The importance of the 12th ASEAN Summit

Let me start this column by greeting our beloved STAR publisher Max Soliven on his birthday today.

Last Friday was quite a busy day on business and the environment for Cebu. On the business end, I was tasked to be the reactor on the talk of Asian Institute of Management (AIM) president Francis Gonzalez Estrada during a Business Competitiveness and Leadership Forum at the new Parklane Hotel, sponsored by the AIM Alumni Association of Cebu, of which I used to be a chapter president. The last time I met an AIM president who went to Cebu was during the time of president Felipe Alfonso.

This business forum was organized by AIM in preparation for the upcoming 12th ASEAN Summit. President Francis Estrada (everyone always stresses that he is not a relative of the imprisoned former president) spoke on "Our Country and the ASEAN Summit: Leadership and Competitiveness." Jacinto C. Gavino Jr. of DPA spoke on "Business Innovation: The Keys to Competitiveness." Henry Tenedero, chairman of the International Learning Styles Network (ILSN), discussed "Creativity and Your Brain: Out of the Box Experience." All three spoke very eloquently to a jam-packed crowd.

Estrada was seriously concerned that businessmen, especially from Manila, aren’t giving the ASEAN Summit any kind of importance... perhaps because it will be held in Cebu and most of them don’t care about what we do here... except for the multinationals. However, Estrada stressed that with the Philippines as this year’s chair of ASEAN, it means that we hold the agenda for anything in business that is related to ASEAN.

The AIM president mentioned that there was a $14-billion investment that went to ASEAN last year... which was actually higher than what China got. Perhaps that’s because there are 560 million people in ASEAN and we are situated between the world’s emerging economies, India and China. However, if we do not change the image of the Philippines as the "sick man" that we are reputed to be and do not fix our problems, then we’re not going anywhere. But if we ride on ASEAN because we call the shots today, then we can launch a new image for ourselves.

Estrada also talked about regional integration... much like what is happening in the European Union today. Truth to tell, we were ahead of this when a Macapagal was in Malacañang... President Diosdado Macapagal. That was when there was a proposal dubbed the Malaysian, Philippines and Indonesian Federation (MAPHILINDO). Let me say that idea was not bad or wrong, rather it came too early in its time. Today, this is worth giving a serious thought and the Philippines can take the lead on this.

One thing that this country direly needs is a paradigm shift from our present way of doing things to something that we wrote about a few columns ago... that we ought to think out of the box. This is what Prof. Titong Gavino talked about when it comes to competitiveness, as he quoted Bob Gavin, CEO of Motorola, as saying, "Bringing your people and organization to where they have never been." Another quote comes from Tom Kelly of Ten Faces of Innovation: "People creating greater value through the implementation of a new idea." But Prof. Gavino insists that all these passages are meaningless unless you follow the advice of Joseph Schumpter’s "Creative Destruction" — that before you can create anything new or change something, you must destroy the old one first.

Henry Tenedero was a go-getter kind of person who not only perks you up even without taking coffee... but also tells you much about yourself... that, for instance, those valedictorians or salutatorians in your class are not in the top of their respective fields today because while they have great IQ, they lack EQ. Indeed, I have always known that the street-smart students would make it in this tough and highly competitive world.

It has been widely perceived that the Philippines, for instance, taught Thailand how to produce rice through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that puts us at the top of our class — Pinoys with high IQ. But today, the Thais beat us in rice production perhaps because they have better EQ than us. These were the lessons we got last Friday afternoon, thanks to the speakers of the Asian Institute of Management who came to Cebu.

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Now about the environment. With the oil spill in Guimaras still fresh in our minds, thanks to the non-stop reportage by our local and national media outlets, a lot of Filipinos are rethinking their roles in helping save the environment or our seas. Here in Cebu, when our good friend, Bantay Dagat chief Elpidio "Jojo" de la Victoria, supported the move by environmental lawyer Antonio Oposa and his group, the Visayan Sea Squadron, to put a stop to commercial fishing in the Visayan Sea... those against this move responded by assassinating De la Victoria last Holy Wednesday; he died the following day. But with the oil spill threatening the Visayan Sea, now people here have no other choice but to find ways to save our oceans.

Whenever one talks about saving the oceans, the name Greenpeace suddenly comes to mind and that’s exactly what we did late Friday afternoon when we interviewed the people behind Greenpeace on board the M/Y Esperanza, the biggest ship in the Greenpeace fleet. Yes, I also interviewed them on my talkshow, Straight from the Sky, which will be aired tonight.

No doubt, the activism of Greenpeace has become known worldwide because of the uncanny tactics that they use. A lot of people don’t like what they are doing, while others believe that they are doing good. Whatever it is, let me say that Greenpeace sends the message across and that message is for us to take care of this planet Earth as it is the only one we have!

Mark Dia, project leader for the Philippines, showed us a video of a Japanese whaling ship that was killing whales off South Africa... in the guise of being a research vessel. That footage was akin to a demonstration in the sea where Greenpeace volunteers were being hosed by powerful jets of water from the Japanese vessel. I fully agree with them on this issue that whales shouldn’t be slaughtered because of the Japanese appetite for whales.

Greenpeace also showed us the destruction happening on Guimaras Island, thanks to the sunken M/T Solar I and yes, they included footages of the filth that is the Manila Bay today... with plastic flotsam just near the Manila Yacht Club. I’m sure that the people in Metro Manila already know this. We don’t really need Greenpeace to tell us that we need to rid our creeks, esteros or rivers of all this plastic refuse. This is something that we will start advocating in Metro Cebu... to stop the use of plastic bags in supermarkets and stores, since they all end up clogging our rivers and creeks.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website (www.philstar.com). He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable. Bobit’s columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com.