MANILA, 25 July — After announcing her resolve to build a “strong republic,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday scrapped a “maximum tolerance” policy in dealing with protesters.

She also vowed not to be cowed by terrorists, ordering more arrests following the capture of two suspects in bomb attacks that killed 15 people in the southern Philippines in April.

Arroyo also ordered state prosecutors not to proceed with charges against an action film star for killing two men who allegedly robbed the actor’s house and tried to rape his daughters.

She also ignored calls by the church and human rights groups not to carry out the death penalty law, saying she will allow at least three executions to go ahead in a show of “exemplary justice” amid unabated criminality in the country.

Arroyo announced that she was getting tough with demonstrators after a policeman was seriously injured during a scuffle with protesters during her state of the nation address in Congress on Monday.

The policeman’s skull was cracked when he was hit in the head with a stone thrown by demonstrators who were blocked from proceeding near the Malacanang presidential palace.

“That is the last of the maximum tolerance policy, which is not required by the constitution,” she told reporters. “The next time, if they violate the law, charges will be filed against them.”

Under the maximum tolerance policy, policemen were under strict orders to avoid breaking up rallies as long as peace can be maintained through negotiations even after scuffles.

Criminal charges were also not filed against demonstrators for minor offenses committed during their protests.

Director Edgardo Aglipay, chief of Manila’s police force, said protesters must control their ranks during demonstrations to avoid any violence.

“If they cannot police their own ranks, then they should not be allowed to hold a rally,” he said. “That is I think what the president wants to happen.”

Terrorists

In the case of terrorists, the president said her government will not yield an inch.

“No compromise, no quarter given. Our war against terrorism is pushing our targets up against the wall,” Arroyo said in a statement she read as police and military officials presented two suspects in the deadly April 21 bombing I the southern city of General Santos.

Abdulbasit Usman and Moamar Timbao Esmael, wearing orange shirts, were charged with the three simultaneous bombings, that killed 15 people and injured nearly 100.

“The war does not end with these two arrests,” the president said. “To our men and women in uniform, I say good work and I ask for more of what you have already accomplished.”

Most of the victims of the bombings, which police linked to the Abu Sayyaf, were outside a mall.

National police chief Hermogenes Ebdane said the suspects were believed to be associates of Noor Mohammad Umog, an Abu Sayyaf leader arrested in May on suspicion of masterminding the attacks.

Usman was captured Sunday in the southern province of Maguindanao, and Esmael was arrested Monday in General Santos, Ebdane said.

Police seized a pistol, two 81 mm mortars, one 60 mm mortar, blasting caps and wires for bomb-making from Usman. A pistol and a manual for making bombs were recovered from Esmael.

Regional police chief Senior Superintendent Bartolome Baluyot said Usman was an explosives expert who belonged to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a large Muslim separatist group before joining the Abu Sayyaf. Esmael is suspected of delivering some of the explosives to Umog, who then allegedly planted them outside the mall, police said.

Criminal gangs

In an interview with reporters, the president defended her order to police not to pursue the homicide charges they filed against action film star Sonny Parsons.

Parsons killed the two alleged robbers during a fight in the Manila suburb of Marikina. Although Parsons is seen to be blameless in the case, police filed charges just the same as a procedural matter.

But Arroyo said she wanted criminal gangs to know that she will not allow them to use the law to get away with their activities.

“This is not vigilantism. He was defending himself and his family. We’ve checked the facts. Intuitively, he felt it was the right thing to do,” she said in defending Parsons, whose real name is Jose Parsons Nabiula.

A former police special agent, Parsons, 44, said six men, armed with pistols, barged into his house early last Thursday as his maid opened the gate. The intruders then tied everyone up.

He said one of the men poked a gun to his head but it misfired. The robbers took money, jewelry, cellular phones and a video camera and then entered his daughters’ bedroom, tied them up and started undressing them.

Parsons, who is trained in martial arts, said he duped the intruders into believing a police patrol would be having breakfast at his house, prompting the gunmen to panic and leave.

The maid then untied herself and Parsons, he said. Armed with a .45-caliber pistol, he chased the gunmen and opened fire on them as they tried to commandeer a passenger jeepney.

In the exchange of gunfire, he killed one gunman and wounded another. Three others escaped.

As Parsons and a sixth guman, both out of bullets, fought hand to hand, the actor wrested a knife away from his opponent and slit his throat, killing him. Parsons starred in 29 action films and directed four, including the last one released three years ago entitled Bullet for Justice. In most he played good guys fighting criminals.

Executions

In lione with her iron fist policy, Arroyo also said executions of death convicts will have to resume.

“I’m really against the death penalty as a matter of philosophy,” she told reporters. “But there are exigencies and demands of the times.”

But once criminals “begin to think twice whether that’s the best source of living,” Arroyo said she would “then go back to the policy of commuting death sentences.”

The first judicial execution by lethal injection under Arroyo’s term is scheduled for Oct. 16.

The convict to be executed is a man who raped her daughter.

Arroyo said that on the day of the execution, she will go to a chapel to pray because “it’s not something that I will be happy doing.”

More than 1,000 convicts have been sentenced to death since capital punishment was restored in the country in 1994 amid an upsurge in heinous crimes. Seven convicts have been executed since 1999.

In 2000, ousted President Joseph Estrada issued a moratorium on judicial executions, and Arroyo initially sustained the policy when she became president in January 2001.

The influential Catholic church has strongly opposed the death penalty, arguing executions were not the solution to the country’s high crime rate.

Amnesty Internation also urged Arroyo to freeze the scheduled execution in October, expressing dismay over her decision to abandon the two-year moratorium on capital punishment. (From the Agencies)