MANILA - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's heavy-handed response to the Philippines' latest botched coup bid was sharply criticised on Friday even as Filipinos rolled their eyes at the serial seditionists.

Elite forces rammed the main door of a luxury Manila hotel with an armoured personnel carrier on Thursday and sprayed the lobby with teargas and bullets to end the coup attempt.

A small group of renegade soldiers, a handful of clerics and a former vice-president had taken over the hotel aiming to kickstart a popular uprising.

One of the Philippines' better-known coup plotters, Senator Antonio Trillanes, sparked Thursday's seven-hour drama by simply walking out of the courthouse where he was on trail for attempting to oust Arroyo in a 20-hour standoff in 2003.

Accompanied by guards that were meant to prevent him from escaping, a dozen other accused and Danilo Lim, a former head of the elite Scout Rangers unit who has been involved in coup plots since 1989, the ragtag bunch walked through Manila's financial district to the Peninsula Hotel, where they holed up.

"Lim, Trillanes and company remind you of cats, which seem to go out of their way to get run over by vehicles," wrote The Philippine Star columnist Ana Marie Pamintuan.

"These men keep jumping into the headlights, testing how many lives they have left."

Trillanes and Lim called for people to join their bid, which was meant to start off a popular uprising."

But no one came.

Despite its deep dislike of Arroyo, the Philippine middle class, instrumental in two previous "people power" revolts, is weary of political upheaval that would trip up a reviving economy.

The Philippines has had more than a dozen coup bids since the overthrow of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, with disgruntled soldiers usually at the helm and plush hotels the traditional venue.

OVERKILL

There was sharp criticism for the government's heavy-handed tactics with even the country's top defence official saying the storming of the Peninsula by commandoes in gas masks was over-the-top.

"I saw the SWAT team when it went in. It should not have been that way," Gilberto Teodoro, the defence secretary, told local television.

Scores of journalists who were covering the siege were put in hand restraints and detained by police but later released. Arroyo ordered a midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew, which resulted in the arrest of around 400 civilians caught unawares.

They were later released.

Senate president Manuel Villar said the tough measures were similar to the heavy-handed approach of Marcos.

"This is overkill, especially curfew. It was unnecessary and only reminded us of martial law," he said.

Arroyo is deeply unpopular due to a seemingly endless cycle of corruption allegations and her failure to shake accusations she cheated in the 2004 elections.

But the former economist has now survived three coup plots and the same number of impeachment attempts, cushioned by public apathy and a strong majority in the lower house of Congress.

"The majority do not want any more trouble. It affects the economy. We want to change the government in a peaceful way," said Andrew Cruz, a call centre worker on his way home from the night shift.

"Everything is back to normal now. We've been in this situation so many times."

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