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The leader of the communist insurgency in the Philippines on
Saturday called for 100,000 Filipinos to gather in a street protest
in Manila to unseat President Gloria Arroyo.
Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party
of the Philippines (CPP) said in a statement that anti-Arroyo forces
should “assemble at least 100,000 people,” in a central part of
the capital.
This is “bound to ignite the withdrawal of
support from the regime by the bureaucracy and the military,” he
said, following a large anti-Arroyo rally in the financial district
of Makati on Friday, which drew an estimated 15,000 people according
to police.
Organizers claim 70,000 people attended the
rally.
“The groundswell of such… rallies will
render impotent the pro-Arroyo military and police officers,” said
Sison whose CPP has been waging a Maoist guerrilla insurgency
throughout the countryside for more than three decades.
Sison, who is living in self-exile in the
Netherlands, cited popular street uprisings in 1986 and 2001, which
led to the ouster of scandal-tainted presidents Ferdinand Marcos and
Joseph Estrada respectively.
Numerous anti-Arroyo rallies have been staged in
recent weeks after a former government official accused the
President’s husband and a key political ally of seeking alleged
kickbacks from a multimillion-dollar broadband deal with Chinese
company ZTE Corp.
Mrs. Arroyo has cancelled the deal but denied
any wrongdoing. The President also said she will not resign.
-- AFP
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