MANILA, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Philippine police said on Tuesday they were looking into possible links between a communist rebel faction and rogue troops who seized a luxury Manila hotel in a desperate coup bid last week. The National police chief said two women among 36 civilians arrested at the Peninsula hotel were known members of a small faction of the Communist Party of the Philippines, while another man who was freed late on Friday had leftist connections. "We're still investigating," Avelino Razon told reporters. "One of the women was believed to be a common-law wife of a senior communist leader." The government charged a senator, a former vice-president and 34 other people, including soldiers and a retired bishop, with rebellion after they took over the Peninsula hotel and called on the army to mutiny. The six-hour standoff, which ended when SWAT teams stormed the hotel, was the latest in a string of attempted coups in the Philippines and one of the most bizarre. The leaders started their mutiny by walking out of a courthouse where they were already facing charges for a previous rebellion in 2003. The guards who were meant to prevent them escaping joined them. A military intelligence officer told Reuters that documents found in one of the hotel rooms showed a plan by rogue troops to set up a civilian-military junta, implementing policies lifted from a blueprint drafted by leftist groups. "We also found a computer laptop that could give us names and details of a planned transitional government," the intelligence officer, who declined to be named, said. Last year, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said security forces had quashed a similar plot by leftwing and rightwing groups to overthrow her. The president, whose final term runs out in 2010, has survived three attempted coups and as many impeachment attempts amid a stream of corruption allegations. On Tuesday, her key ally in Congress, Speaker Jose de Venecia, defeated an ethics complaint that accused him of failing to stop his son from trying to win a multi-million dollar telecommunications contract from the government. Political analysts were not surprised the police were linking communists with Thursday's debacle. "There was nothing new in this plot," said Earl Parreno, analyst at the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms. "It's no secret that some factions of the communist movement were linking up with progressive elements in the military to seize political power. It's a model the local rebels were trying to copy from Bolivia." (Reporting by Manny Mogato, editing by Carmel Crimmins and Alex Richardson)
