Foreign participants to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this week will soon have a taste of the famous brand of Filipino hospitality.
It’s an honor, really, to be hosting this event. This is an opportunity to show our counterparts that despite our nation’s ills that they no doubt hear or read about in the news, we are still able to put together an event of such magnitude and significance.
And cost, too—imagine, P10 billion, good money that could have been used for other purposes.
This has been decided as far back as three years ago, and now is not the time to whine about spending all that money or even holding the summit here in the first place.
What we can talk about now is how the plan is being implemented with regard to the changes in the lives of ordinary citizens. What we can emphasize is our discomfort at how artificial all this feels.
For instance, punishing traffic along major roads in Metro Manila is a reality we confront every day. Vehicle sales have continued to climb even as there has been no corresponding improvement in road infrastructure. The public transport system has deteriorated.
This week, however, the delegates will see none of our daily woes as students and workers are kept home on vacation. The roads would be able to breathe.
What this tells us is that it is okay to not act on our transport woes because on the days that matter, we can always make our problems disappear.
Another induced disappearance is that of street dwellers who, on less important days, are left to roam our thoroughfares. We do not intend to display our poverty, too, but hiding the poor—specifically, giving them money to spend a few days at some resort on the pretext of a workshop—is hypocritical.
The poor ought to be kept off the streets, not because there are dignitaries coming to whom they might be an eyesore, but because nobody should live under such despicable conditions. Being homeless is not a lifestyle choice—it’s a manifestation of the government’s failure to provide opportunities for the poor to help themselves.
And now we hear that high-speed Internet is available in select places for the benefit of the guests, so they could do their work. Connectivity is not a luxury, even for ordinary people like you and me. Why do we not get it from our oligarch providers on regular days? We realize now, with much bitterness, that they could do so much better when there are guests around.
Does there have to be an Apec summit for the government to realize that its citizens deserve—and demand—to live in a less hostile place? And should we brace ourselves to go back to the gates of hell when the last of the guests have left?