Word: arroyos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Philipines: Arroyo's sacrifice
Revolution and martyrdom are powerful concepts in the Philippines. Few people recognize this as well as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. After all, she was elevated to the top job in 2001 through a popular uprising that ousted President Joseph Estrada. Last week, Arroyo attempted to switch from revolutionary hero to political martyr by announcing she wouldn't run for the presidency in the scheduled May 2004 elections. "If I don't make a sacrifice," she said during an event marking the anniversary of the death of martyred revolutionary hero José Rizal, "what will happen to our country...
...slew of recent explosions and bombarded by warnings of more to come, the Philippines these days has something of a siege mentality. Even the gala Dec. 15 opening of the new, $500-million Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal has been indefinitely postponed by a worried President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. "The need to take extreme security measures cannot be overemphasized," Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza said in a statement...
...Arroyo, known in Manila as the "Photo-Op Queen," has sought to burnish her tough-on-terrorism image by appearing on television with arrested suspects. One such photo-op, on Oct. 19, however, went badly awry when Arroyo marched out a prisoner and introduced him as Abu Pula or "Doctor Abu," a forty-something leader of the kidnap-for-ransom group Abu Sayyaf, who allegedly engineered the 2000 abduction of 11 European tourists from a Malaysian beach resort. Alas, the perp she walked wasn't Doctor Abu: he was Mark Bolkerin Gumbahale, a 21-year-old Abu Sayyaf member arrested...
...Arroyo also held a press conference last Wednesday with five alleged terrorists supposedly responsible for bombing a Zamboanga shopping center last month. High-level military sources now doubt that the young men on television had the technical expertise required to execute this type of sophisticated attack. Police are still stumped about the Oct. 18 bombing of a bus in Manila. One possible lead, three tons of ammonium nitrate seized last week outside Manila, turned out to be part of a legitimate shipment of fertilizer. So far, Arroyo has been eager to take the fight to the bad guys. Her problem...