The impact of the ASEAN Summit on RP

Stop for a moment! Have you ever given a serious thought of the impact on our country of our being chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) this year? If you haven’t, I implore you to take a moment and think deeply… when will the Philippines have another shot at being host and chair of the ASEAN Summit? Ten years from today!

ASEAN is composed of the Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar. That’s nine other neighboring countries that would also have a shot at being the chair of ASEAN. That means, the next time that the Philippines will be the chair of ASEAN will be 10 years from now. That’s in the year 2016! That is why it is important for us Filipinos, not just us Cebuanos, to give the 12th ASEAN Leaders Summit our best shot! It’s a milestone. There are just too many things that happen in 10 years; no one can predict that far away.

When my eldest daughter, Fara, passed the Professional Licensure Board for Medicine early this year, it was an important milestone for my family. The same thing happened in March this year when my second daughter, Katrina Charmaine, graduated with B.S. Nursing at the Cebu Doctors University (CDU) and thankfully, she belongs to the second batch which would take the nursing licensure exam this coming December.

I consider these the two important milestones in my life simply because, given their professions in the medical field, I know that my two daughters would have a good life ahead of them. They are the realization of what our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal once said, "The youth is the hope of the fatherland." But what about the rest of our Filipino youth? What hope is there for them, unless we give them that hope? We can use ASEAN for this!

For whatever it is worth, I would like to propose that the 12th ASEAN Leaders Summit come up with a policy decision that would have a major impact on the education of our youth… like an ASEAN-mandated exchange student program (for studies or for short visits), for instance, so as to give the ASEAN youth a better understanding of their neighbors.

I have been a journalist for the past 20 years and I have never seen any huge event happening in Cebu with the same magnitude as that of the ASEAN conference. The last time I saw Metro Cebu abuzz with the most massive spruce-up job was during the visit of Pope John Paul II in the mid-80s. Before that event, the last activity of this magnitude happened a long time ago during the 4th Centennial of the Christianization in the Philippines held together with the 3rd National Eucharistic Congress on April 28 to May 2, 1965. I was still in third-year high school.

Let me tell a little story about that long forgotten event… I was lucky that my late Mother kept the souvenir yearbook for that historic event when the President of the Philippines was a Macapagal, Diosdado Macapagal, father of our current President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA), and the mayor of Cebu City was an Osmeña, Sergio "Serging" Osmeña, the father of current Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña. It was at this time when the Sto. Niño Church was officially declared a Basilica.

What made the 4th Centennial celebration of our nation’s Christianization like that of the ASEAN Summit was because it was also a nationwide event… not just a Cebu-only event. There was even a Manila committee on special events led by Mrs. Elvira Rufino and another committee on special gifts headed by Carlos Palanca Jr. At that time, the North Reclamation area where Shoemart is now located was just barely finished and it was where a huge "Templete" was constructed just for that occasion.

In those days, Popes never traveled far away from the Vatican and since Pope Paul VI wasn’t coming to Cebu, he sent his Papal Legate, Ildebrando Cardinal Antoniutti, to be the main celebrant. He came to Cebu via the presidential yacht RPS Roxas and was met by Mayor Serging Osmeña’s Chris Craft yacht Starfire. Cebu then only had an archbishop in the person of the late Archbishop Julio Rosales who later became Cardinal Rosales. The Cebu governor then was Rene Espina. Indeed, that was eons ago!

Because of that souvenir book, I now have black and white pictures of Cebu back in the 60s. Part of the program was a fluvial procession of the Sto. Niño and the Coronation of his Holy Image. Then there was the formal opening of the 3rd National Eucharistic Congress, whose theme was "Let the Philippines be for Christ. And you can be sure that Christ will be for the Philippines." Back then, the Church vs State was a non-issue at all!

There was the Children’s Day where I remembered we had to participate… a Woman’s Day, where First Lady Evangelina Macapagal and yes, even Mrs. Imelda Marcos participated in to see Fr. Patrick Peyton of the Family Rosary Movement (remember the slogan: the family that prays together, stays together?) and the Grand Eucharistic Procession where President Diosdado Macapagal and Mayor Serging Osmeña walked the streets of Cebu City to take part in this solemn and religious event.

If the 60s were better times, perhaps it is because the Church and the State were so close to each other, there was so much respect and cooperation with each other. We can only hope that we would have the same cooperation not only with the Catholic Church, but with the business sector as well for the next biggest event to unfold in our country… the 12th ASEAN Summit come December, which, by the way, would also have the ASEAN Business Summit.

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At the height of the 12th ASEAN Summit preparations, the concerns of my sister, Mrs. Adela A. Kono, vice chairwoman of the Regional Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons in Region 7, on the comprehensive view of accessibility in the international setting was whether in the frenzy of the building activities, international standards on the accessibility of the edifices to be used during the ASEAN Summit would be bypassed or taken for granted.

But this was not to be… I was at the Cebu Country Club three weeks ago when I stumbled upon the general membership meeting of the Cebu Contractors Association (CCA), where they expressed support for the Accessibility Monitoring Committee (AMC) headed by engineer Josefa T. Ylanan, Cebu City assistant building official. The CCA will now sit in the committee, which is tasked to police the implementation of BP 344 (Accessibility Law) in infrastructure, buildings, telecommunications and transportation. The CCA has also asked the committee to contribute a three-page article to its upcoming yearbook called "Cebu Builders Directory" for the purpose of sharing knowledge of universal standards of accessibility with its counterparts all over the country. Kudos to CCA president George Hong for giving persons with disabilities accessibility!

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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.