Coup highlights corruption challenge
Philippines President Gloria Arroyo said Monday that state of emergency would be lifted sooner than expected.
Eight days after crushing a bumbling coup, Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo projected confidence that the threat to her government was over.
The young officers who led the bizarre seizure of a financial-district shopping mall, apartment, and hotel complex are in jail awaiting court-martial, and government officials say they are moving to file charges against civilian politicians they allege encouraged and financed the plotters. An aid to former President Joseph Estrada, who the government alleges backed the coup, is also in custody.
"We will lift the state of [emergency] earlier than expected as we mop up the fringes of the conspiracy," Mrs. Arroyo said in a speech Monday. Political analysts in the Philippines say the failed coup may even have ironic benefits, giving Arroyo the chance to pursue a long-stalled campaign to clean up corruption and abuse of power.
But the incident, involving some 300 soldiers and officers, serves as a reminder that civilian control of the military is weak in the Philippines. The resulting corruption in the ranks is hampering Manila's efforts - backed by Washington with money and military advisers - to clamp down on terrorism and separatist grievances.
More than 17 years after the end of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, the Philippines' military continues to play the role of kingmaker in national politics.
That hasn't always been bad. The military backed the 1986 "people power" revolt that ended Mr. Marcos' reign and lent quieter support to the protesters that swept Arroyo to power in 2001 at the expense of the crony-bedeviled administration of Mr. Estrada. But that has created a tradition that is undermining democracy, and with it the Philippines' ability to be a reliable American ally in the war on terror.
"There were only a small number of soldiers involved in the mutiny, but this is not some lunatic fringe, it's a sentiment shared by many,'' says Marites Vitug, a Philippines analyst and editor of Newsbreak magazine. "Their attitude is, if it was right for Arroyo or Aquino, why is it wrong now?"
One answer, Vitug says, is that the military's continued vision of itself as a fiefdom outside normal national law helps foster corruption and a lack of accountability that has enabled some of the country's long-running conflicts to fester, including the Muslim rebellions centered on the southern island of Mindanao, that have fed the terrorism problem.
The Philippines has been a staunch American ally in Southeast Asia since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Philippines also hosted a US deployment last year that sought to root out the Abu Sayyaf, an extremist organization with ties to Al Qaeda. At least four of the plotters, according to Philippines newspapers, trained with US special forces during the deployment.
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