The President's Daughter
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat.com
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the first presidential daughter
to become a president herself. Her father, the late
Diosdado Macapagal Sr., served as Philippine president
from 1961 to 1965. She was catapulted to the presidency
in January 2001 by a popular uprising against then
President Joseph Ejercito Estrada.
Her biography in her official website says she descended
from the Pampango nobleman Carlos Lakandula. When Estrada
followers taunted her with the moniker “Gloria
Labandera,” alluding to a ditty about a laundrywoman,
she replied that she in fact hailed from a family of
laundrywomen and was proud of it. She frequently cites
as her political idol her father, who was fond of calling
himself "the poor boy from Lubao."
She took most of her pre-university education at the Assumption College, where
Senators Loren Legarda-Leviste and Tessie Aquino-Oreta also studied. After
a two-year stint at Georgetown University, where former United States (U.S.)
President Bill Clinton was her classmate, she returned to Assumption and finished
commerce with high honors. She earned her masters degree in Economics at the
Ateneo de Manila University and doctorate at the University of the Philippines
(UP).
In an interview with the now defunct Pinoy Times shortly
after she became president, Macapagal-Arroyo said she
was involved in activism while in graduate school at
UP. That was shortly before the declaration of martial
law, she said. She recalled that Gary Olivar was then
the leader of student activists at UP.
After graduate school, she taught economics at the Assumption
College, and later at Ateneo and UP.
During the Aquino administration, she joined the government
service as assistant secretary of the Department of Trade
and Industry (DTI). She afterward became executive director
of the Garments and Textile Export Board and, later,
DTI undersecretary.
In 1992, she was elected senator, a feat she would repeat
three years later. As senator, she was a leading advocate
of the General Agreement of Tarrifs and Trade (GATT),
an agreement that has been criticized by progressive
quarters for further opening the economy to the inroads
of foreign investment without developing local industries.
She was elected vice president in 1998. She also served
as secretary of the Social Welfare and Development department
until her resignation in 2000.
As president, she has had to contend with a lot of issues
against her. Critics have condemned her seeming willingness
to make compromises in the campaign against corruption,
as shown by her having expressed, in several instances,
readiness to accommodate the demands of the Estrada camp
for special treatment.
Her refusal to grant a P125 wage increase is a source
of constant conflict between her and the progressive
labor movement. From 2001 to 2002, the government registered
the lowest rate of land redistribution since 1992. Militant
groups and their nationalist allies have consistently
hit her for continuing the globalist policies imposed
by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
and for maintaining a subservient foreign policy, as
shown by her ready approval of the Balikatan military
exercise and the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement
(MLSA). Human rights groups have seen in her the capacity
to match the human rights record of the late dictator
Ferdinand Marcos, and cite as proof the many brutal killings
of activists under her administration.
Having assumed the presidency in a manner beyond the
electoral process, the Constitution allows her to compete
for another term in 2004. She has declared that she will
not run in 2004. However, observers have commented that
she may take back this declaration shortly before the
elections, especially if her popularity rating should
rise again. She is after all, a Macapagal. In his time,
Macapagal the father took back his withdrawal from the
presidential race after an alleged popular clamor for
his candidacy.
Bulatlat.com
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