Local Governments, Civil Society, Democratization, and Development 121 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 conrmed, 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? As a civil society leader (Karaos 2011) explains, the division among CSOs at that time reected the “differentiation of the hierarchy of values among CSO groups and personalities,” with some groups and personalities calling for former President Arroyo's immediate resignation while other CSOs, once again wary of the competence of her replacement, urge for a “greater respect for plurality of opinion.” For this civil society leader, the “crisis” within civil society in 2005 showed how uncomfortable CSOs are with major differences of opinion within its own ranks. A more fundamental question she raised, was a divergence in views among civil society leaders on whether people power, in the two cases above, to compel an elected leader to vacate the post by exerting pressure through protests, strengthens or weakens “democracy.” From our perspective, the last question deserves attention but should be rephrased. It is not a question of whether popular protests, or what has generally been referred to as “people power”, deepens or is inimical to democracy. As this book argues, it is far too romantic to conceive of our political system as democratic and it is much more precise to examine whether the system is continually democratizing. In this regard, the question should be whether people power facilitates or impedes democratization? To answer this question we can refer back to our earlier discussion on the public good that civil society is expected to push for—specically the accountability of public ofcials. In securing such accountability, civil society harnesses its power to ensure that institutional processes that secure such accountability would be fully put into effect. The preference to work with institutional processes, be it through elections or the process of impeachment, is aligned with the goal of strengthening the rule of law, a condition that makes for much more stable democratic order. It is only when the institutional processes clearly fail that civil society should take on an extra-institutional mode of securing accountability, through people power. This two-stage process was