Filipinos answer anti-corruption call
Cell phone ring tone taking aim at country's president is all the rage
By Benjamin Pimentel, Chronicle Staff Writer

Forget Eric Clapton's "Layla." In the Philippines, the hottest ring tone for cellular phones features what may be the voice of the country's most powerful politician, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

But she's probably not amused: The 17-second tone is based on an alleged phone conversation between her and an elections official during last year's controversial presidential race. Set to rap music, the downloadable audio file is all the rage.

"So, will I still lead by more than 1M (million)?" a woman who sounds like Arroyo is heard asking a man believed to be elections commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. The audio clip is one of many alleged wiretapped exchanges between Arroyo and Garcillano, whom she addresses on the tapes as "Garci."

The wiretapping allegedly was the handiwork of military intelligence agents opposed to Arroyo.

Her opponents say the recordings, which became public several weeks ago, prove that Arroyo cheated in the last election in which she was proclaimed winner over former action star Fernando Poe Jr. Poe died in December after suffering a stroke.

The government has denied rigging the election, which Arroyo won by about 1.1 million votes.

The voices in the recordings spoke in Tagalog and English, the languages most commonly used in conducting official Philippine government business.

In the alleged conversations, Arroyo can be heard asking Garcillano about the ongoing vote tally. At one point, she asks if she could still achieve a margin of victory of more than 1 million votes.

Arroyo never issues an explicit order to cheat or tamper with the vote count.

Still, some analysts say, if the conversations did take place, they were clearly improper. Her opponents have urged her to resign. Arroyo countered by accusing some of her detractors of trying to destabilize her government.

In a move for which she has been severely criticized, Arroyo has refused to confirm or deny whether the conversation between her and the elections commission official took place. She has said that she plans to address the issue at an "appropriate time."

"I will not comment on the authenticity of the material that accusers admit were illegally derived," Arroyo said, according to a press release from the Philippine Embassy in Washington.

Meanwhile, the media and the country's Internet community have had a field day with the recordings, which have been widely circulated.

Transcripts and digital files of the conversations were posted on some Web sites, including the popular blog (www.pcij.org/blog) of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, a respected media organization based in Manila.

The audio clips became ring tones when a Filipino Web site called TxtPower (www.txtpower.org) posted a ring tone based on one of the recordings.

The audio file, now known as the "Hello Garci?" ring tone, opens with a traditional phone ring followed by a rap beat. A woman who sounds like Arroyo is then heard saying, "Hello? Hello? Hello Garci? ... So, will I still lead by more than 1M?"

Despite a government warning that possession and dissemination of the audio clip is illegal under the country's anti-wiretapping law, the ring tone immediately became a hit in the Philippines, where more than 30 million cell phone users send roughly 200 million text messages daily.

As of Monday, the TxtPower site had received more than 72,000 hits and was recording about 170 downloads an hour, according to Reuters.

TxtPower has urged other Filipinos to compose ring tones based on the tapes, and at least three have been posted on the group's site, including one set to the tune "Ice Ice Baby."

Tony Gatmaitan, a businessman and political analyst based in Manila, said many Filipinos believed the conversations did take place and that the ring tone was an example of how they were using humor to deal with the crisis.

"That's the outlet of the Filipino," he said in a phone interview. "There is no authentication yet, but most people believe that that's really her. By inference, they believe also that she manipulated the election."

For Arroyo, the ring tone marks an ironic twist in the role that cell phone technology has played in her political career.

Four years ago, she rose to power after a popular uprising that toppled her unpopular predecessor, Joseph Estrada.

The revolt succeeded after tens of thousands of Filipino protesters responded to a call to mobilize -- sent mainly via cell phone text messages.

Cell phone technology and the Internet have allowed consumers to customize their ring tones using pop tunes or even excerpts from speeches. Millions of ring tones have been downloaded worldwide.