Quotes of the Day

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 presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Or an accuser charging the government with some malfeasance, or a Senator or Congressman calling for Arroyo to quit, or a prophet forecasting "major change"—meaning a complete overhaul of the Philippine political system. The press is certainly looking for them, and writing up breathless copy even when they don't quite fit the bill. Eugenia Apostol, publisher of the new Mr. & Ms., did some television interviews at the relaunch soirée and was asked: "Are you going to overthrow Arroyo?" Apostol's reply: "This magazine is about health and spirituality."

If ever the Philippines needed some holistic healing tips, it's now. Arroyo says there's a conspiracy to bring her down. She said in a speech last week that "those who plot against the government in this time of clear danger ... are no better than economic saboteurs. They have nothing good to contribute to our country but bring [misery] for one and all." It's not just one plot, however. There are countless being hatched, some surreptitious, others gleefully open, and not a few that are trial balloons filled with nothing but gas. That has spawned a host of wild rumors, often spread in text messages—"GMA will declare martial law on or before June 21 ... Stock up on water and groceries"—and a confusion that could eventually prove truly dangerous. The spurious warnings that the sky is falling mask the fact that Arroyo does indeed have lots of enemies. The public now has access to a tape-recorded telephone conversation of Arroyo allegedly discussing the manipulation of votes with an election-commission official after last year's presidential poll. If authentic, it would be a grave abuse of power. Arroyo refuses to comment on whether one of the voices on the tape is hers, and the presidential palace says the tape had been altered. But Filipinos are coming to their own conclusions: the recording is on the Internet, and CDs of the conversation are being sold on the streets for 10¢ apiece.

There's no single mastermind trying to bring down Arroyo. Rather, there are sundry groups arrayed against her: retired military men, loyalists of her predecessor Joseph Estrada (whose overthrow in a People Power demonstration in 2001 gave Arroyo the presidency), leftist organizations rallying the aggrieved poor in regular protests that denounce the government as pro-rich. But street demos are just one tactic to topple Arroyo. The strategy—according to foes of Arroyo as well as palace insiders—is to first discredit the 58-year-old former economics professor in order to turn popular opinion against her. The Senate is investigating allegations that Arroyo's husband, son and brother-in-law were involved in an illegal gambling racket—allegations that they have denied. And the House of Representatives has started hearings about the tape. There might well be another scandal or two along the way, made public at what Arroyo's enemies deem a vulnerable moment for her. Then, her opponents hope (and the palace fears), indignation will be whipped up through protests, aided by leftist groups and possibly the Roman Catholic Church, to start a People Power movement similar to the ones against Marcos and Estrada.

Of course, the strategy may not work. The people might not be roused. Arroyo's popularity rating is at a historic low: polling organization Social Weather Survey in May found 59% of Filipinos were dissatisfied with her performance and only 26% satisfied. But Arroyo has no obvious successor. When Filipinos took to the streets in February 1986, they were rebelling against Marcos—but they were also elevating Corazon Aquino, who had been cheated in a snap presidential election earlier in the same month. In 2001, the People Power movement knew who would replace Estrada (he had narrowly avoided being removed from office for alleged corruption by an impeachment trial): Arroyo, his Vice President, who had been elected separately. The current President might be in serious jeopardy if her challenger in last year's election, movie star Fernando Poe Jr., were around to say he had been robbed of victory. But Poe died of a stroke in December. No other political figure has come forward to rally the people.

Arroyo's enemies say they are no longer content just to see her step down. If she did so, her Vice President and party colleague Noli de Castro, a former news broadcaster new to public office, would become President. But that would not bring the sort of change those opposed to Arroyo want to see. That may be why there's so much talk of revolution and a new political structure for the Philippines: a national governing council, a civilian junta, or a strongman general and a politician ruling in tandem. When Arroyo goes, her enemies say, the country has to be "cleansed" and everything else must go too: corrupt officials and generals, the constitution, elections (for a while), and democratic freedoms such as an unrestricted press and the right to assemble in the streets. "It's the worst possible situation for a country to be in," says Francisco Tatad, a former minister and Senator who leads a civic group called Citizens Versus Corruption. "We want to be constitutional, but the constitution is no longer working. In order to rebuild it, we'll probably have to destroy it completely."

Some of the groups challenging Arroyo have been against every Philippine President for decades. The left has called for revolution since the 1960s; it has representatives in Congress, but is also linked to the 10,000-strong guerrilla New People's Army, which fights the military in the Philippine countryside. Since Cory Aquino's time, disgruntled military men have attempted numerous coups—the most serious in 1989, when soldiers took over Manila's business district for more than a week.

The chief threat to Arroyo, however, comes from her political opposition, which includes parties that currently share power along with influential individuals out in the cold: Estrada's allies; Poe's supporters; the Marcos family; and even Arroyo's former Executive Secretary Renato de Villa, a onetime armed forces Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary who last week called for a "truth commission" to be set up to investigate the so-called Gloriagate tape. A lot of them don't want to wait for the next presidential election, due in 2010, for a shot at power. Their main goal is to seek skeletons in the administration's closet, or, as the palace asserts, fabricate scandals.

Such superheated political times produce strange phenomena. Last year, Fortunato Abat, a retired general who served as armed forces Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary under President Fidel Ramos, wrote a paper arguing that the country should be run by a junta composed of military men and civilians. When Abat distributed his paper to generals serving under Arroyo, the government said it was going to charge him with sedition. But when columnists wrote that Abat, 80, was just a harmless old man exercising his freedom of speech, the administration backed down. Abat didn't, however, and he's not restricting his thoughts to the word processor anymore. "I'm leading the Movement for National Salvation," he says. "I'm very open about it. We've had this system for almost 60 years and now, ultimately, we're the basket case of Asia. The people are looking for change."

Abat wants to junk the constitution and set up an oversight council. Beneath that would be a governing council, which would draft a new constitution and run the government. Elections would be out for "a year or two." He would head the whole shebang. (Last week the government finally filed a sedition charge against Abat for saying at a recent press conference: "Gloria has to go down now, the government has to go down now.")

Almost all the groups hoping to topple Arroyo have a similar plan, with one significant variation: who will be in the junta and, most crucial, who will head it. That lack of agreement, and the fact that there's no obvious public support for such a move, has been to Arroyo's advantage—for now. But, warns De Villa, who has launched his own reform movement, "there is a gathering political storm that will affect all of us." So far, it's a mud storm, but Arroyo will have to work hard to keep from getting buried by it.

• Anthony Spaeth | Manila
• A movement to topple President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is gathering strength