PRESIDENT ARROYO of the Philippines attempted to head off moves to impeach her yesterday by calling for radical reform of the country’s corrupt political system.

After weeks of tumult, in which street protesters, former ministers and political allies have demanded her resignation, members of the Opposition tabled a motion of impeachment in Congress.

It charges her with cheating in last year’s presidential election, corruption and betraying the public trust, and it will lead to a trial in the Senate if it attracts the support of a third of voters in the Lower House.

A crowd of up to 40,000 marched on Congress yesterday, demanding her removal from power. But within hours President Arroyo responded with a proposal to abolish the presidency in favour of a parliamentary system led by a prime minister. The proposal will take weeks and much effort to bring to reality.

If it succeeds, it could provide Mrs Arroyo with a face-saving means of escaping the personal and political firestorm in which she finds herself.

It will also, in the view of Mrs Arroyo and her supporters, help to break the corruption that has come to seem an intrinsic part of public life in the Philippines. By taking concentrated power out of the hands of a powerful president and replacing the office with that of a prime minister answerable to parliament, they hope to encourage accountability and reduce corruption.

“Over the years, our political system has degenerated to the extent that it is difficult for anyone to make any headway yet keep his hands clean,” she said in her state of the nation address. “By and large, our political system has betrayed its promise to each new generation of Filipinos, not a few of whom are voting with their feet — going abroad and leaving that system behind.”

Mrs Arroyo’s travails began last month, a year after she was elected for a six-year term, having seen off her predecessor in a peaceful, army-backed “people power” coup. An audio tape began to be circulated in which a woman who sounds like the President appears to instruct a senior election official to fix the voting figures.

Mrs Arroyo has admitted a misjudgment in contacting an election officer, but refused to confirm that the voice on the tape is hers. Last week she set up a truth commission to investigate the claims; she had already sent into exile her husband, José “Big Mike” Miguel. She insists that she will welcome an impeachment trial in the Senate to restore her reputation.

But she made no mention of the election-fixing scandal in yesterday’s speech, which concentrated instead on the call for political reform and on setting out the achievements of her presidency so far.

She pointed to an economic growth rate of 6 per cent last year, to the increased provision of healthcare to poor Filipinos, and to the country’s good standing with the United States and her Government’s efforts to increase revenue and balance the books.

However, polls suggest that a little more than half of Filipinos want Mrs Arroyo to step down, although they have not yet taken to the streets in the hundreds of thousands, as they did to see off Presidents Marcos in 1986 and Estrada in 2001.

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