Fixing the Philippines

Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is demonstrating that there’s nothing like a weak vice president to make the woman at the top look good. Allegations that she rigged last year’s presidential election have prompted several demonstrations, but the uproar isn’t posing a serious threat to her regime.

Crowds demanding that she resign have barely topped 40,000 -- small potatoes compared with the throngs that successfully demanded Ferdinand Marcos leave the presidential palace 19 years ago. Arroyo’s supporters have staged rallies of their own.

So far, most of the president’s foes taking to the streets have been the usual suspects -- students and leftists. The shop owners and industrialists haven’t joined the outcry; equally important, the country’s important Roman Catholic bishops have so far refrained from urging her to resign.

Ten Cabinet members did quit and urged the president to follow their example. But even opposition legislators rumbling about impeachment don’t think the vice president, Noli de Castro, would be an improvement.

Arroyo’s problems began with disclosure of a wiretapped telephone call in which a woman, supposedly Arroyo, asked a man, supposedly the election commissioner, about the vote count during last year’s presidential election and received the reply that it had been doctored in her favor. Arroyo admitted telephoning an unidentified election official but says she wanted him to guard against vote-rigging.

It’s easy to understand why few Filipinos buy that explanation. Arroyo has also been hurt by charges that her husband, son and brother-in-law received millions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds.

Former President Fidel V. Ramos, an Arroyo supporter, this month suggested shifting the form of government to a parliamentary system and having Arroyo preside over the change to give her a “graceful exit” from the presidency. But rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship of state isn’t going to help. Arroyo needs to find several well-respected business figures and politicians to replace the Cabinet ministers who resigned and show she’s serious about putting the country’s finances in order.

If foreign investors are scared off and the economy worsens, the middle class could add its voice to the students’ and make it impossible for her to stay in office. That would especially be true if the army got involved; the Philippines prides itself on being a democracy, imperfect though it is. The soldiers, who were influential in getting Marcos to leave and forcing President Joseph Estrada from office in 2001 -- to be succeeded by his vice president, Arroyo -- belong in the barracks, not government.