Arroyo marks first year in power, but hounded by protests
Arroyo marks first year in power, but hounded by protests
Agencies, Manila
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo plunged into Manila's slums and ate with squatters on Sunday to commemorate an uprising which swept her to power, while an army faction vowed to defend her from coup plots.
Arroyo, marking the first anniversary of a popular revolt on Jan. 20 last year which ousted Joseph Estrada, urged followers of the ex-actor to give up attempts to destabilize her, saying another revolution would not happen unless God supported it.
Manila's slums, where five million squatters live, have been Estrada's power base. Many of its residents remain loyal to him, accusing Arroyo of caring only for the elite.
"Come on, eat your food," Arroyo prodded about 20 children chosen to lunch with her in Manila's Promised Land shantytown, where over 200 slumdwellers died in July 2000 after a mountainous dump site collapsed and crushed their shanties.
Arroyo, in the style of poor Filipinos, used her bare hand to eat, scooping up a lunch of chicken, boiled eggs and tomatoes spread over banana leaves as the media recorded the scene.
The 54-year-old economist, in green slacks and white blouse, spent the day visiting poor ghettoes, handing out food baskets, in an apparent bid to blunt the elitism criticism.
In one area, she pledged to repair a drainage system, in another she promised residents land.
Arroyo received a major boost when the Young Officers Union (YOU), a military faction linked to failed coup attempts in the late 1980s against then president Corazon, declared their unequivocal support for her.
"We warn plotters and destabilizers, whoever they are, that we shall fight to the death such conspiracies against the people, the Constitution, the government and the state," YOU said in a manifesto released to the media.
The group, composed of idealist middle level and junior officers in the 115,000-strong armed forces, said it had renounced coups as a means to achieve political change.
The capital has been awash with rumors for weeks that disgruntled military factions and some opposition groups, including die-hard supporters of Estrada, would launch their own "people power" uprising to unseat Arroyo.
Estrada's supporters among the slumdwellers, who stormed the presidential palace gates on May Day last year to demand his return to power, plan to march to the palace on Monday.
Estrada is on trial for economic plunder, an offense punishable by life in prison or death. He denies the charge.
While Arroyo was visiting the slums, 3,000 leftists marched on the palace and pelted an effigy of her with rotten tomatoes.
Arroyo, a staunch Roman Catholic, began Sunday's celebration by attending mass with Aquino and former president Fidel Ramos at a religious shrine on Manila's Edsa highway.
The shrine was the rallying point for last year's uprising against Estrada and for the first people power revolt in 1986 which ended late dictator Ferdinand Marcos's 20-year rule.
Arroyo has pledged to reduce poverty within 10 years by pursuing open-market economic policies that she said would lead to job creation. Four out of 10 of the 78 million Filipinos are poor.
The left maintains the Arroyo government has been a failure, but the incumbent on Sunday received encouraging words from former president Corazon Aquino.
"I am a fan of President Arroyo. We have many problems but she is doing her best to address them," Aquino told reporters after the church service.
But the leftwing group Bayan said in a statement handed out at the rally that Arroyo "is a hypocrite just like Estrada," Just like the Estrada regime, Arroyo's is a "hopelessly corrupt, rabidly pro-American, militaristic regime."
The protesters took issue with Arroyo's decision to allow U.S. Special Forces troops to deploy in the southern Philippines for six months of joint military exercises in which they would advise their Filipino counterparts on how to deal with the Abu Sayyaf Moro guerrilla group.