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Subject of Biography: Macapagal-Arroyo, Gloria

Pronunciation: (GLOH-ree-ah mah-CAH-pah-GAHL ah-ROH-yoh)

Biography from Current Biography International Yearbook (2002)Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

For most of the fall and winter of 2000, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was in a ticklish situation: As the vice president of the Philippines, she stood in direct line to the presidency if Joseph Estrada--who had been publicly accused of accepting bribes and kickbacks, and who was facing an impeachment trial and widespread calls for his resignation--left office. As is the custom in the young Philippine democracy, Arroyo had run for vice president in 1998 on a separate ticket than Estrada, and was elected by a direct popular vote. Nonetheless, Arroyo held a position in Estrada's cabinet, and as such was entangled in the scandal that erupted when, in October 2000, a provincial governor publicly accused him of profiting on the backs of the Philippine people. The eyes of millions of Filipinos fell upon Arroyo. After consulting with colleagues Arroyo resigned from her cabinet position and publicly joined the opposition movement. She had the support of much of the Philippine public: she is the daughter of a beloved president; is herself a respected economist; served under President Corazon Aquino and was twice elected to the Senate (the second time garnering an unprecedented 16 million votes). She is also a devoutly religious woman in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, and thus was seen as a natural foil to the earthy Estrada. A Sydney Morning Herald (December 21, 2000, on-line) reporter summarized their differences: "He is a high school dropout; she has a Ph.D. in economics. He has mistresses; she has one husband. He is porcine; she is petite. He is not exactly renowned for his work ethic; her day starts at dawn. He once made a comic virtue of his English verbal pratfalls; she is exceedingly serious." When, in January 2001, Estrada was forced out of office, Arroyo was immediately nominated to the presidency, a position she accepted, according to her inaugural speech as quoted in Newsday (January 21, 2001), with a "sense of trepidation and . . . awe."

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, known popularly as "GMA," was born on April 5, 1947 to Diosdado Macapagal and Eva Macaraeg Macapagal. She spent her first years in Lubao, on the northern Philippine island of Pampanga, with her two older siblings from her father's first marriage. But, when a younger brother was born, Arroyo began spending a lot of time with her maternal grandmother, who lived in Iligan City, on an island to the south. Prompted by jealousy of her new baby brother, a four-year-old Arroyo told her grandmother, "I'm going to go and live with you because they don't love me anymore," as she recalled to the staff of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (December 24, 2000, on-line). Arroyo remembered her grandmother's house as a "kingdom," with a beach, a cold spring, and plenty of surfing and playing to keep a young girl happy.

In 1961 Arroyo's life changed dramatically when her father was elected president of the Philippines. Diosdado Macapagal had risen from a humble background--his mother washed laundry for a living while his father was a part-time farmer and playwright--to become a successful lawyer. In 1946, riding the wave of enthusiasm that followed the Philippines' independence from the United States, Macapagal entered politics and, after a successful decade as a congressman, was elected president on a campaign promise to clean up the government and enact land and other economic reforms. At age 14 Arroyo moved with her family into the Malacanang Palace in Manila and attended high school at the Assumption Convent. Always at the top of her class, she graduated as valedictorian and gained acceptance to Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C., where she was a friend and classmate of former President Bill Clinton. In 1968, after two years at Georgetown, she came back to the Philippines to marry Jose Miguel Tuason Arroyo, whom she had met while still a teen. She finished her degree at Assumption College in Manila, graduating with a B.S. in commerce. She then enrolled at Ateneo de Manila University, where she earned a master's in economics in 1976. As she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer staff, she studied commerce and economics because her father had encouraged his children to become entrepreneurs. As she grew older, however, Arroyo realized that she wanted "different things." "I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be a pilot. Then I wanted to be a professional working for a government." With these several goals in mind, she enrolled in the University of the Philippines Ph.D. program in economics.

Arroyo began her career as a teacher at Assumption College. She then became a full professor of economics, teaching first at Ateneo de Manila University and later at the University of Philippines. Even as the daughter of a president, she claims that she did not plan on becoming a politician, but instead was drawn into politics through the course of events. Arroyo's father served as president from 1961 to 1965 and was widely admired for his efforts to extend the country's rising prosperity to all its citizens; however, his successor, Ferdinand Marcos, converted the nascent democracy into a dictatorship and began to loot the country's wealth for his own gain. In 1986, facing international sanctions as well as opposition from home, Marcos called for a general election in an attempt to silence his critics. Although he was soundly defeated by Corazon Aquino, the wife of a slain opposition leader, he at first refused to relinquish power. Massive street protests and the defection of the military forced him to step down, and to acknowledge Aquino as president.

Aquino was a political novice, a housewife and mother of five who, according to Pico Iyer's Woman of the Year profile in Time (January 5, 1987, on-line), was elected on a platform of "faith, hope, and charity." President Aquino needed help, and asked Arroyo to join her government as an assistant secretary in the Department of Trade and Industry, where her responsibilities included overseeing importation and exportation in the garment industry. Arroyo became, in the words of the Philippine Daily Inquirer staff, one of "the brash young technocrats recruited by the Aquino administration to reconstruct the country left wasted by the corrupt dictatorship."

In 1992, after her three children were grown, Arroyo decided to run for public office, and won a seat in the Senate. Arroyo told the Philippine Daily Inquirer staff that, in spite of what she termed the "macho" Philippine society, the men in her life were supportive of her political career from the very beginning. When she first became a trade secretary, her husband actually suspended his practice of law to avoid accusations of improper dealings, "so that there would be no importers or garment exporters trying to get to me through him." Her husband then served as her campaign manager in 1995, when she was re-elected to the senate with 16 million votes--the highest number of votes received by any politician for any position in Philippine electoral history. As a senator Arroyo gained a reputation as a strong legislative reformer, authoring over 55 laws, including the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law, the Indigenous People's Rights Law, and the Export Development Act. She also raised eyebrows by paying attention to the country's sprawling rural population, hosting a television show aimed at farmers and making trips to the provinces in the morning before the afternoon session in the Senate in Manila.

In 1998 Arroyo briefly considered a run for the presidency. She eventually agreed to be the vice presidential running mate to House Speaker Jose de Venecia, a presidential aspirant. Before Arroyo dropped out of the presidential race, however, she was pitted against Estrada, who, though short on political experience, was a former B-movie actor with immense popular appeal. According to Karla Delgado-Yulo, Arroyo once characterized the choice between herself and Estrada as one between a "babae," or woman, and a "babaero," or womanizer. Arroyo was elected vice president by direct popular vote, winning by a margin of seven million votes over her nearest rival the largest margin for an electoral victory in Philippine history. Estrada was elected president, also by a huge margin, thus ensuring that the "babae" and the "babaero" would serve together in the same administration. Although Arroyo had clearly hoped to work alongside de Venecia, she accepted the outcome with grace: "I received 13 million votes to Estrada's 11 million. Seven million voted for both of us," she told a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald. "The message was work together."

In a move that many interpreted as a peace offering, Estrada offered Arroyo a position in his cabinet as secretary of social welfare and development. Arroyo accepted and proceeded to bolster her reputation as a reformer, initiating an early childhood development program and energetically seeking foreign money for welfare projects. "When there is an earthquake, a flood or a big fire," a correspondent wrote for the Economist (April 15, 2000), "Mrs. Arroyo's agency will be seen leading the rescue." During Arroyo's vice presidential campaign she promised to promote "microeconomic growth," which, she told Nora Boustany for the Washington Post (June 25, 1997, on-line), should "have meaning for the common man." This promise was tested when, in 1998, a regional economic crisis spread through most of Asia, compounding the challenges already created by extreme weather conditions resulting from the El Nino and La Nina climate changes. Even though the value of the Philippine peso plummeted and unemployment rose, the country did not suffer as much as other Asian countries, due in part to economic reforms orchestrated under the International Monetary Fund. "We have a cold while our neighbors are experiencing the flu," Arroyo told Susan Kreifels for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (September 14, 1998, on-line). "We had to swallow the bitter pill of reform while the others were spoiled by protectionism. The Asian crisis, in a way, was a blessing to the Philippines. It's shown we have the fundamentals in place and it's a good place to invest."

In spite of such accomplishments, the distance between the president and the vice president grew increasingly pronounced. During most of her tenure as vice president, Arroyo did not air her differences with Estrada in public, though the media frequently interpreted her comments about the need for good government as implicit criticism of her boss. The situation came to head in October of 2000, when a provincial governor told journalists that Estrada was personally overseeing an illegal gambling ring that raked in millions of dollars. After this revelation, a prominent cardinal called for Estrada's resignation, and an impeachment trial--the first ever of an Asian president--was launched. Arroyo, who was in Rome having an audience with the Pope when the crisis exploded, acted quickly: after requesting the Pope's prayers for her country, she resigned her cabinet post and joined the opposition. In a speech at the Ateneo de Manila University on October 29, archived on Erapalis.net, a Filipino news site, Arroyo promised to "undertake non-violent protest actions calling for the resignation of President Estrada," adding that "the times call for unity, action, and clear commitment. There is no middle ground in this crusade. There can be no more fence sitters." Although she refused to attend any of the rallies held in protest against Estrada's administration, she did begin to form a shadow cabinet and what she called an "alternative national agenda" to prepare for the eventuality of his resignation or impeachment.

Arroyo was embraced by a broad range of religious and political opposition groups, but she did face criticisms. Some Filipinos thought that Arroyo had fraternized too long with the scandal-ridden Estrada, and rumors flew about her own connections to illegal activities. She became the target of a smear campaign waged by Estrada loyalists and even received death threats; someone sent her a bullet in the mail. Perhaps the most damaging accusation was that her break with the president, from whose downfall she stood to profit, was a sign of her political opportunism. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, in December of 2000 a Christmas card was circulated with a photograph of Arroyo smiling and holding a red rose, beneath which were printed the words "See You in Malacanang" (the presidential palace). Support for Estrada remained strong among the country's poor masses in spite of the mounting evidence against the president.

The tide turned against Estrada in January of 2001 when his supporters in the Senate succeeded in suppressing key evidence in the impeachment trial against him. On January 20 thousands of Filipinos gathered before barricades placed in front of the presidential palace. Having been deserted by the military and declared unfit to govern by the Supreme Court, Estrada finally agreed to step down. On the very same day, Arroyo was inaugurated as president. In her speech, as quoted in Newsday, she implicitly criticized Estrada's administration, promising to "promote a work ethic and dignified lifestyle" and provide tangible results. She also thanked former President Aquino, who less than two decades before had also helped lead a popular uprising against a corrupt leader, and who was the only other woman to have served as president. "It was hard to ignore the sense of deja vu in Manila last week," Brook Larmer wrote for Newsweek (January 29, 2001).

Since her inauguration Arroyo has been forced to contend with a small but vocal contingent of die-hard Estrada supporters who view her presidency as illegitimate. (This is not a view held by mainstream opposition groups: Arroyo's succession to the presidency was unanimously endorsed by the Philippine Supreme Court.) In May 2001, with Estrada still in police custody, several thousand of the ex-president's followers attempted, without success, to storm the presidential palace. Arroyo declared a "state of rebellion" and had those suspected of instigating the riots arrested. When the immediate danger was past, she launched a charm offensive aimed at persuading poor Filipinos--Estrada's political base--that she intended to make fighting poverty a national priority. The campaign was a success: Arroyo was handed a popular mandate when her People Power Coalition (PPC) gained control of the legislature in May 2001 congressional elections. Nevertheless, a core of dedicated Estrada supporters remains strongly opposed to Arroyo.

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Arroyo emerged as a staunch ally of U.S. President George W. Bush and a supporter of the American-led war on terror. Soon after the attacks Arroyo, as quoted by Mark Lander for the New York Times (October 3, 2001), declared that the Philippines was "prepared to go every step of the way, as needed" in assisting the United States. Over the next few months the United States dispatched several hundred American troops to train Philippine soldiers in fighting Abu Sayyaf, a militant Islamic group with past links to Al Qaeda. While many Filipinos supported Arroyo, the arrival of American troops also stirred painful memories of almost a century of American military presence in the country. (The last American military base was closed in 1991.) Estrada's supporters seized on the controversial issue of renewed American military presence in May 2002, when thousands of the ex-president's followers once again converged upon the presidential palace to call for Arroyo's resignation. The issue surfaced again in July 2002, when vice president Teofisto Guingona resigned from his post of foreign secretary in protest against the American presence.

Although swept to power by a dramatic turn of events, Arroyo has long had a role model for president in her father, who passed away in 1997. "I am my father's daughter in almost every sense, personally and politically," she told Delgado-Yulo. Promising to govern as humbly as he did, she told Delgado-Yulo that she "would like to see in our political system a change from a politics of personality and patronage to a politics of party programs and institutionalized consultation with the people."

Arroyo was named outstanding Senator by several associations and publications, called "Woman of the Year" by ASIAweek in 1995 after topping senatorial elections, and also named "Woman of the Year" by the Catholic Education Association of the Philippines. She is married to Jose Miguel Tuason Arroyo and has three grown children.

Suggested Reading: Economist p36+ Apr. 15, 2000, with photos; Newsday A p4 Jan. 21, 2001; Newsweek p40+ Jan. 29, 2001, with photo; Philippine Daily Inquirer (on-line) Nov. 5, 2000, with photo; Philippine Daily Inquirer (on-line) Dec. 24, 2000, with photo; Sydney Morning Herald (on-line) Dec. 21, 2000

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