JOHN STANMEYER/VII FOR TIME

PRESSING THE FLESH: Arroyo is swarmed by supporters on the campaign trail

Is She The One?
	Will Filipinos vote for their brainy but aloof President—or anoint a popular movie star who offers nothing less than salvation?
	By Anthony Spaeth Manila

Posted Monday, May 3, 2004; 21:00 HKT
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's chopper swoops down beside a provincial squatter colony, and surprised residents swarm as the diminutive President of the Philippines descends in a tangerine pantsuit and five-inch cork heels. Arroyo settles into the front of a 15-seat Toyota van, opens the window and barks at aides in a startlingly mannish voice: "Candy! Candy! Get the candy!" As the van starts to roll through Laguna province, Arroyo distributes aquamarine peppermints in wrappers stamped with her name to children, and to children only. Adults get waves, a China-doll smile and a plea to support her in next week's presidential election.

But when the van hits a deserted stretch, the candidate transforms into President. She growls toward the back of the bus: "Mayor!" A local mayor seeking re-election stumbles forward, garbed in a clownishly colored campaign vest and a matching cap. He crouches behind the front seat, hand on Arroyo's headrest, and delivers a fiscal prayer. The funds for a road in his town have been held up by bureaucrats. He needs 3 million pesos (about $53,000). Arroyo sternly scans the road ahead, but then humans come into view—the local loafer, shopkeepers, bare-chested kids on bicycles—and the smile flicks on, the hand waves. When the potential voters disappear, the presidential pout returns. Arroyo waits, legs tightly crossed, for aides on cell phones to deliver information on the mayor and the 3 million pesos he desires.

Arroyo is both President and presidential candidate, and her main campaign tactic is to meld those roles into a winning combination. Her topsy-turvy three years in office have had few highs but some memorable lows, including a coup attempt against her last July and a Senate investigation of her lawyer husband, Miguel, for money laundering and keeping excess campaign funds. (He was ultimately cleared of the allegations.) Arroyo has bounced back by trying to show the people that her government is working for them. Four months ago she gave 660,000 people three-month jobs sweeping the dusty streets of Metro Manila. Two months ago she expanded health coverage for some 5 million poor Filipinos. The beneficiaries of this largesse know whom to thank as plainly as those kids sucking peppermints. The sweepers wear T shirts that read I LOVE GLORIA or GLORIA LOVES ME; the health-insurance cards show Arroyo's smiling face. The overall message is that she's already President and has the experience to tackle the Philippines' almost endless challenges: poverty, a perpetually underperforming economy, Muslim militancy and Asia's longest-running communist insurgency.

Unfortunately for Arroyo, her chief rival is Fernando Poe Jr., a half-American action star in Philippine films who's performing from his own script. In the movies, Poe often portrays the strong-but-silent type, and that's his campaign strategy, too. Poe doesn't pretend to have experience with health insurance, foreign affairs, Muslim rebels—although he played a police officer from the southern Philippines in Muslim Magnum .357—or building provincial roads. He refuses to hold press conferences, give interviews or otherwise describe what a Poe presidency might be like. His stump speeches could be transcribed on one side of a Popsicle stick.

But on campaign sorties, Poe stands on the back of a pickup truck beneath the sweltering sun bestowing a gracious, grateful smile on frenzied crowds, and people throw themselves on the road to halt his truck, to possibly touch his hand. Poe's admirers would probably give candy to him if they could afford it, which they can't—he draws support mostly from the poorest of the Philippine poor.

It's tempting to view next week's election simply as a contest between a not-too-popular President with a Ph.D. in economics and a popcorn idol who dropped out of the eighth grade. But the subtext of the Poe campaign runs deep. His real message is that Arroyo can't solve the Philippines' woes because the problem resides in her and her whole class of cynical, overeducated, profiteering, wouldn't-know-a-slum-if-their-housemaid-invited-them-to-hers supporters. The country, according to Poe, needs more than a President with brains or experience. It needs a savior. So far, Poe's messiah act appears to be playing quite well: surveys say the race is neck and neck.

The Philippines is widely described as the most freewheeling democracy in Asia, and if recent events suggest it could lose that crown—South Korea impeached its President in March, and Taiwan's recent election was a cliff-hanger marked by an assassination attempt on the President—think again. For one thing, Filipinos like their elections big. Next week, they'll be voting not just for President and Vice President but for nearly all the elected positions in the land, down to vice mayors and city councilors—17,000 in all. Some 100,000 candidates are running, making and breaking alliances, plastering the countryside with campaign posters and guarding against the mortal violence that always characterizes Philippine elections.

And Filipinos have a tradition so far unique to their country: reversing election outcomes they don't like by means that might be called democratic, although hardly constitutional. People Power was first used to eject strongman Ferdinand Marcos after he rigged a re-election in 1986. Three years ago, Arroyo became President after Joseph Estrada, the first action star to grab the presidency, was hounded from office by street protests when the Senate failed to impeach him on plunder charges. (That was immediately dubbed EDSA II, after Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the Manila artery on which demonstrators usually gather.) The people who installed Arroyo in EDSA II considered it a triumph of virtue over venality and the just unmaking of an election in which movie-mad masses had put a knucklehead in Malacañang, the ornate presidential palace. Three months later, thousands of Estrada's supporters stormed Malacañang, almost ousting Arroyo. They called that EDSA III.

Poe's campaign can be seen as revenge against People Power: another screen actor is running, one who happens to be more popular than Estrada ever was—and with no experience outside the world of movies. (Before becoming President, Estrada was a mayor, Congressman and Vice President.) As in 1998, the people most likely to vote for the film star are the urban and rural poor, what marketing companies call the D and E classes—people who make less than $5,360 a year and who happen to constitute 91% of the nation's population. Arroyo's supporters tend to be from the richer, but tiny, A, B and C classes. They dominate Manila, however, and it's hard to find an office worker or professional who doesn't show an instant disdain for Poe and a visceral disgust when Estrada's name comes up. They say that if Poe wins, it will inevitably lead to EDSA IV—a toppling from the presidency, a public humiliation, a political crucifixion.

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