Word: arroyos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...done," says Haydee Yorac, chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government. Her point is that the first year of any presidency?or any public office in the Philippines, really?is consumed by paying back supporters. "This (2002) will be the test year." In a stable environment, Gloria Arroyo might ace that test. She would calculate the probabilities, put in the hours, get her policies passed and bring economic progress. But politics in the Philippines is far from stable, and the President hasn't shown an ability or willingness to impose her will on the landscape and seed it with...
...economy in meltdown. An army that could turn against her. An ex-President who might be more popular than she is. And now, U.S. soldiers landing on her shores. What Arroyo needs is a bulwark. But without an electoral mandate, the only source is massive public support, the kind more likely to respond to image and inspiration than intellect. To her credit, she has tried. On several occasions, she's traveled to Tondo, a rank, perilously crowded slum that has essentially been Manila's garbage dump for a decade. On her first visit, she was greeted with boos...
...repeated visits have won her some respect, but nothing approaching real support from those like Josie Suangke, a 34-year-old mother-of-two who refused Arroyo entry into her apartment and refuses now to buy the low-cost rice offered in the neighborhood as part of an Arroyo program. Suangke says she is ready to go back to EDSA or the palace, anywhere that she can give voice to her misery. "I'll join," she says, despite having been teargassed and clubbed the last time around...
...goal, Arroyo says, is to be a "good" President, not a great one?a sobering thought in a time when author Wilson Lee Flores says "a country in serious economic, political, and moral crisis needs great and heroic leadership." She should take risks, he says, be a Musharraf or a "Deng Xiaoping, like her physically short but a giant in terms of courage and guts." If she can generate a following for herself, the Philippines might yet learn what is really in her heart, as well as what's in her head. Otherwise, stability, and small steps...
...When you met your future husband, Mike Arroyo, was it 'love at first sight?' I was 15, so you don't really have deep love at that age. We finally got married when I was 21 and he was 22. He has made a lot of sacrifices over the years for my career...