Protesters breach Palace perimeter

Tension gripped Malacañang security men yesterday after demonstrators criticizing the Estrada administration's foreign debt policy breached the Palace security perimeter.

No arrests, however, were reported after members of the Freedom Debt Coalition voluntarily dispersed some 20 minutes after catching Malacañang security men by surprise at about 10:45 a.m. The dozen or so infiltrators engaged security personnel in a shouting match until they were pacified.

Reports show a jeepney of the organization managed to enter Chino Roces Freedom Bridge which leads to Malacañang's Gate Seven before security men could react and stop it. Protesters alighted and moved the barbed wire barricades enabling them to move closer.

Militant groups in the past have broken into the gate during lighting rallies, forcing the Presidential Security Group to disperse them with water cannons and arrest them.

The Freedom from Debt Coalition is bitter about the planned privatization of the National Power Corporation (Napocor), which it said was dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The group's leader, Lidy Nakpil said in a statement that the P.5 million bribery scandal raging in Congress after deliberations of the law to authorize the sale of Napocor, "mirrors the way IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank dangle the release of loans in exchange for the approval of their structural programs, like the privatization of the power industry."