Arroyo in hospital after reporting abdominal pain

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was taken to hospital today after reporting abdominal pain while attending a birthday party for her husband, officials said.

They said the situation did not appear to be serious.

Police in the capital, put on a heightened state of alert earlier in the day due to reported concerns of possible bomb attacks, were upgraded to full alert after Arroyo fell ill “as a matter of procedure so there is a stabilising factor ... to deliver the message that there’s no cause for alarm,” Metropolitan Manila police chief Vidal Querol said.

Coup rumours are always floating around in Manila. The president, who has gone from crisis to crisis during five years in power, has said security forces foiled a plot to overthrow her in February.

Arroyo was taken to St. Luke’s medical centre after returning from a restaurant to the presidential palace and getting a quick examination by a doctor there, chief of staff Mike Defensor said.

He and Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita both said “overfatigue” may have contributed to the embattled leader’s condition.

“We’re leaving now,” Ermita said shortly before midnight. “That’s proof that she’s OK.”

Ermita said the president had been at a restaurant in suburban Quezon City for an early birthday party for her husband, Mike. His birthday is next week, but Arroyo is scheduled to leave on Saturday night for a trip to Italy, the Vatican and Spain.

No decision has been made on whether to proceed with the trip, but Arroyo’s schedule for tomorrow has been cancelled, including flights to southern Davao city for a Cabinet meeting, then to the site of a recent deadly landslide.

About a dozen Presidential Guards were stationed along the corridor of the hospital’s fourth floor where she was being treated, and a crowd of reporters and TV cameras quickly gathered at the driveway outside the lobby.

Defensor told reporters that Arroyo was being kept overnight as a precaution while she undergoes routine checks. “She’s OK,” he said.

“The president is resting. There’s nothing critical about her situation, nothing to worry. She’s undergoing routine check-ups needed so we can be assured there’s no complication and nothing major about her situation.

“The president has to rest, she has to slow down,” Defensor said.

He added that her last words before he left her hospital room were: “Mike, what did we have for lunch?”

Arroyo, among US President George Bush’s closest allies in the US-led war on terror, has been under enormous pressure since she took office in January 2001 in the country’s second “people power” revolt, fending off several coup plots and constant rumours of others, along with a string of terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Her situation has worsened over the last year as she has survived an impeachment effort over allegations that she rigged the 2004 election. Opponents have threatened to pursue another impeachment attempt when the current one-year ban on filing more than one complaint expires on Monday.