Life of GMA administration being fought in DND.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Amando Doronila

ANGELO Reyes resigned as secretary of national defense in a decisive fashion, cutting swiftly and cleanly as he did in January 2001, when he withdrew the support of the Armed Forces from the tottering administration of deposed President Joseph Estrada.

Never opaque over his reasons for his exit from strategic zones in the center of power, Reyes, in 2001, explained that he wheeled the Armed Forces of the Philippines' chain of command behind the defection to halt the country from plunging into civil strife in the wake of the aborted impeachment trial of Estrada.

While Reyes' defection precipitated the collapse of the Estrada regime, this time his departure from President Macapagal's Cabinet was aimed at saving her administration, which has come under concerted attacks from her political adversaries and mutinous segments of the military.

In resigning from the Cabinet, Reyes defined the issue in the crisis of this administration-and his stand in defense of democracy-by lashing out at "a well-organized, well-funded effort by certain forces to bring down democracy through massive disinformation and political agitation."

With this statement, he correctly stated that the issue raised by the failed July 27 coup and the stepped-up agitation by anti-administration forces to topple the sitting government is the survival of democracy under siege from the excesses of adversarial politics mounted in the name of democratic contention.