MANILA - THE leader of the communist insurgency in the Philippines on Saturday called for 100,000 Filipinos to gather in a street protest in Manila to unseat President Gloria Arroyo.

Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) said in a statement that anti-Arroyo forces should 'assemble at least 100,000 people', in a central part of the capital.

This is 'bound to ignite the withdrawal of support from the regime by the bureaucracy and the military', he said, following a large anti-Arroyo rally in the financial district of Makati on Friday, which drew an estimated 15,000 people.

'The groundswell of such... rallies will render impotent the pro-Arroyo military and police officers,' said Mr Sison whose CPP has been waging a Maoist guerrilla insurgency throughout the countryside for more than three decades.

Mr Sison, who is living in self-exile in the Netherlands, cited popular street uprisings in 1986 and 2001, which led to the ouster of scandal-tainted presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada respectively.

Numerous anti-Arroyo rallies have been staged in recent weeks after a former government official accused the president's husband and a key political ally of seeking alleged kickbacks from a multi-million dollar broadband deal with Chinese company ZTE Corp.

Mrs Arroyo has cancelled the deal but denied any wrongdoing and said she will not resign.

Although Friday's rally was the largest in recent years, it still fell short of the organisers' hopes of getting about 50,000 protesters.