After months of rumors of an impending military coup, President Estrada has decided to call it quits, Presidential Spokesman Jerry Barrican announced this morning. Barrican said the president has called Vice President Gloria Arroyo to inform her of his decision and to discuss a smooth transition of power.

Asked to explain why the president made the unexpected decision, Barrican cited Estrada's plunging popularity (down to a negative 32 according to an Asiaweek article) and how it has become an impediment to national progress. Considering that Estrada's initial claim to legitimacy was his remarkable popularity (garnering 41 percent of the votes in a field of 8 major contenders in the 1998 presidential elections), the president realized that he has lost his reason for being in Malacanang, Barrican said.

"The president does not have the intellectual brilliance to offer the Filipino people; he entered office with nothing but his patent rapport with the hoi polloi and his unquestionable sincerity. At the beginning, we were convinced that a combination of political leverage drawn from his popularity and his commitment to the poor will be sufficient to make positive and lasting contributions to the country. It may still be a correct formula, but with the president's political legitimacy in the gutters, we are convinced that he has overextended his stint as chief executive and can no longer be an effective leader," Barrican added.

Estrada's resignation comes in the heels of a growing clamor for his ouster. Recently, Makati-based businessmen launched a protest movement, symbolized by a diagonal exclamation point, aimed at joining both ends of the political spectrum in opposition to what they consider a "political deadend." Makati, the seat of Philippine business and where People Power was partly nurtured during the last years of Marcos, has been uneasy with the Estrada presidency from the very start. The president often accused the country's elite of obssessing to oust him.

For a while, Estrada dismissed his low survey rating as a temporary setback. He sometimes accused survey outfits as spurious operations. For example, if Web surfers have their way, Disney's Mickey Mouse will beat him in a snap presidential election. After a few weeks of on-line voting through the PhilippineUpdate.com Web site, Mickey garnered 22 percent of the votes versus Estrada's 13 percent. Opposition Senator Raul Roco leads the pack with 26 percent (still within Mickey's striking distance). Others in the list are former President Fidel Ramos (15 percent), incumbent Vice President Gloria Arroyo (14 percent), and former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim (10 percent).

Obviously, Mickey supporters are not serious about having a Disney character run the Philippines--the trend reflects the disillusionment of many Filipinos with traditional Philippine politics in general and the Estrada presidency in particular. Packaged during the campaign as the poor man's candidate, Estrada and his 21-month-old administration did not make a dent in the country's fight against poverty. The irrepressible Philippine media, merrily living up to its reputation as the freest in Asia, was relentless in its attacks against the incumbent president. Estrada made himself a favorite target not only because of his penchant for political blunders but also because of his tit-for-tat approach even to the most petty criticisms.

Swept into office by an overwhelming percentage of the votes, Estrada squandered political capital early on by proposing that former dictator Ferdinand Marcos be buried at the Libingan ng Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery) and by pushing for amendments to the constitution. Polls have shown that up to 85 percent of the people opposed the changing of the national charter. While Estrada argued that changes to a few economic provisions were necessary to jump-start the economy and that his proposed amendments would be restricted to those provisions, critics feared that the real agenda was term extension. Under the present constitution the president is limited to one term, other elected officials to three.

Estrada's association with former Marcos cronies and shady characters also raised concerns about the imminent return of cronyism. In the last several weeks, for example, the Philippine stock market has been left bleeding after investigations point to insider trading allegedly orchestrated by one of the president's friends. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman who initiated an investigation testified that Estrada pressured him to go easy on the presidential pal. Precariously buoyed by his charming ways, Estrada's popularity hit a high of 67 percent (net satisfaction rating) in March 1999. By December, he hit the floor with a big thud at 5 percent. The precipitous drop led to a Cabinet revamp, a temporary shelving of the proposal to amend the constitution, and a new resolve to work for the uplift of the poor. Those moves bought some time (a business group gave him 3 months to show results), but when Estrada unwittingly pardoned an infamous murderer who killed a priest and reportedly ate bits of the dead man's brain, critics came back swinging. The beleaguered president complained that his critics not only threw trash and garbage at him but "even the kitchen sink." People apparently took the side of the critics in droves, bringing his ratings further down to negative 32.