Armarie Cruz
Armarie “Arms” Cruz, (born Armarie Lourdes Saavedra Cruz on July 30, 1980)[1] is the daughter of Muslim actor Mohammad Faizal and wife Maricar Saavedra from a big political clan in Zamboanga. She started to be active in the singing competitions as early as 17 years old.
One of her greatest achievements was when she won National Panasonic Quest for the best international grand champion held in Jakarta, Indonesia and miss Musicmate Star in the Philippines. In 1993, she was the third champion, after the Philippine Champions Jaimie Rivera and Ima Castro, both of the broadway play Miss Saigon Her winning the local competition gave her the chance to compete in the Panasonic’s Quest for the Best International held in Jakarta, Indonesia and became the Grand Champion and bested 35 countries from where the former 3 champions failed to achieve in the previous first 3years of the competition.
Another feather in her hat was when Armarie made it to the final 12 of the Philippine Idol,[2] the franchise of the American Idol singing competition in the US. She made it in the top 24 among the auditioning 10,000 thousands, along with her brother Armando Cruz Jr. during the Philippine Idol fast tracks at waterfront hotel davao. but unlike his sister, he was not able to make it in the Top 24.
On the day of Armarie's elimination, the management decided on a new ruling for the text voting process where in ABC 5 executives and Idol franchise owner, Fremantle UK, agreed to limit the length of the voting window from 22 hours to only 2 hours to lessen the predictability of the text votes results .Armarie was eliminated on her fifth week on October 30, 2006[3] and lost to Apple Chiu, the other girl at the bottom two for that particular episode in which there was a new ruling regarding a new two-hour text voting protocol established by the Philippine Idol Management. Unfortunately, this was the reason why fans felt Armarie lost in spite of her competitive edge over the others; her followers did not have the time to 'acclimatize' to the new ruling and were not able to vote for her during the scheduled time.