The Philippines is seeing massive protests over the discovery of a tape which purports to show that that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the daughter of a founding president of the nation, rigged her re-election last year, a contest she just barely won. She got her initial power in a People Power coup in 2001, an event I witnessed in Manila, and now apparently it’s her turn to exit the same way. Sad, because none of this is democratic. Initial news accounts are here, here, and here. Much of the blogging sentiment around Manila is that bad as she is, the threat to democracy is worse. Whether that threat is in stolen elections or in mob rule is where the debate is.

I’ve never liked her. Not only is she a coward, sullying her nation’s word and honor during the Iraq War to be The Oprah President, she’s too elite, too Davos for my sensibility.

She’s the IMF-lovin’ economist who hiked taxes. To keep the Philippines’ overabundant undercompetent bureaucrats on payroll. Never mind its impact on the private sector.

She also made birth control in a Catholic country a priority, something that goes over like bikinis in Kabul, such cultural sensitivity! But so pleasing to the UN types she’s beholden to and wants the good favor of. Regardless of what you might think of birth control as an option, I think her public spending on it was for the wrong reasons: because she was convinced that the economic growth needed to employ growing numbers of Filipinos was impossible. So, the fewer Filipinos, the better. She never believed in the potential of her people. That says a lot about her leadership.

And amid all this spending, she wasn’t even a good economist – she’s led the country to the brink of sovereign default.

On her watch, Philippines turned into a bin-Laden nesting ground and the South became one of the spots to be seen if you’re an Islamofascist, an area where the aid rackets led by the World Bank are so numerous the private sector is almost absent.

Amid her Harvardy image of being a best-and-brightest neoliberal economist who’s interested in just the facts ma’am, she sits in power by highly questionable means, ousting her predecessor, clown-President Joseph Estrada, a Hugo Chavez of sorts, through people power. And now she’s accused of cheating on her re-election, the result of 11 tapes supposedly proving it. She denies they are authentic. But the irony of this picture, more tinpot than technocrat, is amazing.

I am not impressed. The only worry I have is the rise of hard-left elements on the political scene I have seen rise in the past three years. I do not know how powerful they are. But I do know one thing: Tens of thousands of people are in the streets and it’s not surprising it’s time for her to go.

Here is a Philippine blog roundup:

TORN AND FRAYED IN MANILA has a good narrative rundown of events as they have thus far occurred – the tape, the implication, the players, as well as some of the history of illicit bugging as it’s happened in Philippine politics.

MANUEL L. QUEZON III reports that Arroyo has done a good job of showing that her government is not panicking, has secured the support of the U.S. and has seen the Church distance itself from the far leftists and oppositionists who are leading this. A potential Babe Of Politics, Susan Roces, the widow of Fernando Poe, who ran for election last year against Arroyo, has declined to be drawn into this as an opposition leader. This blogger, a newspaper columnist, looks plugged in.

THE SASSY LAWYER warns that the 11 tapes have not been heard by many people in the public, and for that reason, she warns that means there may be power-grabbers at work manipulating the mobs. She writes:

I have no love for Gloria Arroyo. I have no respect left for her as President. But, to be fair, let????????s establish the truth behind those tapes first before jumping into the bandwagon. If there is anything there that constitutes a palpable violation of the Constitution (like messing with the elections), then impeach her by all means. Yeah, even if it means having Noli de Castro take over. But for us to be used by power grabbers???????

Apparently if Arroyo is overthrown, her successor, Noli Castro, would be a jackass. But that’s not the reason she warns against another People Power happening. She asks readers just how far Philippines has advanced since the original People Power Revolution lit up the world in 1986. She has an exquisite post, read the whole thing.

TALES OF THE UNLAWYER has links to Susan Roces’ remarks, declining to be drawn in to this chaos. Roces is the widow of Fernando Poe, the candidate for president last year who lost the election to Arroyo. He died a few months ago of natural causes.

YUPKI GIRL speaks of her efforts to overthrow Estrada a few years ago, and how hopeful that People Power demonstration was in those days. Now, it’s not. All she and her commentators want is peace and rule of law. She says that bad as Arroyo has turned out, she’d like to know who the alternative is. She lists the possibilities and doesn’t like what she sees. She writes:

Why hold elections — spending taxpayers’ money — if the losers will just ignore it and call for a power-grab to benefit their own interests?

BY JOVE!, who’s apparently a TV cameraman, writes firsthand of his adventures at Malacanang Palace trying to get a shot of the president and the political mood there.

BIKOY, in an awesome post, writes that there’s no need for a People Power Revolution because if she’s guilty of rigging the election the next step is to give her the boot, WITHOUT a showy People Power Revolution. How about a little law and order instead? He writes (and I could post the whole thing, it’s that good, so click on and read it all):

What an insult to democracy for people to just say, let this cheater remain in office for the sake of whatever! Or because they don????????t like the vice-president to take over for reasons that have yet to be explained. I wonder why they weren????????t thinking that way during those last few days of January 2001. The issue here is not just corruption, not just a power struggle among politicians, it????????s about a sitting president defiling, befouling the people????????s mandate for her personal gains. Ignore this and you????????re giving every future politician who will cheat his way into office an excuse to say, ???????Hey, you didn????????t complain when Gloria cheated her way into office, why are you apprehending me for fraud????????

PCIJ, hat tip Bikoy, has the full 3 hours of tapes if you want to listen.

BULLETPROOF VEST writes with surprise at this new tape “coming out from the cracks” and smells a rat. She compares it to tawdry tabloid tales. She also senses the legacy of Marcos.

LA VIDA LAWYER has a great post explaining that so long as Gloria Arroyo can keep the dispute in the courts, she’s got the advantage. If she can’t keep it in courts but it does play its drama out in the streets, she’s sunk, like her predecessors. He writes:

On one hand, the parliament of the streets is clearly the battleground of GMA’s enemies. This country and these people have a very strong tradition of protest that dates all the way back to the Spanish era. Like sharks in the water, 100 people protesting on the streets can be lethal. Didn’t EDSA 1 start only with less than a hundred that were brought over by Butz Aquino to support the frantic Juan Ponce Enrile back in 1986? The streets are dangerous these days. GMA should make sure the enemies are swept away from them.

EXPECTORANTS asks the no one forget that the biggest issue is the everyday corruption that eats away at Philippine society, writing:

We are talking about the million-peso pork barrel whose very liquidation is scandalously fantastic in the face of dilapidated schoolhouses in the barrios, unkempt, dowdy government offices, the lack of public restrooms especially in tourist towns, etc. etc.

We are talking about the ten-percenters (or more), all those people on the take, every time a private (or public?) enterprise seeks to approve a contract or in need of some kind of construction to do. We are talking about a whole legacy of corruption we inherited from Marcos that we can’t seem to do without.

POLITICAL JUNKIE says he has listened to the tapes and thinks they are deeply damaging to Arroyo, truly bad stuff. He recommends that she resign and a recall election be held. I suspect he means a new election; if she’s already resigned, I don’t see why voters would need to fire her.