Enemies at the Gates

Mr. & Ms. Magazine was a brave political publication in the final years of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It relaunched last week with an entirely different focus: health spas, feng shui, diets. The magazine's launch party was, nonetheless, jammed with political types, including Jose Luis (Linggoy) Alcuaz, former head of the National Telecommunications Commission and a director of the national sweepstakes. What's Linggoy doing these days? "I'm destabilizing full-time," he said. "I'm the only one who will admit it."

Not exactly. You can't swing a rosary in Manila nowadays without snaring a self-professed "destabilizer": someone trying to undermine the...