Arroyo sworn in as RP president
Arroyo sworn in as RP president
Mynardo Macaraig Agence France-Presse/Cebu, Philippines
Gloria Arroyo was sworn in as the 14th president of the Philippines on Wednesday, pledging jobs and peace to the Southeast Asian nation laboring under crushing debt, political instability and armed rebellions.
Up to 10,000 residents cheered the 57 year-old U.S.-educated economist and grandmother as she flew to this central city to take her oath of office at noon before Supreme Court chief justice Hilario Davide.
Former television presenter Manuel de Castro was sworn in as vice president. Both officials will serve for six years.
Arroyo earlier delivered her inaugural speech before 30,000 government workers at a typhoon-lashed public square in Manila.
She pledged to unite the nation after years of political upheaval, tackle corruption, fix the state's fiscal woes, mobilize capital for the private sector, create jobs, improve infrastructure, and end various rebellions.
Police were out in force a day after foiling what they described as a plot by Filipino Islamic militants to bomb the inauguration.
Police on Tuesday also battled a street riot by supporters of chief election rival Fernando Poe Jr., the country's most popular movie star who has yet to concede defeat and who claims he was cheated out of victory.
In Cebu, baton-wielding riot police beat back about 150 leftist as well as pro-Poe protesters bearing "Gloria, Fake President" placards. Police said two protesters were injured as they tried to crash the oathtaking ceremony.
In a country where more than half of its 84 million people live on US$2 a day, Arroyo pledged to "establish a deep foundation for a broad middle class" by raising private and government capital to support three million entrepreneurs.
"I pledge to bring you a pro-poor agenda that will lift up our poorest brothers and sisters, invest them with dignity and imbue them with hope," she said.
"I pledge to do everything necessary to expand the economy, engage it in the world of commerce and advance the interests of our country and our people the world over."
She promised to create "more than six million jobs" and develop a million hectares of agricultural business lands. Transport and other infrastructure would be improved to link the entire country so agricultural output could be brought to the markets efficiently, she added.
Arroyo said she would work to decongest Manila, which now accounts for a third of the domestic economic output, by building "new centers of government, business and commerce" elsewhere.
She also said "peace will have come to Mindanao," the southern third of the country that has been wracked by decades of Muslim separatist and communist insurgencies, as well as by the newer threat of Islamic militants linked to the al-Qaeda network.
Manila is holding peace talks with the largest Moro guerrilla group in the south as well as with exiled leaders of the communist movement, and U.S. military advisers are training Filipino troops on counter-terrorism.
The president pledged 100 percent enrollment of school-age children, a computer in every classroom, electricity and tap water to the entire country, and the full computerization of elections.
She did not say how she would finance the government projects. The government has in recent years resorted to massive borrowing to remedy weak state revenues.
Elected vice president in 1998, Arroyo came to power when a military-backed revolt ended the corruption-tainted presidency of movie-star Joseph Estrada in January 2001.
She struggled without a popular mandate, surviving a military rebellion 11 months ago.