A dismissed Philippine official yesterday declared he wouldn't let police take him alive from a Roman Catholic seminary where he has sought refuge after accusing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of rigging last year's election.
The standoff heightened political tensions that had started to ebb over the weekend when large anti-government crowds failed to show up in support of Samuel Ong, former deputy head of the Justice Department's investigating agency.
Ong sought refuge in the Manila seminary after telling a news conference Friday that he has wiretapped recordings on which Arroyo purportedly talks to an election official about ensuring a 1-million-vote margin over her closest rival in May last year. The government claims the tapes are doctored. Ong had called on the public and the church to protect him, claiming he feared for his life and arrest.
PHOTO: AFP
Troops and riot police took positions outside the seminary and at key access points to the capital to keep out anti-government protesters from nearby provinces amid what the government has called a deliberate destabilization effort.
But there was no sign of deep military unrest or the large crowds which gathered for peaceful "people power" revolts that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001.
Ong pressed his allegations Monday and asked for public support.
"I will not allow myself to be arrested alive," Ong told DZBB radio by phone.
"I did not come all the way to the house of God only to tell a lie. Believe me, the one sitting in Malacanang [presidential palace] did not win as president," he said.
Lawmakers said they plan to open an investigation into the alleged wiretaps this week.
Ong said a military intelligence agent who was involved in wiretapping Arroyo, Sergeant Vidal Doble, has also voluntarily sought refuge in the seminary. The military alleged that Doble was being held against his will and deployed troops and two armed personnel carriers around the seminary walls yesterday.
The election fraud allegations -- along with an ongoing Senate probe of allegations that her family pocketed illegal gambling payoffs -- have sent Arroyo's popularity to its lowest levels since winning the bitterly contested election.
Arroyo is also grappling with crushing poverty, a huge budget deficit, high oil prices and persistent allegations of massive government corruption.
A tired-looking Arroyo appeared before a sparse Independence Day crowd Sunday and pleaded for unity, but warned she was prepared to use her power to protect democracy and her reforms.
In a country often buffeted by political turmoil, many analysts were unsure how the current storm would end.
"It's a political tele-series, I think," Professor Segundo Romero of the state-run University of the Philippines told ABS-CBN television. "People are asking how it would end, when in fact we're just in episode three of a maybe 15-episode thing."
Meanwhile, Philippine troops killed 14 communist guerrillas in a battle north of the capital Manila, the military said yesterday.
The troops were on routine patrol Sunday when they chanced upon a group of New People's Army (NPA) rebels near the town of Mexico, some 80km north of the capital, a military statement said.
A four-hour gunfight followed, leading to the rebel casualties. Thirteen high-powered assault rifles were recovered, the statement said.
It was the biggest loss suffered by the NPA in a single firefight with government forces since defense secretary Avelino Cruz vowed last month to crush the communist insurgents in the next six to 10 years.
The 8,000-strong NPA is the armed faction of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been waging an armed campaign since 1969, and is on the US' list of terrorist organizations.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS