A
fter several days of forced vacation, it will be back to the salt mines come Monday. With all the holidays that we Filipinos already enjoy, the country must surely be leading the world for the most number of holidays in a given year.
Within the next few weeks, the Christmas season will again be upon us. We all know what that means—very little work gets done especially in the last two weeks of December because we celebrate the longest Christmas.
I do not know whether our leaders especially our economic team are assessing the negative effect of these long holidays to the economic productivity of the country. Even without any scientific data available, the loss in productivity must be considerable.
This is not to mention the hardship experienced by motorists who had to endure the constricted Edsa and the roads around the conference venue that were completely closed. When the country hosts big international events such as the just concluded Asean 50th Summit, it is a given that we all want the country to roll out the red carpet. After all, the pride of the country is at stake. We Filipinos being noted for our hospitality would not want our guests to feel that our welcome is anything less.
But in planning for events such as the Asean or Apec meetings, would it not have been better to have held the event elsewhere instead of the National Capital Region where the disruption would not have been as huge? An argument against this of course, is that there is no other place with the kind of infrastructure other than the NCR capable of holding big international events. But in fact, we did it before in Subic.
It is also about time we developed other areas as alternate sites for such events. Three of the best islands in the world are in our country. Palawan, Cebu and Boracay have been adjudged by travel magazines as offering sights that are second to none. Cebu and Boracay with a little more development should be able to host international conferences such as the recently concluded meeting. Palawan of course needs more infrastructure development but now is perhaps the best time to do this and take advantage of the Build, Build, and Build infrastructure development program of the Duterte administration.
We cannot continue having the kind of work disruption that we just experienced. We have to develop alternate venues.
The event, however, was a huge success and congratulations to those who labored hard to make it the success that it was. There were no glitches that the actress who used the Asean reserved lane for the visitors is now in hot water but I think the traffic authorities should just let it go at that. I do not think it was such a big deal and besides, she has apologized. If at all, it showed the kind of hardship that the motorists had to endure for several days.
* * *
One of the developing stories that was buried by the hosting of the Asean summit was the ever widening rift between Senators Dick Gordon and Antonio Trillanes IV. Trillanes filed a plunder case against Gordon for misuse of government funds. It seems that funds coming from the pork barrel of Senator Gordon was provided the Philippine Red Cross which he chairs and was spent without any proper accounting, so the accusation goes. Senator Gordon vehemently denied this. During the Senate hearing on the smuggling of 640 kilos of methamphetamine worth P6.4 billion, Senator Trillanes accused Senator Gordon of lawyering for the so-called Davao group. As a result, Gordon filed a case against Trillanes for ethics violation which is now pending.
Whether both cases will ever see the light of day is something the public will have to wait and see. My beef in the case is that two old and cherished institutions in the country have now been embroiled in politics which should never have happened. Last year, during those marathon hearings against then VP Jojo Binay, the Boy Scouts of the Philippines was also dragged into the controversy.
Now, it is the turn of the PRC to be dragged into a political controversy. In the United States, when Elizabeth Dole, the wife of former Senator Robert Dole was President of the United States Red Cross and ran for senator, she resigned her position in the USRC to protect the institution from any impropriety or any accusation that the USRC is engaged in any partisan politics. We do not practice that here. Senator Gordon is still Chairman of the PRC and former VP Binay, although no longer in office, is still President of the BSP.
If what has happened recently is any indication, it does not look good for both organizations. Maybe Senator Gordon and then VP Binay should have resigned their positions while both are or were holding political positions to protect the two institutions that they both care about. But since we do not have rules of that nature, it has to be their call.
The same is true for senators who are endorsing certain commercial products. In my youth, the scouting movement was purely voluntary and the President of the BSP was not a politician. The whole complexity of the scouting movement changed when it was made compulsory during Martial Law and when politicians started to enter the picture. There really should be a rule that insulates purely civic organizations from the intrusion of politics.
