MANILA, 12 August 2006 — Breaking a two-week silence, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday assured Filipinos that he is in good health and that a new bid by her political foes to impeach her would fail.

“I got sick. I’m fine, end of story,” she said in a media pool interview in Mactan, Cebu, on the sidelines of her meeting with her international board of advisers at the 10th APEC Business Advisory Council anniversary conference and the Third ABAC Meeting 2006.

She vehemently denied rumors that her poor health has been due to her intake of alcohol. “I’m not an alcoholic,” she said, although she admitted she drinks alcoholic beverages.

Rumors about Arroyo’s poor state of health swirled after she was hospitalized twice in a month’s time, first for diarrhea, and second, for flu on July 27.

Asked about talk that she had liver problems, Arroyo said, “They wish, they wish.”

Nonetheless, Arroyo said she is taking precautions. She said she would cut down on calories, alcoholic beverages, spicy food, raw fish, and caffeine “because they cause gas.”

She said she is also taking measures to go slow on her schedules.

Even with her tight schedule yesterday, she managed to pamper herself with a spa service in Shangri La Hotel in Mactan island resort, saying this was one way of slowing down.

And she is even considering taking two days off in a week, this time to include Saturdays.

“That’s one way of slowing down,” she said. “Maybe I’ll do that for a while, I will not initiate evening events.”

Her tight schedule this weekend could possibly be the last, she said.

Yesterday, she visited the Cebu plant of Ford Motor Company, where she was shown the multinational giant’s line of flexible fuel vehicles (FFV).

After delivering a keynote address today, she will fly to Albay province to oversee the evacuation of families affected by the rumbling Mayon Volcano.

Poll Fraud, Corruption

Arroyo yesterday also took the opportunity to lash out at her foes behind the fresh impeachment complaint filed in the House of Representatives.

The impeachment complaint, which accuses Arroyo of rigging the 2004 presidential polls and of being responsible for the spate of political killings in the country, does not have the support of the people, she said.

“The people are tired of politics, and there is not much interest in this,” she said.

“I am confident they will fail and we will continue to push for more important things that we have to attend,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo pointed to the “disgruntled opposition driven by leftist terrorists and their legal fronts” to be behind the fresh moves to oust her.

The House justice committee on Wednesday voted unanimously to declare that the complaint against the president was “sufficient in form” — meaning, it complies with the legal requirement of having verified complainants and congressional endorsers.

With only 51 opposition House members supporting last year’s impeachment complaint — less than the required one-third of the entire chamber — the bid was defeated.

The opposition needs to muster support from at least 78 House members to impeach Arroyo this time.

Task Forces

Arroyo said she would not be distracted by the complaint and would continue focusing on her work.

She said she has created task forces to carry out the different thrusts she has outlined in her annual address before a joint session of Congress in July.

One is the Task Force on Competitiveness, composed of the private and the public sectors, another is the Anti-Red Tape Task Force, and a third one is the Infrastructure Monitoring Task Force.

Discussions on how to make the Philippines globally competitive will be firmed up when the country holds a competitive summit next month, Arroyo said.

Ford’s New Product

In her visit to the plan of FMC’s local subsidiary, Ford Motor Company Philippines (FMCP), company president Henry Co. showed Ford’s sedan line of vehicles, particularly the Ford Focus 1.8-liter and the Ford Focus 2.0-liter Sport, are now equipped with engines that can run on either conventional gasoline or blended gasoline and bio-ethanol fuels.

Co said Ford’s FFV is the car manufacturer’s answer to growing worldwide calls for safer, cleaner and more energy efficient internal combustion engines that rely less on conventional fossil fuel-derived gasoline but on alternative sources of fuel “specially blended” with ethanol.

Both vehicles are E20 capable, meaning they can run on fuel composed of 80 percent gasoline and 20 percent ethanol. Ethanol is a by-product of sugarcane after the extraction process.

Ethanol has been touted as the “new gasoline” because in its purest form, it has a higher octane rating which means it burns better and leaves little or no unburnt fuel molecules.

When mixed with regular unleaded gasoline, the resulting blend increases the energy efficiency of an engine and lessens harmful emissions to the environment, ensuring a clean and green environment.

The detergent properties of this special blend are far more superior than that of regular unleaded gasoline, thereby reducing the need for frequent oil changes. (With Input from Inquirer News Service and Agencies)