Word: estradas
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...parting letter, Estrada wished his successor well. However, in a haunting postscript he signaled that, like reruns of his old films, Filipinos may not have seen the last of him. "I continue to have strong and serious doubts about the legality of the swearing in of the Vice President," he wrote. Estrada, for all the wrong reasons, had said what really matters: a democracy that doesn't respect the law will always be vulnerable...
Indeed, it's happened before, and like predecessor Corazon Aquino, Arroyo will need all of her assets - plus some - to succeed in one of Asia's most difficult jobs. Arroyo has an easier lot than Aquino in 1986 - she doesn't have to dismantle a 20-year dictatorship. But Estrada left a whole lot of garbage behind, literally: Manila is inundated with uncollected trash due to bad planning by Estrada's administration. (Ironically, and possibly symbolically, the rankest part of town is now EDSA, where hundreds of thousands of Filipinos managed to evict a President and also make quite...
...moving into to her old bedroom in MalacaNang Palace, the presidential residence.) Though 53 years old, she resembles a delicate ingEnue, a plus in the appearance-crazy Philippines. A Ph.D. in economics gives great gravitas. In office, Arroyo intends to be the reverse image of her disgraced predecessor, Joseph Estrada: brainy, focused and, well, sober. "I won't be drinking with my friends," she tells Time...
...growth is stalled and public debt is at record levels, which is triggering concern at the International Monetary Fund. The Philippine economy, bypassed long ago by the Asian Economic Miracle, might have found a niche in the New Economy, but any such hopes were put on hold by the Estrada debacle, which plunged the Philippines into its worst crisis of confidence since the Marcos years...
...Those deep economic troubles are unlikely to disappear with Estrada, as Arroyo concedes. "Things are so bad now," she says. "Oh yes, they can still get worse." Still, Arroyo has had a shadow cabinet since she quit Estrada's cabinet in October, and says she has big ideas for plugging the Philippines into the global economy. She talks about "structural reforms" and "a level playing field" - the kind of hip, business jargon that never escaped Estrada's lips. "Things can get better under us," she insists...