Word: blas
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...political supporters. Last week's mass resignation may have bought Aquino time to reorganize her government and recapture the sense of high expectation that marked her early months on the job. But allies and opponents alike wondered whether she would move decisively enough to capitalize on the opportunity. Said Blas Ople, a member of the opposition who was a Labor Minister under Ferdinand Marcos: "This is a government that lives hand to mouth, politically and intellectually...
Even without Arroyo, Aquino would still face daunting difficulties. "Dropping him may change the climate," said Blas Ople. "It won't change any fundamental problems." Though she has managed to revive democratic institutions, Aquino has yet to forge a clear set of legislative priorities. Her attempts at promoting economic recovery were sidetracked by last month's uprising. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling that Honasan is planning to launch another takeover attempt, this time using tanks under his command. And late last week, Communist guerrillas waged a heated battle with government troops + just 30 miles away from Manila. Aquino is likely...
...inevitably life in the Kuna's San Blas archipelago has subtly changed. Many of the men have left the islands for jobs inland. Tourism and rampant drug smuggling along the coast have transformed the Kuna's former open welcome of Americans into the almost xenophobic suspicion with which they have always regarded Latinos. The number of day trippers, drawn by the Kuna's renowned cloth art, the mola, has multiplied...
...mola that also brought the Peace Corps to San Blas. These vibrantly colored, intricately patterned, hand-stitched cloth panels are essential not only to the Kuna woman's traditional dress but to her life. From her first crude attempts at the difficult reverse applique, a Kuna woman will stitch on her mola daily, first for her trousseau, then to sell. Yet when the corps arrived in 1963, Indian women were shedding their artful garb for cheap cotton dresses, and it was feared the unique craft of the mola would be lost, along with the cash it earned the Indians...
...surprise, 65 newly jobless parliamentarians from Marcos' New Society Movement remained unpersuaded, accusing the President of dictatorial tendencies and excoriating the new plan as a "Magna Carta of enslavement." Blas Ople, who had served as Marcos' Labor Minister for 17 years, went so far as to charge, with more than a little hyperbole, that Aquino was claiming authority "more absolute, more authoritarian and more arbitrary than the powers gobbled up by the former President...