158 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy As regards the first, civil society groups were among the first to bewail allegations of jueteng pay-offs and ill-gotten wealth leveled against former President Estrada by his erstwhile close associate, Ilocos Sur Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson. When the telling allegations were made, civil society groups lost no time in organizing themselves into a broad coalition known as the Kongreso ng Mamamayang Pilipino 2 (KOMPIL 2). The coalition, composed of moderate and leftist civil society organizations was as broad as the earlier coalitions of interest groups after the assassination of former Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr., in 1983. KOMPIL 2 organized rallies, and a group within even “cyber-blasted” a signature campaign called e-lagda (e-signature), continually asking then President Estrada to consider his option and two scenarios that were captured by the call for R.I.O. (Resign, Impeach, Oust). The drive to hold President Estrada accountable for the allegations made against him, not only by Governor Singson, but also those that surfaced in numerous investigative reports by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), did not let up. Eventually, when the majority of the Senators acting as the Impeachment Court decided to withhold the opening of an envelope that was believed to contain damning evidence linking former President Estrada to the jueteng payoffs, and as the prosecution team walked out of the trial, emotional outrage ensued in the evening of January 18, 2001. Most immediately, text messages from various civil society groups circulated urging the public to mass at the EDSA shrine and the protest lasted for four days until the 21st of January 2001 when then Vice-President Gloria MacapagalArroyo was sworn in as president. Unlike the quick consensus and sustained campaign of civil society groups to hold former President Estrada accountable, civil society was far more divided and vacillating when it came to the allegations leveled against immediate past president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The division within civil society was most apparent soon after a conversation believed to be between former President Arroyo and former Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Commissioner Virgilio “Garci” Garcellano was made public by a former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agent. Known as the “Hello Garci” scandal, it took quite some time for civil society groups to react. In fact, it took more than a month from the time the taped conversations were confirmed, by no less than one of the presidential spokespersons, before former civil society leaders who were then members of the Arroyo cabinet, resigned on July 8, 2005, a group that would be referred to as Hyatt 10. Why was civil society relatively slow in reacting to the equally nefarious allegation against former President Arroyo?