MANILA - The Philippine government prepared fresh charges on Friday against the leaders of yet another botched coup and hunted for others as public apathy and a show of force sent a strong message to serial seditionists.
Senator Antonio Trillanes, one of the nation's best-known coup plotters, believed opposition politicians and the public would flock to Manila's Peninsula Hotel after he and a small group of renegade soldiers declared mutiny from one of its plush conference rooms on Thursday.
But no one came.
"I think the public is as much disgusted with the opposition as with the government," said Scott Harrison, managing director of risk consultants Pacific Strategies and Assessments Ltd.
"There is total regime change fatigue in the country. People don't have the stomach for it."
A few thousand anti-government protesters took part in a rally in Manila on Friday, a public holiday, but the numbers were a fraction of the tens of thousands that protested in the past.
In Thursday's drama, bizarre even by the soap opera world of Philippine politics, Trillanes simply walked out of the courthouse where he was on trial for a previous coup in 2003. Then he, his co-accused and the guards supposed to prevent them from escaping marched to the Peninsula in the heart of Manila's financial district.
But after such an embarrassingly easy start, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, breaking a long tradition for administrations' to go soft on renegade soldiers, ordered elite troops to storm the five-star hostelry.
An armoured personnel carrier battered down a grand glass door, and troops sprayed tear gas and bullets into the lobby.
There were no casualties but the heavy-handed tactics shocked the plotters who, as in previous mutinies, chose a plush hotel because they thought the location gave them protection.
"It's a pretty significant development," said Harrison. "I think the government have probably learned the lesson that if they don't tighten things up they are going to encourage more of these bush fires."
The Peninsula, which had to billet its 400 or so guests in other hotels and will not reopen until Monday at the earliest, was aghast at the damage to its newly renovated lobby.
