MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Several military officers defied a deadline to surrender after storming out of their coup trial Thursday, taking over an upscale hotel and demanding that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo resign.
Shots were heard about 75 minutes after the deadline passed. SWAT teams and troops used an armored personnel carrier as cover to move into position for a possible assault.
At least one dissident soldier, distinguishable by a red armband, crouched inside the hotel lobby, his finger near the trigger of an M-16 rifle.
Joined by other dissident officers and leaders from the opposition and the left, the coup defendants were making phone calls and sending cell phone text messages seeking to generate crowds to support them.
But as the day wore on and hotel guests were evacuated, few people turned out for the latest effort to oust Arroyo, who has survived at least three coup plots and three impeachment efforts during nearly seven tumultuous years in power.
Manila Police Chief Geary Barias told the dissidents to vacate the hotel by 3 p.m. (2 a.m. EST) or face arrest on new warrants for contempt of court.
The deadline passed with the officers refusing to leave and posting uniformed troops to guard stairways leading to the second floor of the Peninsula hotel where the dissidents set up a command center in a function room. Estimates of the dissidents’ strength ranged from at least a dozen men up to as many as 30.
One thing I can assure you is we have more than enough willpower, fighting spirit to bring this government down, said Antonio Trillanes, one of the officers on trial who was elected to the Senate in May, campaigning from detention. We want change.
The trial is over a 2003 insurrection in which troops commandeered a shopping center and demanded Arroyo’s ouster.
It was unclear where the rest of the often-restive military’s loyalties lay.
My orders now are to re-arrest them and take them back to custody, to apply the law, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said. We want to assure our people that we will apply the full force of the law to maintain peace and order in the area and the rest of the country.
Arroyo called an emergency Cabinet meeting. The Presidential Security Group, which provides security at the presidential palace, went on red alert.
Escorted by military police, who apparently did not prevent them from leaving the court, the defendants marched to the Peninsula hotel and pushed away guards at the entrance.
They were joined by Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim — suspected of involvement in another failed coup plot last year — who issued a statement urging Arroyo to resign and asking the armed forces to withdraw support for her.
In the statement, read on nationwide TV, Lim called for the formation of a new government.
Mrs. Arroyo stole the presidency from Estrada, and later manipulated the results of 2004 elections, Lim said.
Arroyo took over the presidency when predecessor Joseph Estrada was ousted in January 2001, and opponents have criticized the legitimacy of her rule ever since. She also has been fighting allegations that she rigged the 2004 elections that gave her a six-year term.
The officers on trial were among 300 soldiers who took over the ritzy Oakwood hotel and a nearby shopping center in Makati in July 2003, rigging the area with bombs and demanding Arroyo’s resignation. They denounced the government and military corruption, but were accused of staging a failed coup. They surrendered after the daylong uprising. E-mail to a friend
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