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THE PRESIDENT
The Unmaking of the President
by Sheila S. Coronel
Mrs. Arroyo is reaping the consequences of the damage she has wrought on key institutions.

The Tangled Tale of the Tapes
There appears to be more comedy than cunning in the release of the "Garci" tapes.

Bye, Bye Love
Gloria and Mike complement, but also compete with, each other.

THE OPPOSITION
Despite Susan, The Opposition is not Quite Smelling Like Roses
by Luz Rimban
Mrs. Poe is the best thing that has ever happened to a splintered and discredited opposition.

Pondering Plans B to G
A whole range of options is being offered as a way out of the current mess.

THE ELECTION
Who Really Won in 2004?
by Yvonne T. Chua
The experts say the fight was so close it was a statistical dead heat.

WHAT WENT WRONG IN THE COMELEC?
The Comelec's Fall from Grace
by Alecks P. Pabico
The questionable credentials and integrity of commissioners have wrecked the election body.

Sins of the Commission
Scandals have hounded the Comelec for years.

VIRGILIO GARCILLANO
Master Operator
by Sheila S. Coronel
The man whose voice is heard on The Tapes is an expert in election fraud.

MINDANAO
Working 'Miracles' in Mindanao
by Yvonne T. Chua
The "Garci" recording gives clues on how the cheating was done in the South.

Statistically Improbable
The result of the elections in some Mindanao towns challenges credulity.

PARTY LIST
Messing with the Party List
by Luz Rimban
Favored party-list groups got more than a little help from the Comelec fraud squad.

THE FIRST FAMILY
Shame and Scandal in the Family
The Arroyos have weathered allegations that range from keeping secret bank accounts to getting money from illegal gambling.

TECHNOLOGY
Blogging Gloria
by Alecks P. Pabico
Ringtones, bootlegged CDs, and blogs are the new weapons of resistance.

POINTS OF VIEW
Writings on the (Democracy) Wall
Filipinos have never been shy about speaking out, especially in turbulent times.

HELLO, GARCI?
The Non(Musical): A Program Guide
There really is only one Garci recording, but several versions of it have been released. A full transcript and a list of the cast of characters in The Tapes is in this issue.

Mrs. Arroyo is reaping the consequences of the damage she has wrought on key institutions.

by SHEILA S. CORONEL

	Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo apologizes on national TV for a "lapse in judgment."

UNTIL last month, the heavens seemed to have favored Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The economy was picking up, the stock market was trading briskly, and Congress had just passed a new tax measure. For sure, the budget deficit and rising oil prices were something to worry about. At the same time, the opposition seemed bent on raking the jueteng muck. But all these were part of life — and politics — as usual.

After all, the president had won by a convincing margin in 2004, and although doubts about the integrity of the balloting lingered, the main opposition contender in last year's elections, the actor Fernando Poe Jr., was dead and buried. Joseph Estrada was safely languishing in the ennui of luxurious house arrest. And the rest of the opposition, while strident and noisy, was also fractured, discredited, and somewhat dispirited. President Arroyo's popularity may have dipped because of the hard times, but she was clearly, unmistakably in command.

And then came The Tapes. Suddenly, it seemed that the President had lost favor with the stars.

And yet, the stars are not solely to blame. The crisis that has paralyzed the presidency is as much of Arroyo's making as it is of the confluence of circumstances that brought us to where we are now: on the brink, possibly, of another political upheaval.

Blaming the opposition for the current mess gives it too much credit and endows its members with more cunning than they have. Neither the opposition nor the stellar Susan Roces can lay claim to the unraveling of the Arroyo presidency. Gloria Arroyo did that largely on her own. She is reaping the consequences of the damage she and her predecessors have wrought on the electoral process and on key institutions, among them, the Commission on Elections, the military, and the police.

AN INSECURE PRESIDENT
Much more than Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada, Arroyo has politicized these and other agencies of government, stunting their professionalism and turning them into puerile props for a president insecure about her mandate and the affections of her people. She has reasons to be insecure. She became president in 2001 only because Estrada fell and she was second in line to occupy Malacañang. Even those who voted for her in 2004 did so mainly because she was the safest bet, not because they believed in her, much less loved her, She was the lesser evil, not the principled choice.

The president's insecurity is also partly due to Edsa 3. Arroyo was traumatized by Labor Day 2001, when thousands of slum dwellers protesting Estrada's arrest came close to breaching the defenses of Malacañang. Even as angry masses were storming the Palace gates, the President remained isolated, unsure of .the loyalty of the military and the police. Edsa 3 defined her presidency and made her acutely aware of her vulnerabilities and perpetually anxious about the stability of her rule.

Since then, Arroyo has exerted every effort to win the allegiance of the military and the police by buying their loyalty through promotions, perks, and special access to her. She used these institutions to quell legitimate threats to her government, like the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny. Nothing wrong with that. But having courted the favor of strategic officers, these agencies were also used for more partisan purposes, including keeping tab of the president's political opponents and, if the conversations in the "Garci" tapes are to be believed, also to ensure her victory in 2004.

The Tapes that have set off the current crisis exist only because the head of Mrs. Arroyo's favorite military agency, the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines or ISAFP, ordered the wiretapping of presidential phone pal Virgilio Garcillano. President Arroyo called the elections commissioner 15 times in the span of three weeks in May and June 2004.

The wiretapping, according to military and intelligence sources, was instructed by Malacañang political operatives, who wanted to keep track of the commissioner's movements, for fear that he would favor the opposition instead. "This is because the administration party, as we've learned, considered Garcillano as a vulnerable target of the political opposition for them to be able to cheat in the last elections," a military officer told the Philippine Star a few days after the tape scandal broke.

THE WIRETAPPERS
Since she assumed power, the President has turned ISAFP into a sniffing dog against her enemies, most notably Sen. Panfilo Lacson but also an assortment of other "bad" guys (ex-RAM, ex-Erap, ex- and current communists). ISAFP officers could go straight to President Arroyo and to the First Gentleman, bypassing the chain of command. The president, as Newsbreak reported, also personally handpicked all the ISAFP commanders during her time, starting with the controversial Victor Corpus, who led the charges of "narcopolitics" against Lacson.

	Dynamic duo. President Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro when the going was good. [photo courtesy of Malaya]

But that is a digression. Suffice it to say that Garcillano was wiretapped by ISAFP operatives on orders of their superiors, who in turn got their orders from the Palace.

The wiretaps would not have been made at all had President Arroyo left ISAFP alone and allowed it to operate as an independent, professional intelligence agency free from partisan politics. But even if for some reason ISAFP on its own had made the recordings, these would not have fallen into opposition hands had the morale of ISAFP personnel been high and their commander-in-chief commanded their respect and loyalty.

Intelligence sources say one of the ISAFP agents linked to the release of the tapes, the ill-starred T/Sgt. Vidal Doble, is a "loyal soldier" who would probably not have succumbed to opposition inducements to be part of the plot if ISAFP were a more disciplined and tightly run organization.

The problem is that President Arroyo's sense of institutions is overwhelmed by her inherent insecurity and instincts for survival. She has put her own partisan political interests over the long-term development of the institutions of government. The scandal over The Tapes shows the 'pitfalls of this approach: rather than bolstering her rule, the weakened institutions only further heightened her vulnerability.