Bishops Allow Arroyo Reprieve

The Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo, yesterday won crucial breathing space in her battle to defeat a mounting campaign to oust her when the country's influential Catholic bishops refused to support her opponents and cautioned against an armed uprising.

However, the 91 members of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines declined to endorse the embattled leader after two days of deliberations. They urged her to assess whether she could justify staying in power.

"We do not demand her resignation," the bishops said in a statement. "Yet neither do we encourage her to simply dismiss such a call from others.

"We ask the president to discern deeply to what extent she might have contributed to the erosion of effective governance and whether the erosion is so severe that it's irreversible."

Ms Arroyo, a US-trained economist, is facing allegations that she tried to rig last year's presidential election. She has denied the claims and has yet to be charged. But it appeared on Friday that she might have to quit after 10 cabinet ministers - along with the popular former president Corazon Aquino and two key financial organisations - called for her to resign.

The bishops also demanded a "thorough, credible and independent process" to determine whether the president had betrayed the public trust.

Ms Arroyo, who is a devout Catholic, thanked the bishops for their "guidance and wisdom" at a "time of national soul searching" and said she had searched for "the moral discernment that can only come from divine signs".

"I know, in faith, that in my own weakness [God's] power is made perfect in me - to help me become the servant-president for you in the way he wants me," she said.

It is unclear whether the bishops have saved Ms Arroyo, who yesterday went on a surprise charm offensive. She strolled along the Manila Bay promenade, holding babies and chatting to surprised fishermen and passersby.

Francis Escudero, the opposition leader in Congress, said the fight would go on. "We will continue on with our peaceful call for the president to step down," he told local television.

Attention will now turn to the military and police. The leadership has so far remained neutral, but representatives of junior ranks have joined the opposition.

Rigoberto Tiglao, a close Arroyo adviser, told the Guardian that the president would seek to restore public confidence by "accelerating the reform programmes she has already been implementing". "Once people see that she is committed to their welfare this crisis will fade away," he said.

The next test will come on Wednesday when the anti-Arroyo camp is due to hold a rally in Manila. Organisers predicted that 50,000 protesters would attend - a significant increase over the largest demonstration of the current crisis, which attracted about 10,000 people. This was a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets in the uprisings of 1986 and 2001 which toppled Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada respectively.