Perhaps in our frustration with debilitating traffic, the string of lame excuses and the hypocritical window dressing during Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held the past week, Filipinos turned their attention once again to personalities.
Online and off, they feasted on the physique of the delegates—Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and, to some extent, United States President Barack Obama.
Look at how they carried the traditional Filipino barong tagalog, social media users gushed. They looked dignified, respectable; they were real statesmen. Not a few compared them to how our own President Benigno Aquino III conducted himself.
Soon, the fact that Filipinos were entertaining themselves with the physical attributes of the delegates through the hashtag #APEChottie became international news. Who cared whether the Canadian leader still had to give a satisfactory answer to the issue of garbage from his country finding its way to the Philippines? We also did not pay attention to the news of Mexicans challenging our fascination with their president, who appears to be derided at home because of various anomalies.
Perhaps it is human nature to zero in on something to get excited about when many things go wrong and when many don’t even understand how such a summit can directly improve their lives.
The so-called hotties are gone now. The adulation for the leaders has died as they go back to their usual concerns, perplexed, perhaps, at how Filipinos are able to get excited about the oddest of things.
We brace ourselves for the reality of “back to normal” beginning tomorrow, made worse by the run-up to the holiday season and the circus that is the May elections.
We are left with everything that was there before the summit—poor public transport system, congested roads, street dwellers everywhere, and the glaring lack of opportunity even for those who tirelessly seek it.
Nobody left to swoon about, too, especially not this President who claims he treads the right path but exaggerates accomplishments, justifies his failures, blames his predecessor, and claims anybody who does not agree with him is out to destroy him.
