IT’S a security and logistics challenge but the Philippines, as this year’s head of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, embraces the task of hosting heads of state and other representatives for the days-long summit.
For many Filipinos in and around the capital, this simply means a pleasant break from work or school, heavy traffic and punishing public transport system.
In an ideal world, anybody can host an international event and life would go on as usual for its citizens. Not here—intra-city travel itself is an ordeal, so do we dare show our esteemed guests that we are this way in the Philippines? Of course we won’t, even if it comes at the cost of low productivity and missed school days.
But it appears this is the only thing we are bent on playing down. At least we have not gone to the extreme of herding street children away to some resort, or putting up facades over depressed communities just so our visitors could not see them.
No, we can only afford to be true to ourselves. Put up tarpaulins with embarrassing typographical errors, allow underserving officials to brandish their power and decide who are and who are not legitimate members of the media, and own up to the fact that our President is one who says and does exactly as he pleases—damn the consequences.
We know that the high-level meetings are supposed to bring us and our neighbors closer to solutions to our common problems. Beyond the personalities who would come here and their sound bytes, discussions, commitments, agreements and their details would be more consequential.
This is a series of meetings that are supposed to affect the way we—and others in our region—live. It would be ridiculous for most of us to equate the Asean summit with holidays or traffic. While it is tempting to do just that, let us not fall into the trap.