Word: arroyos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Once a week, the Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo likes to kick back and unwind with a movie. Last Monday, the lights dimmed in the screening room at the MalacaNang Palace, and the diminutive, 53- year-old president settled back uneasily to watch Live Show, a raunchy, local sex film. Rated "R" (18 and above), the film explores the sad and desperate lives of several impoverished boys and girls who put on sex shows. Live Show had generated a Babel of commentary, and the president wanted to judge for herself: was it social realism, or porn...
...After the film, Macapagal-Arroyo emerged smiling?with relief. Earlier, she had withdrawn Live Show from Manila's cinemas and leaned on the liberal chairman of the censor board to resign. Then she began having misgivings. The Catholic church and ultra-conservative groups lauded her decision, but her two-month old presidency found itself assailed by powerful former friends, the media and the intelligentsia. She was lambasted for succumbing to "moral terrorism," as one newspaper columnist put it. So, on Monday afternoon, Macapagal-Arroyo cleared her schedule and watched Live Show, alone. "Well, I finally saw it," she told...
...about past 7:00 in the evening here, so we're actually in different time lines." GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. President, during a telephone conversation with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo...
...Arroyo realizes she has to accommodate her most influential People Power partners?not the eponymous people, but the cabal of generals who hoisted her to power. She moved swiftly to cement their support, shrewdly naming former President Fidel V. Ramos Special Ambassador of Goodwill, an anemic-sounding title for what could be a very powerful role. (Ramos is a former armed forces chief of staff, and during his six-year term as president there were no coup attempts.) Then, on her first day in office, Arroyo gave some of the juiciest government jobs to military...
...that it makes others envious and potentially restive. And unlike the coup plotters in the 1980s, disgruntled military elements have in Estrada a ready rallying figure for an uprising. Despite his ignominius overthrow, Estrada retains considerable popular support. Senate President Aquilino Pimental says the former president can definitely cause Arroyo problems. "I will not use the word 'threat,'" he says, "but Estrada has a large following." Especially, Pimental noted, among rural lower income families and the poorest of the poor. Estrada was praying a lot last week, according to his son, and feasting on Philippine-style suckling pig, according...