MANILA: Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may have lost the widespread support she enjoyed when she took office in a “people power” revolution a year ago, but there is no imminent challenge to her rule, analysts say.
She has failed to keep together the disparate sections of her so-called “rainbow coalition” that helped her rise to power, they said, but persistent reports in newspapers of budding coups were little more than talk.
“What the country needs now is a leader, not an economic manager. She needs to be more charismatic and be able to motivate and unite the people of all sectors,” industrialist Raul Concepcion said of Arroyo this week.
Concepcion, the head of the Philippine Chambers of Commerce, was an enthusiastic supporter when Arroyo took power from disgraced ex-president Joseph Estrada on January 20, 2001.
Big business, the church, the military, left-wing groups, other people’s organisations and most of the cabinet came together in the street protests to force Estrada to quit.
As she celebrates her first anniversary in office, Arroyo is in control, but many of the groups which supported her are showing signs of unhappiness.
The economy is more stable and official corruption is less pervasive, but crime and kidnappings have soared, foreign investors are running scared and poverty has increased.
Left-wing groups have held demonstrations to convey their displeasure over Arroyo’s presidency, former president Fidel Ramos has noticeably cooled, and even the church has said the leadership needs improvement. The US war on terrorism has reached the Philippines with a deployment of US troops as non combatants in the south of the country, sparking street protests.
Arroyo’s most vociferous opponents, the urban poor of Manila who still consider Estrada their champion and feel they were bypassed by a revolution led by a business elite and the middle-class, look unlikely to be swayed by a public relations offensive she has mounted to woo them.
Last May, thousands of slum-dwellers stormed the gates of the the presidential palace demanding Estrada be reinstated. The government called it an attempted coup. “We were really on the brink of political disaster,” said Rigoberto Tiglao, Arroyo’s spokesman.
“The scenario was not for Estrada to come back but for a coup d’etat. The country would have been so polarised because you would have had the middle classes against the junta and the masses divided.”
Such instability is on the wane because Arroyo has put the economy on a relatively stable footing, he said, adding however that the process was slow.
In recent weeks, newspapers have said there have been signs of restiveness in parts of the military and among some political groups and that Arroyo’s administration was susceptible to a coup. Arroyo has admitted several elements were unhappy with her, but says they do not pose a threat to stability.
“Thus far she has not cemented her appeal to the masses and there is a cacophony of voices from the original coalition that brought her to power,” said Antonio Gatmaitan of the Political Economy Applied Research Foundation think tank.
But analysts say the military is not as politicised and senior officers realise that the era of coups by the armed forces are no longer fashionable, either elsewhere in the world or at home. “Nothing will happen to her