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President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo inducted the
officers and governors of the Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC),
Asia’s oldest press club and the Philippines’ most prestigious
press club., the other night, July 17. I am the MOPC chairman.
Babes Romualdez of Philippine Star is the president.
With new Press Secretary Jess
Dureza, she hosted a 15-minute cocktails (red and white wine with
chicharon bulaklak for hors d’ oeuvre) before we sat down for a
90-minute dinner. The meal was superb—salad of sliced red tomatoes
and pipino, vegetable soup, succulent crispy pata and baked prawns
for the main course, and ice cream for dessert. Her chef, Babes,
used to be her budget officer at the Department of Social Welfare.
Despite a long day, the President
looked happy and ebullient, confident that the country will overcome
the current food and fuel crises. She was asked about the theme of
her July 28 State of the Nation Address (SONA).
“There is a challenge to the
world,” she said. “The Philippines has prepared itself for that
challenge. We have a plan to address it. At the same time, we are
not losing track of our transformation of our economy. The resources
we have husbanded can meet the challenges and allow us to stay on
track. The Philippines offers the best value for investments.”
She said the Philippines has
lower inflation rate than Indonesia and Vietnam.
“There has been no negative
when other developing economies were experiencing recessions. Every
president (before me) experienced negative growth at the end of his
or her term,” she pointed out.
Noting the huge contribution of
OFWs, she noted that “although our GDP is growing at 5.2 percent,
our GNP is 7 percent” (because of the OFW remittances).
She won’t remove the 12 percent
value added tax. Amid the global challenge of rising food and oil
prices, her economic managers have declared the country needs more
than ever the revenues from rhe VAT on oil and petroleum products.
Instead, the President will give
cash and subsidies for the poor, including P4 billion for the eight
million lifeline electricity consumers, those who consume less than
100 kwh a month. She has removed school fees (like for the Girl
Scouts) in public elementary schools to boost attendance.
Karl Wilson of the French news
agency asked her what books she has been reading lately. “I reread
Tom Friedman [The World is Flat],” she disclosed. “It’s a more
recent edition. He added more recent examples [of globalization].”
Friedman has a new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded which his website
says “brings a fresh outlook to the crises of destabilizing
climate change and rising competition for energy.” “We [the
Philippines] can live in a flat world,” the President assured us.
“The goal I set in 2001,” she
recalled, “is to have the highest Internet penetration rate.” I
said only ten percent of the population has Internet access.
“Because you are including the provinces,” she clarified. “If
you talk about Metro Manila comparing it to city states like
Hongkong or Singapore, we are doing well. You are comparing a city
state and a nation state.”
The President said she will go to
China for the Olympics and make a visit to Chengdu and one city
where the Philippines can export something new to.
I told her you are going to be
prime minister using the Putin model. She just smiled. I said “you
are too young to retire.” “I only look young,” she replied.
“How do you manage to look
young?,” I asked.
“Energy management. You manage
your time, you manage your diet, you manage your mental energy. My
public schedule is from ten o’clock to three o’clock because I
have to do paperwork before and after that. I do the final draft of
my speeches.”
“My dinners I try to make it
not mentally challenging,” she told us, as we broke into laughter,
“that’s why we I tried to schedule this for lunch.”
“You are breaking it, Tony,”
Secretary Dureza reminded me.
“I have seven hours of
sleep,” the President said. “I have a diet done by my
nutritionist. But I don’t live in a straightjacket.” She has a
daily exercise and hears Mass every morning. Some members of the
Malacañang Press Corp. used to join her for the exercises but
dropped out “because of the high intensity.” She has seven
hours of sleep.
“You need that to be creative
and analytical. It’s all part of energy management,” she
reminded me. I told her sometimes I could manage just four hours of
sleep. “It’s okay to do four hours if, say, you have five
speeches tomorrow and you have no time to prepare, like the times
when I am abroad. You can’t have a lifestyle sleeping only for
four hours,” she advised me.
More later.
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