No surprise that Philippines president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is under siege by critics to resign over an alleged vote-rigging scandal during the May 2004 presidential election, in which she is now directly implicated.

Arroyo's been trying to worm her way out of trouble for weeks but her telephone conversations with an electioneering official during the last poll were taped by military intelligence agents, which put her squarely at attempting to sway the count. Arroyo won the election over actor Fernando Poe Jr by a margin of just over a million votes.

There is no question the Arroyo presidency is mired in fraud and deception. What's more, history is stacked against Madam President.

Arroyo came to power following ex-president Joseph Estrada's spectacular stupidity in office. Why Filipinos had chosen Estrada in the first place is obvious: After Fidel Ramos's two terms as president, no credible alternative existed.

In fact, following the overthrow of dictator and big-time thief Ferdinand Marcos - who died in Hawaii in 1986 in the arms of the United States government - Ramos gave the brightest hope yet to ordinary Filipinos that their stock would improve. But in the end Ramos, too, fizzled out.

As did Corazon Aquino, who had replaced Marcos in what now seems like a capricious yellow revolution, and whose landed gentry places Aquino among the Philippines' filthy rich.

Arroyo, an economics graduate of Chicago University, and daughter of former liberal reformist president Diosdado Macapagal, was quickly promoted as the Philippines' newest saviour. But in a country infested by massive corruption, a saviour emerges only for the ruling class.

This perhaps explains why Arroyo took the longest honeymoon during her first presidential term, with the occasional, obligatory fluster-and-buster act to make her look sufficiently presidential and on the job. Meanwhile, the ruling class has been allowed to pillage the banana republic.

Filipinos became less fooled by Arroyo's publicity stunts, and Arroyo quickly learnt she could lose the 2004 poll that would give her a second term. Amazingly, however, after winning it - by the skin of her teeth - Arroyo relapsed into yet another honeymoon within the fortified Malacanang Palace.

Arroyo appointees

So no surprise either that after the recent mass protests to dethrone her, Arroyo's henchmen - out of panic - quickly hatched a counter public rally made of, sources say, mostly a claque.

That's easy enough to do in a country sizzling with cronyism and nepotism while the majority of devout Catholic Filipinos continue to live in grinding poverty. If ordinary Filipinos have a schizophrenic view of domestic politics, that's because they, like so many in most if not all developing countries, have been routinely cheated by their political leaders in singularly improving their lives - in real terms.
More, if foreign investors have complained, often enough, of the high costs of doing business in the Philippines, that's because it's true. Only Asians can do good business in the Philippines; after all, they've got corruption down to fine art. And it swirls amongst the Filipino ruling class like an unstoppable tornado.

In the latest spin-off, a Marcos-ist stench has hit Filipino politics, one which trails all the way to Malacanang. Arroyo's family and relatives have been caught up in corruption scandals. But Arroyo's aides say the allegations that Arroyo's relatives, including husband Miguel, received money from an illegal gambling racket, are just another part of the plot. You'd expect Malacanang to say that.

The plot thickened, though, in early June, when former provincial official Sandra Cam told a Senate inquiry that she had personally delivered tens of thousands of dollars - in cash - to Arroyo's son, Juan Miguel, and her husband's brother, Ignacio Arroyo. All three, too, have denied getting payoffs from the notorious jueteng numbers rackets.

Not unsurprisingly, Arroyo responded swiftly by ordering an investigation by the Justice Department. But don't hold your breath on a quick a-political outcome. This inquiry will be a drawn-out affair, akin to a merry-go-round. Like so many of Asia's judicial systems, that of the Philippines is scarcely independent, let alone corruption-free. Even senior judges are Arroyo appointees.

Surprising backer

The worst is ahead for Arroyo. For starters, her cabinet has slowly begun to withdraw its support for the boss. In turn Arroyo blames the Philippines' constitution for the nation's relentlessly degenerative politics.

If only as a convenient scapegoat, Arroypo can also thank her father for this. For many of pro-Arroyo politicians, though, there's too much to lose from backing a lousy horse.

Arroyo still has the support of the military, whose top generals were handpicked by her. Predictably the top brass moved quickly to post troops around Manila to secure the president. But if public pressure continues to mount for Arroyo's head, the generals will jump ship - just as they did when Marcos's star began to dim.

Rumours have come from Arroyo's aides of an imminent military coup, led by 'Young Turk colonels' who have long been disenchanted with the regime. That's a common ruse.

Perhaps most surprising of all is the Catholic church. Once it led the biggest, most telling protests against Marcos and Estrada. But recently, perhaps without the politically astute leadership of the late Cardinal Jaimie Sin, the Catholic church, in its magnanimous wisdom, has chosen to back the incompetent Arroyo.

Not the Protestants, though. Nor - and Arroyo would be nervous about this - the Makati district of politically powerful Filipino business and several influential parliamentarians whose political future depends on the Makati patronage, and, increasingly, sections of Filipino civil society.

The old shape of Third World politics, which many nave commentators, including the Western and Asian media, have long claimed to have been jettisoned after the 'lessons' of the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s, are stubbornly embedded not only in Filipino society but just about every other Asian nation.

Arroyo's climb to power after the Estrada fiasco was illegal and since claiming the presidency, she has sought to personalise political power - like most Third World dictators and authoritarians do. They then develop a complex web of patron-client system to keep them in power. Just as former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad did in Malaysia.

So far Arroyo has acquired the personal loyalty of law enforcers, the compliance of legislators, the allegiance of judges and the silence of civil society. More, Arroyo has used and abused government resources to wage an expensive electoral campaign in the same manner as Marcos.

Arroyo, after all, is the product of the old Philippines political system. She understands it. She knows how it works. She knows how to milk it. She knows just how weak Filipino society is, with its subsidy mentality, and a Catholic church that's today increasingly inward-looking and out of touch with the people's real plight.

Now Arroyo wants to tinker with the constitution, which she warns will easily give way to the country being run by a military junta or a firebrand revolutionary council.

Such fear-mongering isn't without truth, but that truth is manufactured by Arroyo. Having been caught out for electoral fraud, corruption tainting her family and relatives, and a presidency that as been a nothing less than a spectacular joke on the policy front, much of it due to her own incompetence, Arroyo is desperately seeking to entrench her power.

There's a dangerous precedent here: Marcos did likewise in 1985-86 and then fled to the United States, whose government winched him to safety and protected him from legal prosecution for stealing the nation's wealth and other ignominies.

Arroyo came to power illegally and without the popular legitimacy of Filipinos. She has lost the trust of Filipinos.

And before she piles onto herself Marcos-like ignominies and does more irreparable harm to ordinary and long-suffering Filipinos, she must go - ignominiously and deservedly so.

MANJIT BHATIA, an academician and writer, is also research director of AsiaRisk, a political, economic and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. He specialises in international economics and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific.