Hello Obama this is Gloria Arroyo calling!

Poor Gloria she can't seem to get herself noticed by Obama. She even attends a prayer meeting. Probably she prayed that Obama would give her a phone call. Maybe she should try getting an invite to George Bush's Texas ranch instead.


Miriam says Gloria erred in attending US prayer meet
02/09/2009
A strong ally of President Arroyo yesterday criticized the Chief Executive’s attendance in the national day of prayer in Washington D.C. where she risked being perceived as desperately trying to seek an audience with US President Barack Obama after reportedly being “snubbed” several times already.
“If you’re a president, you should not be made a mere part of the audience. You shouldn’t be made part of the three thousand-strong audience of a president of another
country,” Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said.
The administration senator and chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations, in a radio interview over at dzBB, noted that in such events, someone of Arroyo’s stature should have been given participation.
“Or at least she should be recognized as a head of state and not just be made to sit beside the (US) Speaker of the House of Representatives. She outranks him and even their secretary of state whose position does not equate with that of the President,” she said.
“Our President should be treated like a president by the other country,” she added.
It has been reported that Obama, who delivered a speech in the said event, made no mention or did not recognize the presence of Arroyo. Opposition Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero was also in the audience.
The lady senator practically berated the so-called handlers of Arroyo, pointing out that in such a gathering where the invitation came from Congress, an ambassador should have been sent to attend instead.
Santiago disagreed with the decision of Malacanang allowing Arroyo to attend it, especially as she was perceived to be pining for a meeting or a one-on-one with Obama.
There were reports that when Obama got elected in November last year, Arroyo tried at least twice to reach him by phone to personally congratulate him.
“If their Congress extended the invitation, our ambassador to Washington D.C. should have been sent. Our president should have been treated as a (head of state),” she said.
Santiago said that such was not humiliating at all, as far as Arroyo is concerned since nobody within the international community seemed to have taken notice of her presence.
“She went through all this trouble for nothing. That’s her call. She has the energy and she did not at all lose face because many countries did know that the Philippine president was present,” she said.
Arroyo, can not be faulted for her apparent faux pas, the senator said, noting the possibility that the President was misled by the country’s ambassador to Washington D.C. into believing that it could be her chance to finally meet Obama.
Knowing Arroyo, Santiago said, “she’s not the type of person who makes drastic decisions. She may have been given the impression that there’s a high probability of her having talk with Obama.”
When told that Arroyo, instead, reportedly managed to get a photo opportunity with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Santiago only had this to say: “So what!”
Angie M. Rosales