Manila (AsiaNews/Agencies) Filipino are increasingly dissatisfied with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the country continues to be in the grip of corruption, inflation and political scandals. Three thousand people today gathered in front of the presidential palace carrying signs denouncing the President and calling for her resignation.
Dissatisfaction has also reached the military, which has been involved in at least 12 coup attempts since 1986, but most observers do not see any parallel between conditions that led to President Marcos's overthrow in 1986 and President Estrada's ouster in 2001. However, the Filipino military has gone on maximum alert in Manila ahead of June 12, Independence Day, when Filipinos celebrate the country's break from Spain in 1898.
Aquilino Pimentel, an opposition senator, said that "[f]or the sake of the nation, the President should now consider resigning. [. . .] She has exhausted whatever moral ascendancy".
But opposition parties are divided over the issue and lack any credible alternative to Ms Arroyo.
Her husband, son and brother-in-law are under investigation by the Filipino Senate over alleged kickbacks they are said to have received from groups involved in illegal gambling. Moreover, the President herself is accused of electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential election.
For a week now, the media have in fact been broadcasting a wiretapped telephone conversation in which the President is purportedly urging an election official to ensure her victory in the May 10, 2004 vote.
Ms Arroyo has called the allegations a conspiracy and reiterated that she would not resign. She denied any involvement in electoral fraud, insisting that wiretapping was illegal and that her interlocutor in the audiotape was not an electoral official but another politician.
"I will not allow those seeking to topple me to succeed," she said. "I did not cheat. How can I cheat when I got 40 percent," she added.
Never the less, a recent poll put Arroyo's approval ratings at the lowest of any president since Marcos was removed from office in 1986.
In the meantime, Filipinos are fed up with rising inflation and the economic crisis that is affecting the whole country.
Figures released by the National Statistics Office are indeed worrisome; the inflation in the first five months of the year has been running at 8.4 per cent, reaching 8.5 in May.
Analysts expect further price hikes, especially in food and energy, after President Arroyo's controversial consumption tax takes full effectthe tax itself is meant to raise revenues for the government whose debt is close to 80 per cent of the GDP.
The economic situation is such that many people are liquidating their stocks to buy foreign currency driving down the bourse exchange index (down seven points on June 6-9) and the Filipino peso.
The political impasse is also preventing the government from tackling the country's pervasive corruption. (PB)
