Estrada Quits; New Philippine Leader Installed

Philippine Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, backed by the military and police, was sworn in as president today, moments after beleaguered President Joseph Estrada reluctantly said he will step down.

Estrada, under fire for alleged corruption, was compelled to quit after his top generals and Cabinet members deserted him and hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demand his ouster.

The 63-year-old Estrada said he has no intention of fleeing the Philippines to avoid charges. “I will live and die in my country,” he told GMA television.

Arroyo, 53, who rode to power on a wave of public protests, took the oath of office in Manila, the capital, before tens of thousands of people at the site of mass demonstrations against Estrada that began Tuesday. “People power has dramatized the Philippines’ capacity for greatness,” she said.

Arroyo, daughter of former President Diosdado Macapagal, won the vice presidency in 1998 by 7 million votes. She holds a doctorate in economics and is said to read the Bible every morning.

Estrada humbled himself twice on television Friday in the hope of winning a reprieve, first urging that his suspended impeachment trial on corruption charges resume, then promising to call a presidential election for May in which he would not run.

But the opposition, whose leaders include former Presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel V. Ramos, refused to settle for anything less than Estrada’s immediate resignation and the installation of Arroyo as the nation’s new head of state.

The huge crowd of protesters sensed Friday night that victory was near. Many remained in the streets, singing, chanting and calling for Estrada to step down.

The scene echoed the “people power” protests of 1986 that toppled dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos and helped inspire peaceful revolutions that stretched from the Berlin Wall to the Kremlin.

As the drama unfolded, the country was plunged into a constitutional crisis in which the elected president had lost command of virtually every arm of the government but no successor had been sworn in.

“I would have wished the impeachment trial to go on so as to allow this constitutional process to take its due course,” Estrada said in his second televised appeal. “But as much as I would have wanted this to happen, I know that my mandate to lead our people will remain in question from here on regardless of the outcome of the trial.”

Although Estrada still had considerable support among the nation’s poor, most key sectors of the country were arrayed against him: business leaders, the Roman Catholic Church, the military and intellectuals.

As dawn broke today, thousands of protesters marched on Malacanang, the presidential palace, in an attempt to force the former action movie star to give up the presidency.

Throughout the night, Estrada sought to negotiate the terms of his surrender. Opposition spokesmen said he had requested passage to another country, a pardon, the right to carry large amounts of cash with him from the palace and a delay of five days.

“What is he waiting for, the banks to open Monday?” Alex Magno, an advisor to Arroyo, asked after the negotiations bogged down at 3 a.m.

“We have a Cabinet all lined up,” he said. “The government will be fully functional by Monday. We are ready to take over now.”

Cardinal Jaime Sin, who like Aquino and Ramos was a key figure in the 1986 protests, called for Arroyo to be sworn in as president this afternoon whether Estrada had resigned or not.

Popularly known by his nickname, Erap, after one of his movie characters, Estrada has been accused of widespread graft and corruption since his landslide election in 1998.

The House of Representatives voted to impeach him on four counts of bribery, corruption, betraying the public trust and violating the constitution. In the public arena, he has been branded a drunkard, a gambler, a womanizer and a woman-beater.

His impeachment trial, with the 22 members of the Senate acting as judges, began in December. House prosecutors produced evidence that Estrada had pocketed at least $74 million in illegal gambling profits, cigarette tax revenues and mysterious transfers to a once-secret bank account he allegedly opened under the name “Jose Velarde.”

But the proceedings came to an abrupt halt Tuesday night when the judges voted 11 to 10 not to unseal bank records of the Velarde account.

Within hours of the Senate vote, thousands of people began gathering at the site of the original people power rallies. The protests, called “People Power II” by many, continued nearly round the clock, growing day by day.

By Friday night, the throng extended for blocks from the protest site. Estimates of the crowd size Friday night ranged as high as 1 million people.

The opposition has portrayed the battle against Estrada as the political successor to the movement against Marcos. But some politicians worry about the critical role played this time by the military.

They question whether Estrada was in fact forced out of office by a junta that would wield undue influence over a figurehead president.

“Let us not rejoice,” said former Sen. Rene Saguisag, who served in Aquino’s first Cabinet. “This may be the saddest day in our history. The military clique may have gang-raped democracy.”

The crucial moment came Friday afternoon when Gen. Angelo Reyes, the armed forces chief of staff, and Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado, along with the generals who head the army, navy, air force and marines, appeared at the demonstration and took the stage.

The generals, wearing their uniforms and looking somewhat uneasy, were cheered wildly by the crowd as confetti rained down.

They said they would take their orders from the vice president. Despite Estrada’s refusal to resign, Arroyo began calling herself the “new commander in chief” Friday.

“I welcome the heroism of our generals and the secretary of defense,” she said. “Let’s begin the healing process, because our country has been so deeply divided.”

But behind the scenes, the defections from the Estrada camp were not so benign and, in at least one case, took on the appearance of a coup.

National Police Chief Panfilo Lacson initially refused to join the opposition, officers said, and had a plan to paralyze the military by encircling the top brass before they could defect.

Some of Lacson’s subordinates, who were loyal to the opposition, learned of the plan and surrounded the police chief’s headquarters. One police major said they were prepared to execute the chief by firing squad on the parade grounds if he didn’t agree to switch sides.

Before Lacson could be caught, he and other senior police officers quickly held a news conference announcing that they had joined the opposition.

“This is the hardest and most painful decision I have ever made in my entire life,” the police chief told reporters.

Estrada tried to head off the defections by calling for the impeachment trial to resume and offering to have his lawyers unseal the contested bank account evidence.

When that proposal fell flat, he went on television again a few hours later and offered to step down in May after new elections were held.

“There have been events in the last few hours which tell us that we can no longer focus our attention on our objective to lift our economy and raise our people from poverty,” Estrada said. “These events have intensified the divisions among our people and are pushing our country toward the destruction of our economy and democracy.”

Arroyo and other opposition leaders rejected the proposal, arguing that snap elections are not covered by the constitution.

Through the night, Estrada was said to be holed up inside the presidential palace pondering his increasingly limited options.

At one point, the two sides had nearly reached agreement that Estrada would board a waiting plane that would take him to the United States, said Pastor Boy Soycon, one of the mediators.

But the deal fell apart when Estrada said he would prefer to go to Australia and listed other conditions, including the right to take large sums of cash with him, Soycon said.

By midday today, the stalemate had left the opposition with the prospect of swearing in Arroyo before Estrada could be persuaded to resign.

Despite Sin’s endorsement and Arroyo’s swearing-in by Supreme Court Justice Hilario Davide, some opposition democrats were uneasy at the prospect of the new president beginning her term without clear constitutional authority.

“Withdrawal of support [to Estrada] by the military and police constitutes a bloodless coup,” said Supreme Court Justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma. “In other words, they have taken over.”

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An Impeachment Timeline

Key events of Philippine President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment:

* Oct. 9, 2000: Gov. Luis Singson, a longtime friend of Estrada, says he provided the president with more than $8 million in payoffs from illegal gambling and $2.7 million from tobacco taxes.

* Oct. 12: Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo resigns from Cabinet post as secretary of social welfare, citing allegations against Estrada. She later takes leadership of united opposition.

* Oct. 18: Opposition groups file an impeachment complaint against Estrada with House of Representatives. Thousands of protesters demand that the president step down.

* Nov. 2: Dozens of lawmakers, including the Senate president and House speaker, resign from Estrada’s ruling party. Estrada’s trade secretary and five senior economic advisors also quit.

* Dec. 7: Senate impeachment trial begins with tribunal examining a check signed in the name of Jose Velarde, an alias that prosecutors say Estrada used for hidden bank accounts. They say Estrada signed the check with the fake name to buy a mansion for one of his mistresses.

* Dec. 11: An aide to Singson testifies that she delivered $100,000 in payoffs from an illegal numbers game called jueteng to Estrada’s personal secretary.

* Dec. 20: Witnesses testify that an account in the Philippines’ third-largest bank held millions of dollars in bribes collected by Estrada. Equitable PCI Bank Chairman George Go resigns.

* Dec. 22: The bank’s senior vice president, Clarissa Ocampo, says she saw Estrada sign a false name to documents withdrawing $10 million from a secret personal account.

* Dec. 30: Five synchronized bomb attacks kill 22 people and injure more than 120 in Manila, days before the trial is to resume after holiday recess. Police accuse Muslim rebels, but many fear that the bombs may be linked to the trial.

* Jan. 16: Senators vote 11 to 10 to keep key bank documents secret, angering prosecutors who say the records would prove that Estrada amassed an additional $63.5 million from corruption. Senate President Aquilino Pimentel quits in protest.

* Jan. 17: The prosecution team resigns, and the trial is suspended. Tens of thousands of Filipinos take to the streets.

* Jan. 19: Military chief Angelo Reyes, Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado, Finance Secretary Jose Pardo and other top military, police and economic officials resign and join anti-Estrada protesters.

* Today: Estrada announces resignation.

Source: Associated Press