The United States on Friday expressed its ”unequivocal” support for embattled Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and said there appears to be no real danger of a coup despite persistent rumours.
However, the US government will oppose ”any extra-constitutional or extra-legal efforts to any way undermine” Arroyo’s government, US embassy charge d’affaires Joseph Mussomeli said.
Arroyo has placed the entire military and police forces on full alert as rumours swirl of a plot against her, fuelled by opposition allegations she rigged last year’s election.
But the allegations gained more momentum on Friday when the former deputy chief of the country’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) came out in public as the source of taped conversations being aired in the local media, in which Arroyo purportedly asked an independent election commissioner to ensure she won the vote.
The government has described the taped telephone conversations as illegally obtained and doctored.
”I don’t know if I will live to see tomorrow. My surfacing today means I am dead meat. They can throw the book at me and worse, they can kill me,” the NBI official, Samuel Ong, told a hastily arranged news conference surrounded by bodyguards from the political opposition.
He said he has the master copy of the alleged taped conversations and that three other copies have been entrusted to close friends. If anything happens to him, Ong said the tapes will automatically be given to an unnamed Catholic bishop.
The recordings were given to him by members of the military intelligence who were allegedly fed up with the government, Ong said.
”This is my insurance,” Ong said, showing press photographers the taped conversations, which he said run for more than an hour.
The tapes will reveal that opposition candidate Fernando Poe, a movie star who nearly unseated Arroyo in last year’s May election, was cheated by Arroyo, Ong said as he called on the incumbent to resign.
Poe, who died of natural causes seven months after he lost, was a close friend of deposed president Joseph Estrada.
Estrada was deposed in a military-backed popular uprising in 2001 and replaced by Arroyo on allegations of corruption. But he remains the de facto opposition head and still enjoys popular support.
Mussomeli said the US embassy knew about the alleged recordings as early as April, but ”we didn’t take it that seriously”.
”We are not concerned that this administration is at risk,” he said. ”We want to take it seriously; we just don’t think its credible.”
The US support for Arroyo ”is unequivocal”, Mussomeli said. But while there is no real danger, he said the political scandal is eating away at the Philippines’ stability.
”We believe this has really grown out of proportion from what we know. Just as accurately, this is very serious because it distracts people from the real problems that we should be dealing with,” the diplomat said.
The rumours have caused jitters across the financial markets in Manila as the Philippines on Friday prepared to go on a long-weekend holiday.
Anti-Arroyo protesters meanwhile gathered near the presidential Malacanang palace to demand she step down.
The Philippines has a long history of coups and intrigue since dictator Ferdinand Marcos was pushed from power more than 20 years ago.
A group of junior offices and soldiers briefly took over part of downtown Manila in July 2003 to demand Arroyo step down. They later surrendered without incident. — AFP
