BLOGGERS UNITE IN PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION

A Protester declares her stand with
fresh flowers and banner in the Philippines.
Bloggers unite

in Philippine revolution

By Connie Levett
Bangkok, July 16, 2005.

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First came the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia, then the orange revolution in Ukraine. Now the Philippines, fighting public fatigue with the whole political process, is gearing up for the cyber revolution.

For the third time in 20 years, there is a real threat that a Philippine president will be forced from office by public anger.

But unlike previous revolutions waged by million-strong crowds on the broad avenues of Manila, this political crisis is being fought out on the information superhighway, where police are finding it harder to control nimble bloggers.
"U-uuy, somebody's making the rounds of the blog sites leaving the same messages trying to convince people that GMA didn't cheat. pung!" a Filipino blogger warned this week.

GMA is embattled President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the cheating refers to allegations that she fixed the vote in last year's presidential election.
This revolution is all about control of information. The election-fixing allegations centre on taped phone calls allegedly between the President and an electoral commissioner, Virgilo Garcilliano. When the allegations surfaced in early June, threats from the Arroyo administration stopped the mainstream media from publishing the contents because the calls had been illegally recorded.

This created an online blog bonanza.
"One of the most influential groups in the blogging community are mainstream journalists putting out their own websites," Roby Alampay, executive director of the South-East Asian Press Alliance, said.

The Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism was also crucial in the online campaign. The centre first aired the three-hour tape of the conversations, offering it as a download on its website in early June. The site collapsed under the pressure of interest.

"It proved to be the turning point for GMA, the tape being leaked," Mr Alampay said.
The centre appealed to the blogging community and more than a dozen mirror sites were set up to cope with the traffic. The transcript was also popular, downloaded 100,000 times in three weeks.

Not everyone thought the cyber revolution was good for the country. In late June, a computer security whiz was asked to hack the site of the investigative journalism centre. He declined. Unbeknown to the caller, the whiz was a friend of the centre and warned the group.

A week later on June 27, as the President addressed the nation in a carefully scripted half-apology, the centre's website went down, preventing any blog analysis for more than 12 hours - a lifetime in cyber space.

In the weeks since, the diminutive President has been fighting to slow the momentum for her eviction.

She has exiled her controversial husband, offered fuzzy future constitutional change and promised new infrastructure.

But it may be the public's political fatigue, rather than a desperate road-building program, that saves her.

"Here comes the mob, take down a president by force, we start over again, take down another president by force, we start over again, take down a third president by force, we start again," wrote one blogger.

"We will never get anywhere economically if we continue doing this forever. There has got to be a better way to deal with this political problem. Why not try following due process for a change?"

Mr Alampay said people were genuinely fatigued with the people-power phenomenon and the fact they had been bitterly disappointed every time people power succeeded.

Sheila Coronel, head of the investigative journalism centre, believes the President is trying to outlast her detractors.

That settlement is still far from clear. The opposition smell blood and will not let up. The military is watching the streets, trying to measure the depth of public outrage.
But a disillusioned public has taken its rage indoors and online.

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