The Philippines Midsummer Night's Dream

A bungled takeover highlights questions about the army's loyalty to Aquino

In Shakespearean drama, both tragic and comic, the storms and calamities that shake the sublunary globe are reflections of turmoil in the hearts of men. So too, when the state of nature is disordered, do they often portend the same upset in the nature of the state. It therefore seemed a distinctly Shakespearean augury when Typhoon Gading drowned Manila in torrential rains last week, sending coconut trees swaying wildly in the wind and plunging much of the city deep into darkness. For in recent weeks, tremors and uncertainties have had all of Philippine politics listing between tragedy and comedy, swept up...

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