THE PHILIPPINES: The Philippines' steady state is poverty, corruption and non-delivering leaders, writes David McNeill.
Water cannon and riot police, a suspected military coup and a presidential state of emergency: it is, unfortunately, business as usual in the Philippines which has staggered through much of the last half-century in a state of barely contained chaos.
Twenty years ago today millions of weary Filipinos thought they had seen the last of such sights when they jeered dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda out of Manila's Malacanang Palace and into exile.
The ailing Marcos was carried "like a sack of rice" by a US marine to a waiting helicopter - as potent an image as any of the country's supine relationship with America and the sickness and corruption that somehow made this beautiful, resource-
rich country one of the poorest on the planet.
But the seeds of the People's Revolution have failed to bear fruit in a country where eight out of 10 of its 83 million people still live in grinding, $2-a-day poverty.
More than seven million Filipinos work abroad, sending back money that provides 40 per cent of the nation's budget - and 3,000 more leave every day.
President Gloria Arroyo promised, like her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, to stop the rot when she took office in 2001. But years of swimming in the murky world of Philippine politics, dominated by a few hundred powerful families, have tainted her with the same allegations of corruption, vote-rigging and nepotism.
Last year she separated from her husband after he was accused of taking bribes from a gambling syndicate, a scandal that also implicated her son and brother-in-law. She was then forced to admit a "lapse of judgment" when a tape was circulated of her apparently trying to influence the May 2004 presidential elections.
That blunder, later dubbed "Gloriagate", cost her much public good will and was a key factor in the failed attempt last September to impeach her.
Mrs Arroyo is, by common consent, an improvement on failed-movie star Estrada who, like Marcos, gleefully plundered the country's wealth. But while she is still supported by the country's middle classes, business elite and powerful Catholic Church, the young and the poor are again growing restless with the pace of change.
Manila, where many live, is a huge, choking mess where crime and prostitution are two of the few growth industries. Corruption and poverty grind down millions of average people and send more to the airports and harbours.
It does not take much to push such desperate people out on to the streets.
Waiting in the wings - and barely kept in check by presidential power - are sections of the military with powerful right-wing backing and nine years of experience of martial law under Marcos. These believe that only they have what it takes to pull the country out of chaos.
In July 2003, a small group of soldiers led a coup attempt against her.
It is to these twin poles of power that Mrs Arroyo probably referred yesterday when she said a conspiracy of "totalitarian forces of both the extreme left and extreme right" constituted "a clear and present danger to the safety and the integrity of the Philippine state and of the Filipino people".
Manila folk, who have been in this situation several times since 1986, say they can tell by the size of the crowds demonstrating whether the president will survive. So far, there are just a few thousand, not the hundreds of thousands who brought down Estrada and Marcos.
But by reintroducing emergency laws that many associate with the hated Marcos years, Mrs Arroyo risks alienating millions of ordinary people and may soon leave office like her predecessors with the jeers of disappointed Filipinos ringing in her ears.
Last week I interviewed Imelda Marcos, who again lives a life of luxury in Manila, a fact that "makes a mockery of the People's Revolution of 1986", according to one of her biographers.
"My philosophy in life is that the only things we keep are those we give away. Long after I'm gone, the hospitals I built, the cultural centres, the hotels, will be there," she said, waving a hand across the view of the chaotic city outside her window.
It is one measure of the current state of the Philippines that Imelda Marcos sounds sane.