Botched Manila coup a warning to would-be plotters

By Carmel Crimmins

MANILA (Reuters) - 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."

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who will depart as planned on Saturday for an 8-day trip to Europe, dismissed Trillanes' bravado.

"What happened yesterday was not an act of heroes, It was plain defiance for the rule of law," she said in a statement.

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.