The mountain laboured and produced a mouse! Or at least that's the way things look at this stage. Four dramatic days of nationwide demonstrations, culminating in a half-million-strong procession in the capital, Manila, led to the replacement of president Joseph Estrada by his Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Arroyo was sworn-in in front of a massive crowd. The movement has been given the name People Power II, after the 1986 revolt on the same street which toppled the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. This, the first 'revolution' of 2001, looks uncannily similar to the uprising in Ecuador one year ago, which was hi-jacked by the country's top generals and resulted in a vice president replacing his former boss.

Arroyo, the daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal, is a favourite of the country's business elite, committed to speeding up the privatisation programme which stalled under her chaotic predecessor. She served in Estrada's cabinet as Social Welfare Secretary until October, only abandoning him after mass protests had erupted. She has been criticised for not declaring $4.6 million worth of property in California, and friendship with a notorious gambling lord Bong Pieda, accusations not unlike those which dogged Estrada.

The massive demonstrations of recent days are the culmination of a process that started in October when repeated allegations of corruption against Estrada took a new turn, sparking calls for his impeachment. The President's former ally, a provincial governor Luis Singson, alleged Estrada had taken bribes from organisers of an illegal lottery called jueteng and even pocketed some $2 million in tobacco taxes. The impeachment trial started in the Senate on 7th December and was televised live. The population heard their president described as a 'thief' and compared to a 'gangland boss'. Four charges were brought against him: bribery, corruption, betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution.

The Senate trial hearings entailed a high-risk, opening the eyes of ordinary Filipinos to the fabulous wealth, not just of Estrada's entourage, but the rich and powerful in general. It was reported that Estrada had equipped one of his seven mistresses with a $1.72 million property, housing its own cinema, a kitchen big enough for a commercial restaurant and a swimming pool complete with artificial waves and a white-sand beach. On the 23rd day of the hearings, on Januray 16th, the Senate voted not to allow the introduction of damning evidence. The 11-10 vote by senators revealed the likely eventual line-up in a vote on impeachment. The proceedings were exposed, as one prosecutor put it, as a charade. The 11-man prosecution team then walked out in protest, triggering tumultuous scenes in the Senate.

One pro-Estrada senator began dancing excitedly. An anti-Estrada senator burst into tears, while the Senate chairman also resigned his post. If Estrada thought his manoeuvre had paid-off, his joy was shortlived. Within hours of the impeachment trial collapsing, thousands of anti-Estrada demonstrators began gathering in central Manila. The demonstration swelled throughout the evening with protestors staying out all night. The following day the protests grew, with strikes and walkouts in Manila's business district.

Demonstrators took to the streets in cities throughout the archipelago. Thursday 18th January saw a 10 kilometre human chain snake its way through the business district to the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), the site of the decisive stand-off between protestors and troops in 1986 which sent Marcos fleeing from the country (People Power I). Given the role of the IT sector in Manila's economy, the revolt was bound to be hi-tech. Demonstrators, many from the middle class, beeped the latest news to fellow protestors via SMS (text) messages on their mobile phones. On Friday 19th, with the demonstrations still growing, came a turning point. Not only did Estrada's finance minister, Jose Pardo, and defence minister, Orlando Mercado, join the protests, but the armed forces chief, General Angelo Reyes, announced they were "withdrawing support" for the President.

"On behalf of your armed forces", Reyes told the demonstration, "the 130,000-strong members of the armed forces, we wish to announce that we are withdrawing our support to this government." On Saturday 20th, the day Bill Clinton left the White House, Estrada left the Malacaang by boat to avoid the crowd outside.

The anti-Estrada movement had found common ground on only one issue, that Estrada must go. As soon as Arroyo was sworn in furious disagreements broke out. A left-leaning former senator complained "Do not rejoice; this may be the saddest day in our history. The military clique may have gang-raped democracy".

The movement which incorporated the trade unions and left organisations was dominated by the Filipino establishment: big business organisations like the Makati Business Club, the Catholic church and ex-presidents Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos. This was what Marxists call a 'popular front'; a coalition linking working class organisations to bourgeois parties and interest groups. In this lay the fundamental weakness of the movement which prevented it from offering any real alternative.

Last month a majority of our organisation in Scotland (International Socialist Movement - ISM) decided to leave the CWI. A third of those present voted to remain in the CWI including the trade union base and three parliamentary candidates. This debate began three years ago when the ISM leadership handed over all of the painstakingly accumulated resources of our Scottish section to a new party they formed; the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Because the SSP included socialists and anti-capitalists of many different kinds we described it as a politically broad left party, not a marxist party like the ISM. We considered it vital that the Trotskyists organised within such a broad party to win support for a rounded-out Marxist programme.

Instead the ISM leadership claims the SSP is "potentially the vehicle through which the working class could take power". This requires a Marxist organisation consciously setting out to win the SSP to a Marxist programme. The SSP has a left-reformist programme that's completely inadequate for a party aiming to change society. It does not argue for the decisive sectors of the economy to be brought into public ownership under workers' control and argues against public ownership of foreign-owned assembly plants. Yet foreign-owned companies employ 29% of manufacturing workers in Scotland. Taking this argument to its logical conclusion would mean arguing against bringing threatened car plants, such as Vauxhall Luton, into public ownership.

The ISM majority has also made serious mistakes about SSP democracy. They are proposing "guidelines" saying organisations within the SSP cannot sell their own publications, other than to members of the party. These methods bear more resemblance to those used by the Labour Party right wing against us in the past than to the methods of Marxism.

The SSP Executive has shamefully agreed that the SSP conference should not have the power to change the founding core values of the SSP. The justification for these highly undemocratic methods is they are deemed necessary in order to cope with the Socialist Workers' Party when they join the SSP. The only way to cope with the SWP is to confidently counter their political ideas with the ideas of the CWI.

We were extremely concerned by a Tommy Sheridan quote in the Sunday Observer. His statement was ambiguous but seemed to imply that the SSP would take part in a coalition government with the SNP. The SNP is not a party of the Scottish working class; it is a nationalist, predominantly middle class party, whose programme does not go beyond the confines of capitalism.

We regret what has taken place, but are confident that the CWI's ideas will gain a powerful echo amongst the Scottish working class in the future.

On November 14TH, a press conference was held by twenty former party activists and leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (KPP-PRD) to announce that their faction, the Democratic Socialist Faction has officially split from the central committee and formed the Democratic Socialist Association (PDS).

Former members of the Education, Literary and People's struggle departments of thePRD Central Committee stated that they were dissatisfied with the increased bureaucratisation of the party and the two-stage concepts the leadership of the party holds.

"It's a matter of democracy versus bureaucratisation"stated Hendri Kuok. They stated that the PRD claimed the working class were too slow, their level of consciouseness is too low, they are mainly concerned with 'economic struggle' and that the urban poor was where their activities should be based. The PDS say the PRD is basing itself on the urban poor, rather than the working class.

The PDS outlined 11 points of disagreement with the PRD, claiming they have continually shown chauvanism when looking at the problems of nationhood in Indonesia, such as the resistance of the people's of West Papua and Aceh, regarding them as 'regional turbulance'. They claim "sectarian activism" by the PRD has isolated it from the other left parties. They criticise a lack of priority on party building and the party newspaper and work amongst women.

In response, the PRD leadership were dismissive of the split group and claim they were expelled and inactive for the past six months. It remains to be seen if the PDS can build a new force in the next period. This split relates to the fundamental questions of revolutionary socialist strategy on the issues of the importance of a strong marxist cadre party and the theory of a two stage revolution, an idea that destroyed the massive Communist Party in 1965.

The conclusions reached by the PDS, a policy of class independance and the arming of a new generation of activists with the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky hopes to halt the crisis within the left. The ideas of the DSP-style 'uninterupted revolution by stages' (merely a left version of the two-stage theory) must be exposed.

A discussion on these questions cannot not be postponed any longer if a PKI style fate is to be avoided. The PDS must raise the lessons of the 1965 massacre and the defeat of the Communist Party and move to build support for such ideas if they want to assure the success of the socialist revolution.