Word: arroyos
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...When presented with new data or surprising briefings, Arroyo will hit the phones to cross-check the info herself. She insists on hourly updates about the drive against Abu Sayyaf. She rings her own network of contacts, built up during her days in the Senate and as Estrada's Vice President and Social Welfare Secretary. Says Rigoberto Tiglao, the palace spokesman: "As President, you get so much advice?wrong or right?that after a while, if your intellect isn't that good, you stop trying to process it and you hide in a cocoon of close advisers. But President Arroyo...
...devout Catholic, Arroyo may feel a bit like Job?not an unfamiliar sensation for any head of state of the often-chaotic Philippines. Since being swept into office by a People Power demonstration this January, Arroyo has faced plenty of challenges. Predecessor Joseph Estrada insists he's still the real President of the country; a mob of 40,000 anti-Arroyo demonstrators attacked MalacaNang in May, prompting an unsuccessful coup attempt. There has been criticism of the appointment of her businessman-husband's cronies to key government posts, and a high-profile Senate race that required all of Arroyo...
...Sayyaf is Arroyo's hardest challenge yet: she's forced to deal not only with a gang of cutthroat kidnappers motivated by lucre and Islamic zealotry but also the needs of Big Brother in Washington, concerned about the fate of the three Americans. Arroyo wants to crush the "bandit-terrorists," as she calls them. "We'll give you the peace of the grave," she vowed after the rebels escaped an army siege two weeks ago. That's a good demonstration of the determination that is the bedrock of Arroyo's character?which transformed the former economist and bureaucrat into...
...Arroyo is also impulsive, famously stubborn, with a tendency to do things her own way and on her own?pretty dangerous habits when dealing with a serious hostage crisis. The U.S. is publicly backing Arroyo's guns-blazing approach, but some Washington counterterrorism experts are worried. Says one official: "We need a more coordinated, deliberate Philippine strategy, rather than running blindly through the jungle in hot pursuit, putting the hostages at maximum risk...
...Petite, girlishly slender and wearing a suit of iridescent ink-blue silk, Arroyo, 53, is nearly dwarfed by her phalanx of aides and bodyguards as she strides, with her fashion-model smile, into a vast, wood-paneled living room in MalacaNang. She exudes the haughtiness of someone for whom privilege is a birthright: Gloria grew up literally roaming the corridors of power. Her father Diosdado Macapagal governed the Philippines from 1961-65, and Arroyo reclaimed her old teenage bedroom when she moved back into the palace. Sitting primly on the edge of a sofa, she comes across like a college...