Theres The Rub
Fiddling
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:06:00 06/30/2008
Filed Under: Politics, Government, Typhoon Frank
MANILA, Philippines - Panfilo Lacson calls it “Fiddling while Rome burns.” That’s the same phrase I used in a commentary on TV. It’s the phrase that easily leaps to mind at the spectacle of GMA and her outsized entourage in the United States. Lacson is right: Even without Typhoon “Frank,” that trip leaves a bad taste in the mouth, coming as it does while the country reels from skyrocketing prices and faces the specter of hunger. With the devastation wrought by Typhoon “Frank” as added backdrop, it’s unconscionable.
It’s a junket, nothing more, nothing less, the kind Ferdinand Marcos used to reward his loyal minions with. Any trip that brings in tow 10 Cabinet secretaries, 59 congressmen and a senator reeks of profligacy. There’s just no excuse for it.
If the justification for the size of her retinue is that GMA needs the precious advice of her advisers, then she herself refutes it, if unwittingly. She has done so by berating the National Disaster Coordinating Council, the Coast Guard and Sulpicio Lines loudly in public. Meant to suggest that she never really left home, as our newspaper put it last week, and that she remains on top of things even while abroad, she merely exposes the cruel absurdity of having brought so many associates along. Because if you can teleconference with anyone in this country at any time, why in hell do you need to bring all those people with you?
We live in the day and age of Internet chats, web cams, satellite feeds, cell phones and what have you. A head of state does not lack for the technology to communicate instantaneously with her officials anytime she wants to—as GMA herself demonstrated before the nation, fuming and raging like a storm. Eduardo Ermita cites that in defense of the trip, failing to note the irony of it. Modern technology, he says, allows GMA to go abroad and still run the country. For that very reason, why bring everyone along? Indeed, for that very reason, why leave the country at all?
Which brings us to: What on earth was that trip for? What wondrous gain were we supposed to reap from it?
The official reason was that GMA was supposed to meet with George W. Bush, and did. But the question is: Whatever for? George W. Bush, who has singly kept David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and Jon Stewart employed, is a lame-duck president. He has been completely removed from the equation. Even John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, wants nothing to do with him for fear of contamination, or confirming the Democratic depiction of him as more of the same. Even if GMA could extract all sorts of promises from him, what of it? He is no position to give anything, other possibly than some insights to a psychic twin on what it feels to reach the end of the rope, disliked and detested, after grinding one’s country to heel.
Had GMA not had junket in mind, she would have put off her visit for next year when the United States would have a new president. Who is probably going to be Barack Obama.
Which brings us to that whole pitch about GMA going there to meet with Obama. That was just one big lie. The only question in my mind was not whether or not that visit would take place but what excuses government would give for that meeting never taking place. The excuse being given now is that GMA had such a hectic schedule it could not accommodate a meeting with him. As though she would not have dropped everything for the merest hint of it and the career-enhancing, or life-saving, photo-op it would have afforded.
Indeed, the report being given now is that Obama called up and spoke to GMA for half an hour to welcome her. We have that only on the strength of the word of people who claim GMA is the direct descendant of a saint. Obama’s official statement itself is pro forma, something he probably never read, or saw.
One US-based Filipino journalist explains more realistically: “He’s so busy, and we’re not really that important.” Even that misses the point. Which is: Why on earth would someone whose campaign motto is “Change” and who has savaged Bush for invading Iraq—and even his own rival in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, for going along with it—want to meet with its most ardent defender in this obscure part of the globe? Or indeed with George W.’s clone?
Finally, Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante defends the trip by saying that GMA’s trip had been planned well ahead of time, and “any head of state should honor that commitment.”
Why so? Why should any head of state not fly back home posthaste when her country has been razed by a calamity? Will it embarrass her in the eyes of her hosts? Not at all. The hosts would not just understand and sympathize with it, they would praise it to heaven as a testament to that head of state’s character as shown by her sense of proportion and priority. Who knows? Maybe the hosts might even be inspired by that gesture to pledge or immediately send all sorts of help to the ravaged country.
In fact the only true source of embarrassment is a visiting head of state not doing so. It’s bad form, even for Filipinos who are obsessed with pakitang tao. It sends the wrong message to the hosts, and it sends the wrong message to the ruled. It overlooks the most basic principle of governance, which is that a head of state is committed first and last to her people, not to anybody else. It forgets the most sacred principle of governance, which is that the head of state’s duty is first and last not to save face but to save the country.
In the end, the only visible reasons for that trip, which write junket all over it, are two things—Manny Pacquiao and Las Vegas. Basking in victory and wallowing in gambling.
True enough, that trip produces the kind of garish sounds you can only associate with, well, fiddling while Rome burns.
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