MANILA, 11 June 2005 — The daggers are out in the Philippines for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
She is the most unloved leader since dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986, her ratings show, as Filipinos complain about rising inflation and persistent corruption.
A Senate inquiry has heard allegations Arroyo’s husband, son and brother-in-law took kickbacks from illegal gambling.
This week, audio recordings surfaced that the opposition said bolstered its claims Arroyo cheated in last year’s election.
But rather than another coup attempt or popular revolt, analysts see a delay to Arroyo’s economic reform agenda as an immediate but temporary threat, with the government distracted by the barrage of scandal noise.
“I think it will blow over,” Nicholas Bibby, strategist at Barclays Capital in Singapore, said yesterday.
“Then we’ll move on to other business. It’s just one of these short-term volatility things we see, not just in the Philippines but in a lot of emerging markets.”
The latest round of uncertainty has rattled investors into selling down Philippine stocks and the peso. The currency fell to a three-month low to the dollar yesterday but stocks bounced back by two percent after slumping earlier this week.
The allegations, denied by Arroyo and her family, have been long on innuendo and short on proof.
The opposition said the recordings, which have been played repeatedly this week by radio and television stations, were of Arroyo leaning on the election commissioner for a bigger margin of victory as votes were being counted.
Arroyo’s spokesman said the series of discussions had been doctored from an illegal tap of the president’s mobile phone and that the male speaker was a political leader in the south, not an election official.
As one broadcaster began airing the conversations on Monday, the government handed out its version of the recordings and said they were part of a plot to incite mutiny in the military and sow discord in the streets.
Rumors and propaganda about unrest, spread quickly via mobile phone text messages, are fixtures of Philippine politics.
The army is on red alert in Manila for any trouble over the weekend, when the country marks its independence from Spain. Yesterday, about 3,000 demonstrators marched near the presidential palace, waving placards that read “Gloria corrupt, resign now”.
People are angry and there are grumblings in the military, which has spawned at least a dozen attempted coups since 1986.
But there is little sign yet of the united public outrage that toppled Marcos with huge street protests and then drove out Joseph Estrada as president in 2001 as he faced allegations of graft, including payoffs from illegal gambling syndicates.
“Critical mass has not been reached and we believe the Arroyo government will continue to limp along for the time being,” Manila-based risk consultancy Pacific Strategies & Assessments said in a report to clients.
Arroyo, who put down a one-day mutiny by 300 elite soldiers two years ago, on Thursday called on Filipinos to bury a history of coup talk and upheaval by uniting behind her reform efforts.
“I hope you won’t be used by those who were ousted but want to return to power, or those who want to run the country by not going through a democratic process,” she said.
Arroyo, an economist and daughter of a late president, has been pushing measures to raise more revenues with broader taxes, fight rampant tax evasion and shrink a debt mountain that is nearly 80 percent of the nation’s 2004 gross domestic product.
The opposition has been trying to whip up public anger over the state of the economy and the allegations of corruption. But Arroyo’s rivals have problems of their own with fragmented parties and few palatable alternatives as leader.
Only half in jest, analysts say there are always plots aimed at any president. But some commentators think Arroyo’s officials do more harm than good with frequent warnings of instability.
“There is no need for any real ‘destabilization’ effort,” Philippine Star publisher Max Soliven wrote in his column on Thursday. “The government is doing a great job of wrecking itself — and our country’s international reputation to boot.”
