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SCMP Reporter

PRESIDENT GLORIA Macapagal-Arroyo would seem to have it all - the economy is picking up, her Government's opinion rating is improving, and Muslim kidnap gangs are apparently on the run.

But as the first anniversary of Mrs Arroyo's inauguration nears, the voices against her administration are getting louder. The coup rumours that dogged her predecessors are back with a vengeance and some opponents are even telling her to step down - or else.

Justified or not, analysts do say the gap between rich and poor in the Philippines is widening, the cost of living is increasing, and unemployment growing. They use the words 'people power' increasingly frequently.

Those words should be cause for concern for a Government brought to power by the military after civilian protests. But those circumstances - and the numbers involved - are much removed from the original 'People Power' revolt which overthrew the 20-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

As an unelected leader, Mrs Arroyo has many expectations to live up to - and the knowledge that governments in the Philippines can now be made or toppled by popular uprisings.

For now, she and her spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao brush the critics aside. They say the economy is the priority and it is already improving, with gross domestic product up 3.8 per cent.

The rise in consumer prices declined to 3.9 per cent in December, down from 4.4 per cent in November and the lowest rate for 18 months. The currency, the peso, continues to strengthen against the US dollar. The nation's most respected polling organisation, Social Weather Stations, gave the Arroyo administration an approval rating in November of plus 27, up from plus 8 in September.

Mr Tiglao, with Mrs Arroyo during a confidence-building trip to the country's poorest region, Mindanao, this weekend, said the President was pleased with the way the economy was performing.

'It's not much, but considering the difficult situation of the world economy and that we went through political turbulence earlier in the year, and the problem with the Abu Sayyaf Muslim rebels, it shows our policies are correct,' he said in Cotabato City. 'The economy has been resilient.'

The law and order situation had vastly improved nationwide, with no kidnappings in the capital, Manila, for two months. With US assistance, 300 Abu Sayyaf terrorists had been captured or killed. It was only a matter of time before the group was destroyed, he said.

Mr Tiglao dismissed the coup rumours, citing security at Mrs Arroyo's hotel in the Muslim heartland, which he said had not been unusually increased.

Political commentator Conrad de Quiros agrees a coup is not likely. 'The threat is more powerful than the execution,' the columnist with the respected Philippine Daily Inquirer  newspaper said yesterday. 'I don't think there's any group that's capable of mounting a coup at this point. There's no one group that handles the military very, very strongly in the way they did in the 1980s, where they could command the loyalty of a critical mass.'

The latest rumours were sparked by the gunning down in Manila on Monday of Baron Cervantes, a spokesman for the Young Officer's Union, a group within the military whose members were involved in coup attempts in the late 1980s and early 1990s against then-president Corazon Aquino. The group's members were granted amnesty by Mrs Aquino's successor Fidel Ramos.

Cervantes had claimed that active and retired military members had been plotting to destabilise the Philippines, but the union's leaders disowned him, saying he was a discharged lieutenant and never the group's spokesman. Police are hunting his killer.

De Quiros said there had been a sea change in the military's thinking in the past decade. Instead of taking power in a coup, the preferred method was now through the ballot box.

'Most generals and other officers think in terms of pursuing a political career after retirement . . . they've become more politicians than [some] other politicians,' de Quiros said.

But although the military was no longer a physical threat, some groups and individuals were trying to show how politically vulnerable Mrs Arroyo was.

'They are trying to force her hand on a number of issues, chief of them the prosecution of her ousted predecessor Joseph Estrada,' de Quiros said.

Calls are growing for Estrada - a movie star swept to power in 1998 with massive popular support, but now in prison facing perjury charges - to be pardoned. De Quiros does not believe Estrada will be found guilty for fear of another popular uprising, and former senator and presidential candidate Miriam Defensor-Santiago, a law expert, has even suggested he may be able to run against Mrs Arroyo in the next presidential elections in 2004.

De Quiros suggests Mrs Arroyo's biggest problem will be from the poor classes.

'The economic indicators are only of consequence to businessmen and economists,' he said. 'The lives of ordinary people have actually got worse over the past year. You can feel it at the lower level - prices have got too steep and wages aren't growing. People see the economy as deteriorating.'

It is from the lowest income groups that the dissent is loudest. Among the most vocal backer of such views is Linda Montayre, secretary-general of a group known as the People's Consultative Assembly. The assembly has no mainstream political representation, but it says it represents the popular voice.

Mrs Montayre's group has already called for Mrs Arroyo's resignation and last week demanded that unless major reforms were made by January 22 - the administration's first anniversary - it would start a campaign for her removal from office.

People power, said Mrs Montayre yesterday, was the only option left to the masses.

'This is not mob rule - people power is the only option left to the poor,' she said. 'When the electoral system is so corrupt that you have to spend billions, or hundreds of millions, of pesos to become a senator, or several million to be a congressman, only those who are rich and corrupt get into office. Because they spend so much, they really have to steal.'

Mrs Montayre accused the Arroyo Government of turning economic figures around to suit its purposes. After last month's visit to the US, Mrs Arroyo said she had secured US$4.6 billion (HK$35.8 billion) for the Philippines, but rather than being in cash, this had been in expected exports to the US that would have to be approved by the US Congress. 'It was a false claim and something that was not really how it had been pictured,' Mrs Montayre said. 'The figures are being dressed up.'

Mrs Montayre disagreed that the economy was improving.

'We see that in the statistics, but in the actual life of our people, there is more and more hardship,' she said.

Unemployment was also worsening, with 400 labourers losing their jobs each day. About 111,000 had been retrenched since Mrs Arroyo took office.

'We all agreed that she [Mrs Arroyo] would bring an end to corruption, immorality and ineptness in office,' Mrs Montayre said. 'But what we are finding out now, to our dismay, is that the same syndicates of corruption are there and only their heads have changed . . . that's why we are calling for massive revolt - because we feel cheated.'

Peter Kammerer (kamm@scmp.com) is the Post's foreign editor



Troubleshooter makes her mark