A colonel in the Philippine navy has been stripped of his post and put under investigation over a video in which he called for President Benigno Aquino's overthrow, the military said Saturday.

Colonel Generoso Mariano was removed as deputy chief of the Naval Reserve Command on Friday and investigated for possible sedition and unbecoming conduct, navy spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Omar Tonsay said.

"The tape showed him speaking out against the government," Tonsay told AFP, adding the footage appeared to show Mariano laying out scenarios when a president's removal could be justified.

Tonsay said the tape, copies of which began circulating on social networking sites on the Internet on Saturday, had been viewed by some military units. One copy was anonymously delivered at the gate of navy headquarters.

However, he stressed that the president's ouster had no support in the 120,000-strong armed forces.

Mariano, who is set to retire Sunday when he turns 56, must stay in his navy quarters until the investigation is completed, Tonsay added.

"The possible offences are conduct unbecoming of an officer and sedition," he said. "Sedition is a grave offence."

A video said to be of the footage and making the rounds on Facebook showed a bespectacled middle-aged man wearing a blue shirt with an indistinct but military-style crest speaking to a microphone while seated behind a table.

"It is the duty, it is the right of every Filipino including soldiers to replace the government. I repeat, replace the government," the man says in the 95-second tape, which was dated July 3, 2011.

The shared videos on Facebook come from the account of a group calling itself the "Oust Noynoy Movement!". Noynoy is Aquino's nickname.

The Philippine military has been wracked by periods of unrest since a military-backed bloodless "people power" uprising toppled the 20-year rule of strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

Two of the five presidents that followed him survived a series of military coups, including Aquino's late mother Corazon Aquino, who had to seek the help of the US Air Force in a bloody attempt in 1989.

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