Manila: While critics are sure to find all possible flaws on the former palace chief occupant, her immediate staff will always remember former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as an incessant task mistress who demanded best effort from her subordinates.

In their last press briefing before Arroyo turned over her office to its new occupant, President Benigno Aquino III, Executive Secretary Leandro Mendoza muses over the diminutive now ex-chief executive’s work ethic.

“She works harder than the most hardworking soldier,” said Mendoza, a former police general.

Mendoza said Arroyo’s workaholic-can do attitude rubbed off on her subordinates.

“She demanded the best from everyone,” Mendoza said.

Presidential spokesman Ricardo Saludo said Arroyo was the most hardworking among the Presidents. “She was everywhere even the remotest place,” he said.

Saludo attributed the focus of the President to get things done as one of her assets. ”

“Her focus on things drove the cabinet and the whole bureaucracy to do more,”

A former graduate school professor at the Ateneo de Manila University before she went into politics during the latter part of the 1980s, Arroyo had long been used to giving lectures and talking to people from a higher intellectual plane.

But along with her task mistress assertiveness comes her high-handed attitude towards her subordinates and people she work with in the Cabinet. At one time, she was even reported to have thrown a piece of hamburger she was eating during a palace meeting in a fit of anger with two warring subordinates.

Mendoza said Arroyo’s infamous temper has become their fuel to get projects done right and fast.

He cited that doubts were raised during the proposal to connect the different provinces through the so-called “nautical highway,” an interlinked network of ferry connections and roads that covered the country’s several islands. Mendoza said that because of Arroyo’s work ethic and insatiable insistence, the project has become a success.

Mendoza’s also emphasized her administration’s other accomplishments which are now getting drowned by political noise created by critics.

These include maintaining economic growth for 37 straight quarters, building unprecedented amount of infrastructure and fulfilling the agenda for peace and reconciliation, among others.

Finally Mendoza said that despite all the allegations hurled against the President, “history will be the judge.”