WASHINGTON - A travel weary President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo frolicked in the company of nearly 500 Filipino-American supporters, mostly her “kabalen” (provincemates), at a hotel dinner party here ahead of her meeting with United States President Barack Obama.
“G-M-A, all the way,” chanted members of the event host, FIL-USA, which was formed a few months ago by former Angeles City Mayor Edgardo D. Pamintuan, Arroyo’s adviser for Subic and Clark infrastructure projects.
“We are pleased to accept the invitation to be the first Southeast Asian president to meet President Obama,” said Arroyo who listed peace and security, and concerns on the global economic crisis as among the issues she wanted to take up with Obama.
Arroyo’s speech was practically a repeat of her State of the Nation Address on Monday albeit more concise and less confrontational. Her tirades against Senator Manuel Roxas and former President Joseph Estrada were excised.
The President, whose eyes betrayed her struggle against sleep from her Manila-Quebec-Washington journey, beamed at the show of support. She acknowledged that 60 percent of the audience was made up of by her provincemates from Pampanga.
Dressed in a beaded Filipiniana attire with a diamond encrusted watch as her main accessory, she apologized for making her guests wait for one-and-a half hours. After finishing the speech, she ate her salad with gusto at her table.
She looked tired but she was game enough to spend more than an hour having her picture taken with the guests at each of the 50 tables in the function room. She was followed closely by her close-in security aides and US Secret Service agents.
Her entourage included Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, Trade Secretary Peter Favila, Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Bayani Fernando, Senator Lito Lapid, Speaker Prospero Nograles, and more than 20 members of the House of Representatives.
If the President was concerned about reports of impending protest rallies against her in the US, she did not show it in the company of allies and admirers.
A Filipino-American writer based here scoffed at the dinner party as a mere “palabas” (just for show) amid what she described as an overwhelming bias against her administration by Filipinos in the US capital.
The writer, who asked not to be named, said Malacañang was desperate to give the President a rah-rah audience before her meeting with Obama that it had to tap a little-known Fil-Am group to organize an event bankrolled by one of her appointees (Pamintuan) who invited mostly non-DC residents to welcome Arroyo.
The writer said the Palace was anticipating protest rallies by “Church-based and activist groups based in the US and some Americans” at the entrance of the White House on Thursday (Friday in Manila) before Arroyo’s meeting with Obama.
These were the Columban Office for Advocacy and Outreach, which planned to hold a prayer vigil to address the rise in extrajudicial killings under the Arroyo administration, and the activist group Katarungan (Justice), which was scheduled to hold protest rallies in the area.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
