Word: arroyos
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...Deep in our guts, we know that a President phoning an election official when votes are being counted?as Arroyo has admitted doing?is most likely not unusual. The scandal generated over Arroyo's calls is both contrived and hypocritical: we are not supposed to know this happens, but because the conversations appear to have been caught on tape, our explicit code of proper civic behavior compels us to feign disgust. We have to go through the motions of being scandalized. One side of our schizophrenic political culture must be appeased. After we are done with the ceremonial self-flagellation...
...Philippine President delivers a State of the Nation speech every summer. Last week Gloria Macapagal Arroyo jumped the gun on the speech scheduled for July 25 because, as she told her countrymen in a hurried radio address, the nation's state was so parlous it needed fixes that couldn't wait. "Let's confront the biggest, most painful political truth ... our political system has degenerated," the President said. Arroyo ordered her Cabinet to step down and announced a crusade to reform the government, reducing red tape and cleaning up the election process. Arroyo also said she couldn't resign...
...Arroyo's address was the most eloquent of her career, and her points about the Philippines' hurly-burly political system might have hit home?if her own widely criticized presidency weren't hanging by the thinnest of threads. She insisted that her speech was not "a political ploy or gimmick," but that's how it came across. The following day, seven members of her Cabinet, including Arroyo's respected economic team, quit, saying they had been on the verge of resigning anyway, and that Arroyo had simply been trying to pre-empt their moves and show that she's still...
...Purisima's remarks followed a week of calls for Arroyo's resignation from such high-profile organizations as the Catholic De La Salle University, the University of the Philippines College of Law, and the leaders of the country's 13 million Protestants. On Friday, the blue-chip Makati Business Club joined the chorus, as well as former President Corazon Aquino, the heroine of the 1986 People Power revolution, who said the present crisis was "crippling the government and endangering the nation...
...Until recently, the business community was squarely behind Arroyo. Its defection is a major worry for her, given that Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada fell from power in 1986 and 2001 respectively after Big Business wrote them off. In June, Arroyo's administration pushed through Congress a fiscal restructuring package to help avoid an Argentine-style financial crisis. But the cornerstone of that package?an expanded value-added tax?has been suspended by the Supreme Court. Increasingly, Arroyo is no longer seen as an asset but a liability. "We were on the verge of a major boom," says Joey Salceda...