Nearly eight years ago I asked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,  “I’m sure a lot of women are dying to ask you this question.”

“And since you are not a widow, they would like to ask you this question. You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but a lot of women are dying to know – do you still have sex?”

The 55-year-old mother of three replied  “Plenty” – and gave a toothy smile.

Last January 22, when she hosted a a surprise dinner for 23 officers and members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) I asked her a milder personal question about her hair. Now I’m not so sure if her reluctant reply pertained to my question eight years ago or two Fridays ago.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and FOCAP

During the hour-long dinner, Mrs Arroyo was at her gracious best but she was not all that candid. I must say, it took all of our reportorial skills  to get her to talk about her former college student and now leading presidential contender Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. She refused to talk about her party’s presidential standard bearer Gilbert Teodoro or about her feelings towards the Ampatuans – her long-time allies now accused of murdering 57 people including 30 journalists.

The ease with which she talked to reporters vanished in 2005 when wiretapped tapes of her, suggesting she was trying to rig her 2004 poll victory by a million votes, leaked out.

During her dinner some of that ease returned as she talked about the presidential palace, her girlhood and her Palace chef. Only to vanish when she refused to answer many questions she deemed “political” or which asked about her “feelings”.

Still, the occasion gave me a momentary glimpse of the power and the pomp of the presidency, its lonely isolation, and the woman who was determined to hold on to it for as long as she could.

I did not get any hint she was ready to clear out her desk by June 30 when her term ends.

At short notice. An invitation to dine with her, even at several hours’ notice, was highly unusual and one I seized at a moment’s notice. She had not seen FOCAP since 2007. A press conference in 2008 was abruptly canceled after we were told she would only talk about the economy and would not entertain political questions.

I was curious why the President wanted to meet us on the same day she waved goodbye to the remains of her press secretary, Cerge Remonde.

Her terms for engaging the foreign press quickly became evident. At the entrance to the presidential palace, the guards impounded all tape recorders and cameras on orders of the palace media relations office. It was a first for many of the journalists, including me, who have covered Palace events in three previous presidencies.

The media handlers later explained that no tape recorders and cameras were allowed because it was a strictly social event. A Palace photographer would snap photos. The confiscation disoriented me somewhat because we were informed earlier that while there was no formal Q and A, the President “may answer questions”.

Didn’t she want to be quoted correctly? And it would have been bad manners for us to scribble throughout the meal.

It turned out alright in the end, because someone else, who asked to remain unnamed, enabled me to put together almost the entire dinner conversation. Besides, Mrs Arroyo never told us it was off the record.

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