Albay, Cebu, and Cagayan. By the time the smoke cleared roughly thirty-six hours later, 53 people were dead, 358 were wounded, and the country had survived the sixth - and by far the deadliest - challenge yet to the fragile democracy restored at EDSA.
</p>
<h2>
From EDSA Comrades to Bitter Rivals
</h2>
<p>
RAM had been born in the final years of the Marcos dictatorship as a secretive circle of reform-minded officers disillusioned with corruption and cronyism inside the Armed Forces of the Philippines. In February 1986, RAM officers under Honasan and Defense Minister Enrile launched a mutiny against Marcos that, joined by AFP Vice Chief of Staff Lieutenant General <a href="/articles/3350/fidel-v-ramos-life-presidency-and-lasting-legacy" class="news_link">Fidel Ramos</a> and swelled by hundreds of thousands of civilians who poured onto Epifanio de los Santos Avenue to shield them, snowballed into the People Power Revolution. Marcos fled into exile, and Corazon Aquino, the widow of assassinated senator <a href="/kauswagan/articles/778/today-in-philippine-history-november-27-1932-benigno-aquino-jr-was-born-in-concepcion-tarlac" class="news_link">Benigno Aquino Jr.</a>, was installed as president.
</p>
<p>
The alliance did not survive contact with governance. Enrile grew increasingly vocal in criticizing Aquino's handling of the communist insurgency and what he considered her betrayal of the revolution's spirit, while RAM officers - many of whom saw themselves, not the civilian politicians, as the true architects of Marcos's downfall - chafed at a new order that offered them neither the reforms nor the recognition they felt they were owed.
</p>
<h2>
A Year of Rebellion: The Coups That Came Before
</h2>
<p>
August 1987 was not RAM's first attempt to seize power from Aquino - it was the sixth. In July 1986, Marcos loyalists led by his defeated running mate <strong>Arturo Tolentino</strong> occupied the Manila Hotel and declared a rival government, an episode that fizzled out within days for lack of public or military support. A far more serious conspiracy followed that November: the so-called "God Save the Queen Plot," in which Enrile and RAM officers allegedly planned to install a prime-ministerial government under Enrile's control. Discovered and leaked to the press before it could be carried out, the plot nonetheless cost Enrile his cabinet post - Aquino fired him as defense secretary on November 23, 1986, formally beginning RAM's estrangement from the government it had helped install. The killings that month of labor leader <a href="/kauswagan/articles/2482/today-in-philippine-history-november-14-1986-bodies-of-rolando-olalia-and-leonardo-alay-ay-were-found-in-antopolo-bearing-signs-of-brutal-torture-and-murder" class="news_link">Rolando Olalia</a> and his driver Leonor Alay-ay, along with the murder of activist Lean Alejandro the following year, were later linked by investigators to the same plot.
</p>
<p>
Barely two months later, in the last days of January 1987, around 100 soldiers loyal to Marcos seized the GMA Network compound in <a href="/articles/2989/the-historical-journey-of-quezon-city" class="news_link">Quezon City</a> and tried, unsuccessfully, to capture Sangley Point Air Base in Cavite; the incident left one rebel dead and 35 people injured. A subtler plot to seize Manila International Airport was uncovered and quietly dismantled that July, months before it could be launched, resulting in the court-martial of four officers. Each failed plot fed the next: RAM's leadership concluded that only a swift, overwhelming, simultaneous strike - one government intelligence could not preempt - stood any chance of succeeding where half-measures had failed.
</p>


<h2>
Building a Strike Force at Fort Magsaysay
</h2>
<p>
Following the God Save the Queen affair, Honasan was reassigned away from Manila to Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, roughly 200 kilometers north of the capital - ironically the largest single military reservation in the AFP, and therefore a deep pool of potential recruits. There, he was placed in charge of the Philippine Army's Special Forces training school and given personal oversight of the 1st Scout Ranger Regiment. Within months, the magnetic young colonel had won the loyalty of the commando trainees under him. Investigators later determined that Honasan deliberately withheld his students from graduation, using the extended training period to indoctrinate and organize them for the coup he was quietly planning - a delay that went unnoticed by his superiors for months.
</p>
<h2>
A Government Braced for Attack
</h2>
<p>
Government intelligence was not entirely blind. A few days before the coup, Major General <a href="/articles/3260/renato-de-villa-born-on-july-20-1935-a-distinguished-filipino-military-leader-and-statesman" class="news_link">Renato De Villa</a>, chief of the Philippine Constabulary, received a report that rebel soldiers were massing at Fort Magsaysay for an imminent strike. He passed the warning to General Ramos, now AFP Chief of Staff, who alerted the Army's 5th Infantry Division and dispatched his deputy for operations, Brigadier General Ramon Montaño, to investigate the base personally on the morning of August 28. He was too late. On the evening of August 27, Honasan and his trainees had already rolled south along the North Diversion Road aboard commandeered buses, dozens of 6x6 trucks, and three tanks, flying the Philippine flag inverted - the traditional signal of war. By midnight they had been joined near the Santa Rita tollgate in Guiguinto, Bulacan, by troops from nearby camps, swelling their ranks past 2,000. Government forces spotted the convoy passing through Santa Maria, Bulacan, prompting Montaño to warn his colleagues that the rebels would strike within the half hour; Major General Restituto Padilla Sr., the Army's commanding general, rushed five tanks to reinforce Camp Aguinaldo. Aquino's own scheduled visit to Central Luzon that day was scrapped. Investigators later recovered classroom blackboards at Fort Magsaysay marked with maps of Malacañang and Camp Aguinaldo - the coup's two primary targets - and an intercepted police radio message from the day before had already warned that the rebels intended to assassinate the president before the month was out.
</p>
<h2>
The Assault on Malacañang
</h2>
<p>
The rebel convoy reached Manila at around one o'clock in the morning, announcing its arrival with celebratory gunfire that jolted the capital awake. Honasan personally led one column toward the presidential palace while dispatching deputies to strike the Philippine Air Force headquarters at Villamor Air Base and the city's television stations. At 1:45 a.m., roughly 200 of his men, backed by V-150 armored vehicles, rolled down Jose Laurel Street toward Malacañang's gates. They reached the palace perimeter but were beaten back by the Presidential Security Group under Colonel Voltaire Gazmin, reinforced by Philippine Marines under Brigadier General <a href="/articles/3064/today-in-filipino-history-april-14-1935-rodolfo-g-biazon-was-born-in-batac-ilocos-norte" class="news_link">Rodolfo Biazon</a>, and forced into retreat. A follow-up assault on the nearby Nagtahan Bridge by Colonel Reynaldo Ochosa's 62nd Infantry Battalion, and then by Lieutenant Colonel Melchor Acosta Jr.'s 14th Infantry Battalion, met the same fate, repelled by loyalist gunfire.
</p>
<p>
In the confusion near the bridge, rebel troops ambushed a car carrying the president's only son, <strong>Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III</strong>, as he returned to the palace. He was struck by five bullets - one of which remained lodged near his spine for the rest of his life - while three of his companions were killed outright. Two palace sentries were also reported shot in the same exchange. Realizing the assault on Malacañang had failed, Honasan ordered his men to regroup and fall back toward Camp Aguinaldo.
</p>
<h2>
Massacre at Nagtahan Bridge
</h2>
<p>
What happened next would do more lasting damage to RAM's cause than the failed palace assault itself. As the retreating rebels approached Nagtahan Bridge, they were met by a crowd of unarmed civilian Aquino supporters who jeered and heckled them. The soldiers opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons, killing eleven people - ten of them minors - and wounding fifty-four more. The killings, difficult to justify as anything but the deliberate shooting of unarmed bystanders, would haunt RAM's public image for years; Honasan initially denied his men's responsibility, claiming the deaths occurred in crossfire with government troops, before finally acknowledging them - along with casualties from his later plots - during his 1995 Senate campaign.
</p>
<h2>
Corazon Aquino's Longest Night
</h2>
<p>
The president herself was staying at the nearby Arlegui Guest House rather than the palace proper. Woken at around 1:30 a.m. by the sound of gunfire, she was asked by one of her daughters what was happening. After sending her duty officer out to assess the situation, Aquino tried and failed to reach both General Ramos, who was en route to Camp Aguinaldo, and her executive secretary, <a href="/articles/3211/today-in-filipino-history-january-5-1927-joker-arroyo-was-born-in-naga-camarines-sur" class="news_link">Joker Arroyo</a>. Unable to get through, she chose to wait out the fighting praying the rosary with her daughter. At 4:45 a.m., she went on the air to announce that the assault on Malacañang had been repulsed and that she was safe, urging the public to remain indoors, suspending classes across Metro Manila, and canceling her Central Luzon trip. Those who heard the broadcast recalled a voice that was, by all accounts, calm, unhurried, and reassuring - a striking contrast to the chaos unfolding barely a kilometer away.
</p>
<h2>
The Battle for Camp Aguinaldo
</h2>
<p>
An advance rebel party tried to force its way through Gate 1 of Camp Aguinaldo, initially held off by a squad under Colonel Emiliano Templo backed by an armored vehicle, before superior numbers allowed the rebels to break through. Honasan's main force, retreating from the failed Malacañang assault, soon followed, seizing parts of the sprawling camp including the headquarters of the Department of National Defense. Just 100 meters away, however, the four-story building housing AFP General Headquarters remained in loyalist hands, defended by Montaño, AFP Vice Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eduardo Ermita, and Brigadier General Orlando Antonio despite being effectively surrounded. Rebel troops poured gasoline inside the building and set it ablaze; trapped officers were forced to crawl along the floor toward the building's left wing to avoid both the flames and rebel snipers positioned outside.
</p>


Gringo Honasan and the August 1987 Coup vs. Aquino

August 28, 1987: RAM rebels under Gregorio Honasan stormed Malacañang Palace and Camp Aguinaldo in a bloody bid to oust President Corazon Aquino.

August 28, 1987: the RAM soldiers led by Honasan attempted to overthrow the Corazon Aquino government