This column aims to profile personalities who made the news once but have now faded from the spotlight.
The Philippines never runs short of interesting characters, particularly during election time. This year is no exception, with just a few months to go before general elections open in May.
Political aspirants include a tough-talking mayor who liberally sprinkles his speech with cuss words, an unpopular grandson of a late president and the “Iron Lady of Asia” more popular for her books and wit than her political campaign beset by a bout of cancer.
And then there’s Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the former president who became the first in the country to run for a lower position after her 10 years in office ended in 2010.
Call it a desperate attempt to cling to power, but Macapagal-Arroyo said it was her way of giving back to the community who loyally stood by her despite a political career marred by controversies. Macapagal-Arroyo’s district of Pampanga received several multi-million peso projects during her presidential run.
Despite her fading popularity elsewhere, Macapagal-Arroyo still holds political clout in Pampanga, where she is an elected congresswoman. She was re-elected as Pampanga representative in 2013 while in detention.
She is facing a plunder case over alleged misuse of hundreds of millions of pesos in state intelligence funds during her term as president. But Macapagal-Arroyo will remain in office until convicted of electoral sabotage, plunder or graft.
Notwithstanding the case against her, the detained 68-year-old isn’t fading out of politics just yet, at least in her province of Pampanga, where her political allies said she is seeking her third and last term as representative. Her representatives visit the six towns in her district for consultations, services and projects.
First foray into politics
Things weren’t always this bleak for Macapagal-Arroyo. In fact, it was popular vote that fuelled the former economics teacher’s run in the political arena. As an economist, she had an outstanding track record: she studied economics with Bill Clinton as her classmate at Georgetown University in Washington DC, graduated magna cum laude at Assumption College in Manila, earned a master’s degree in economics from Ateneo de Manila University and received a doctorate in economics from the University of the Philippines, Quezon City.
She also carried and was closely associated to the promise of the Macapagal brand of leadership: her father, Diosdado Macapagal — president of the Philippines from 1961 to 1965 — was fondly called “man of the masses” for his pro-poor advocacy.
It was this promise that propelled Macapagal-Arroyo’s overwhelming success when she started her political career following a 1986 appointment by then president Corazon Aquino as undersecretary of the trade and industry.
Her senatorial bid in 1992 was a success, and she was re-elected in 1995, winning a record 16 million votes. Three years later, she was elected the country’s first female vice-president, getting more votes than even the presidential winner, Joseph Estrada. She took over as president in 2001 after Estrada was ousted and convicted of plunder.
With a promise to reduce corruption and improve the economy, Macapagal-Arroyo was elected the 14th president of the Philippines in 2004, becoming the country’s second female to hold the position.
During the first few years in office, Macapagal-Arroyo brought about unprecedented economic changes to the Philippines. In one of her state of the nation addresses, she took pride in stabilising consumer prices, including a lower poverty rate, and in improving the peso’s strength against the dollar.
She was also a relentless ambassador, making trips from India to Russia and South Korea, where she secured $2 billion (Dh7.35 billion) in investment pledges. In early 2009, she made a trip to Dubai to meet Filipino workers and learn about their plight.
Macapagal-Arroyo’s term as president was plagued by political turmoil, including belated accusations that she rigged the election. The masses that had earlier rallied behind her were now rallying to have her impeached. The impeachment attempt failed, but her troubles didn’t end there.
In 2011, she was arrested over criminal charges of electoral fraud. Macapagal-Arroyo was detained at a hospital in Quezon City while receiving medical treatment, and was released on bail in 2012. She was shortly re-arrested on charges of misusing $8.8 million in state funds.
Life in detention
Macapagal-Arroyo has served nearly three years of detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Centre in Quezon City, where she receives treatment for neck and spinal ailments. Despite the spotlight now gone, she continues to make headlines, with celebrity lawyer and Hollywood actor George Clooney’s wife Amal Clooney the latest to take up Arroyo’s cause.
Clooney has filed a complaint before the UN Human Rights Committee against Philippine President Benigno Aquino’s government over Arroyo’s continued detention, calling it a “politically motivated campaign to have her tried and detained so that she can effectively be neutralised as a political opponent.”
Clooney also called on the UN to urge the Philippine government to release Macapagal-Arroyo and apologise for violating her rights.
Meanwhile, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said Macapagal-Arroyo’s detention pending her plunder case was “in contravention” of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
On the local front, several appeals have been made for Macapagal-Arroyo to be placed on house arrest instead. Her husband, lawyer and businessman Jose Miguel Arroyo, and their three children have made repeated pleas for her house arrest. The Lucena bishop and long-time friend Emilio Marquez too echoed this.
“As the former President of the country, she should be accorded dignity by placing her under house arrest,” said Marquez, calling Macapagal-Arroyo’s current hospital detention “vindictive”. Macapagal-Arroyo had allowed her predecessor, Estrada, to be placed under house arrest when he was ousted and convicted of plunder.
Arroyo’s husband, in an interview with the media last year, said her birthday wish was to be set free. Whether that wish will be granted remains to be seen.
