Arroyo is a new breed -- results oriented, able to look at the balance sheets, and to evaluate programs with a cold eye. She has had to be tough these past few weeks. On the morrow of Estrada's removal, it turned out that he had done far more damage than anyone had thought: there was a 225 billion peso budgetary shortfall, about US$4.5 billion, more than the weakened economy could sustain. She has had to find ways to cut it back by almost half to satisfy the country's economic judges -- the IMF, World Bank, and potential investors.
Watching her recently at a reception in Makati was a marvel: she managed over a dozen "stand-up" conferences in less than 15 minutes with business titans and governmental mandarins. It was clear that she meant business and was doing business as she went.
What will her foreign policy concerns be? No doubt there will be some sentimental allusions to her father's third world agenda back in the 1960s. But those friends of Estrada who tried to scare Washington into believing that she was a "leftie," with an agenda to match, missed the point entirely. The real agenda will be growth. Her reelection strategy will be hinged on not just what is good for her but what is good for the Filipino poor -- more jobs, back to Ramos-level economic growth, FDI (foreign direct investment) from the region's tigers. Doing well will be doing good.
Arroyo has repeatedly noted her desire to well represent Chinese Filipinos, which is understandable since she is married to one of the most prominent of these. Her husband, Michael Arroyo, is descended from a taipan prominent in Manila over two hundred years ago -- after coming, of course, from Amoy.
What she will do vis-a-vis the PRC and Taiwan may be anybody's guess. But if her priority is economic growth, she will put a high priority on investment from the region -- and that isn't going to come from China. She's too smart to rock the boat with the China; the Philippine armed forces have barely a trip-wire capability against the Chinese military, but it would be logical to expect her to seek warm ties with Taiwan, as her mentor President Fidel Ramos did.
From a Taiwan perspective, this is for the most part good news. What is best about it is that the republic can expect an increasingly stable south flank, in which a growing prosperity gives it a rising stake in a stable status quo. Taiwan has good reason to be assured by the current political complexion of its southern neighbor's -- and every reason to expect it to last the entire decade. Predictability in business is the essence of success, but it is the same in politics and worth a lot.
W. Scott Thompson is professor of international politics and head of the Southeast Asia program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston.
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