"She has a PhD in politics," says a top official about President Gloria Maca-pagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, when discussing whether the youthful 58-year-old with a 1985 doctorate in public finance is a technocrat or a politician. The formidable politician certainly demonstrated this in June and July as she clung on to power with tenacity, even as a tape of her talking inappropriately to an election official in 2004 was made public and major upheavals followed. Interviewed in May, just before the crisis blew up, the president, a Georgetown University and University of the Philippines graduate, said she is a mixture of both technocrat and politician but that the problematic state of the economy necessitates a rather rigorous approach.
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