Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has just about
everything a Philippine President could
desire. Her middle name, for starters,
reminds Filipinos of former President
Diosdado Macapagal, her dad. (Arroyo
says she is looking forward to 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.
It doesn't hurt that Arroyo assumes the presidency on a massive wave of public approval. How
many Presidents get pushed into office by a People Power revolution? "We need a leader who is
strict, and who will implement the rule of law," says Enrique Gonzaga, a 38-year-old taxi driver. "It's
a good thing this is all finished. Now, we start over again."
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 a mess.)
In fact, when the People Power afterglow fades and the
political Cinderella gets down to work, she may feel like a
sweeper following the elephants in a parade. The peso is at a
historic low, economic 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.
Arroyo says she has two role models: Cory Aquino and her
father. As for the latter, she is quick to note that during his days
in the presidential palace, from 1961-65, the Philippines was
Asia's star economic performer after Japan. Surprisingly, the
mother of three is a relatively unknown figure across the nation,
far less understood and loved than Aquino at the conclusion of
the first People Power, despite her political pedigree and a
stunning success in the 1998 vice presidential election. (In the
Philippine system, voters choose presidents and vice presidents
separately, and Arroyo got more votes than the highly popular Estrada.)
Competence is all over her resumE. Born in Manila, Arroyo had an unusual upbringing. At the
precocious age of four, she chose to live with her maternal grandmother in Iligan, a town on the
southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The reason: she was jealous of a newborn brother. She
stayed there for three years, and then split her time between Manila and Mindanao until the age of
11. (As President, Arroyo says she will concentrate on the separatist problem that has plagued
Mindanao for decades.) At 14, she moved into MalacaNang with her father. She was always a
strong student, earning the top grades in her Catholic girls' high school. (She was valedictorian at
graduation.) For two years she studied economics at Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown University-at
the same time as Bill Clinton, whom she knew-before returning to the Philippines. Her career goal
was to be a teacher, a path she followed for a few years before marrying and deciding to return to
school to get a Ph.D. from the University of the Philippines. When Aquino came to power, Arroyo
was appointed undersecretary of trade and industry, and she remains passionate about the need
for freer trade and increased foreign investment for the Philippines. Arroyo won a Senate seat in
1992 and helped write 55 laws on economic and social reform.
Arroyo reads the Bible every day; she also has daily sessions with a hairdresser and makeup artist.
It's a measure of her readiness for the world stage that when Estrada was first accused of
corruption by a former drinking pal, the allegation that would lead ultimately to his impeachment,
Arroyo was in Rome for an audience with Pope John Paul II.
Controversy hasn't entirely escaped the new President. In October, when Estrada was accused of
taking a cut of proceeds from an illegal gambling racket known as jueteng, Arroyo got loudly
questioned about her own personal connection with Bong Pineda, an alleged provincial jueteng
boss. Arroyo is godmother to one of Pineda's sons. She flatly denies any impropriety, saying she
doesn't associate with Pineda or his crowd. "I don't drink with them," she tells Time. "I don't play
mah-jongg with them." When she was asked to be godmother, she says she got counsel from
Jaime Cardinal Sin, the archbishop of Manila. "Cardinal Sin said, as a Christian, if I am asked to be
a godmother, it is my Christian duty," she relates, "because the sins of the father are not the sins of
the son." In addition, Arroyo has included leftist groups in her three-month anti-Estrada opposition
coalition; now that she's in power, they could try to water down her pro-globalization bias. That's
another echo of the past: Aquino had similar ideological clashes within her government. More déjà
vu: change sometimes comes fast in the Philippines-but many things stay the same.
Reported by Wendy Kan and Nelly Sindayen/Manila