GMA to keynote Unesco meet of 3,000 delegates at Paris General Conference

PARIS – President Macapagal-Arroyo will deliver the keynote address at the 32nd General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) this morning here in Paris.

She is one of the two keynote speakers who are opening this meeting of more than 3,000 delegates from 190 countries in every hemisphere, among them a large number of ministers, with five heads of state also attending, plus America’s First Lady, Mrs. Laura Bush.

The other speaker is the President of Italy, Mr. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who is representing Europe, and the "developed" countries while President GMA is speaking for the Asia-Pacific membership.

On succeeding days, French President Jacques Chirac; the President of Kyrgyzstan, Mr. Askar Akaev; and Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo will deliver speeches.

What’s significant about the conference is that UNESCO Director-General, Ambassador Koichiro Matsuura (who visited Manila in May last year to launch World Press Freedom Day from our country) will welcome the United States of America back into UNESCO.

The US is rejoining the world body after having angrily resigned 19 years ago during the 13-year Director-Generalship of Mr. Amathar M’Bow from Senegal, a fiercely abrasive anti-American UNESCO chief whose policies and attitudes finally irritated Washington, DC to the point of rupture. (Since the US contributed almost a third of UNESCO’s budget, this was a big blow to the international organization financially, not just in terms of reach and prestige.) I understand that Mrs. Bush, representing her husband President George W. Bush, will speak at the meeting tomorrow (Tuesday).

The formal "return" of America as the UNESCO’s 190th member— State will officially be marked on October 1 this week. In the meantime, the main item on the agenda will be the examination and adoption of the UNESCO’s draft program and budget for 2004 to 2005.

visited Manila in May last year to launch World Press Freedom Day from our country) will welcome the United States of America back into UNESCO.

The US is rejoining the world body after having angrily resigned 19 years ago during the 13-year Director-Generalship of Mr. Amathar M’Bow from Senegal, a fiercely abrasive anti-American UNESCO chief whose policies and attitudes finally irritated Washington DC to the point of rupture. (Since the US contributed almost a third of UNESCO’s budget, this was a big blow to the international organization financially, not just in terms of reach and prestige.) I understand that Mrs. Bush, representing her husband President George W. Bush, will speak at the meeting tomorrow (Tuesday).

The formal "return" of American as the UNESCO’s 190th member State will officially be marked on October 1 this week. In the meantime, the main item on the agenda will be the examination and adoption of the UNESCO’s draft program and budget for 2004 to 2005.

The General Conference will also elect the UNESCO Executive Board made up of 58 member-states.

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President GMA arrived here in Paris yesterday afternoon, almost half a day earlier than expected.

She flew here from Rome aboard her chartered Presidential Airbus when the Italian capital was hit by a massive "brownout" (I mean blackout).

So you see, it‘s not just New York, the northeastern United States, Canada, and Luzon which are hit by blackouts which paralyze everything. Even the Eternal City this time was plagued by a terrible power outage. This just goes to show that God spares no one, not even the Vatican.

Perhaps our own government ought to begin treating Meralco better. With the help of God, the Manila Electric Company could, if it collapses, wreak havoc on our economy, not just on our nerves.

Western Europe, indeed, has been undergoing more frequent power outages in the past three months owing to the jump in the demand for electric power. Not being a scientist, I won’t try to pontificate on why the electricity-delivery systems more frequently experience a breakdown these days even in highly-industrialized countries. The layman’s reason for the "strain" being put on electric power systems – as anyone can plainly see – is the fact that more and more people have been buying and resorting to air-conditioners and cooling equipment.

Would you believe, in such "civilized" metropolis as Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Berlin, many offices and homes never installed air-conditioning on the basis of the idea that hot summers were short (lasting only eight to ten weeks) then the temperatures would cool off with the advent of Autumn? This year, however, temperatures were so devastatingly high that entire families – those who couldn’t rush off to the beaches and the high mountain resort areas to seek relief – checked into five-star and deluxe hotels in order to "survive" in an air-conditioned "refugee center"! Those, who could do so, even hied themselves off to the Scandinavian north and the Baltics. (Or presumably the North Pole.)

Here in Paris, everybody sweltered. During the vacation month of August, those who couldn’t "escape", my friends told me, simply had to sweat it out – suffering beyond their memory and past experience. The leading daily, Le Figaro, last Thursday confirmed that no less than 14,800 had died here in France during the heat wave of August-September. Many of the victims were, of course, elderly persons who were left uncared for during that crisis, which saw temperatures shooting up to above 40 Celsius at times.

What surprised Filipino friends who’ve lived here for years is the callous attitude of some locals whose elderly and feeble fathers or mothers succumbed while they were abroad on vacation. They reportedly advised funeral parlors or handlers to keep the bodies of their "loved ones" refrigerated until their holidays were over and they could come home to arrange for the burial ceremonies. The above-mentioned were the "affectionate" ones. Hundreds of bodies, up to now, remain unclaimed. Their families and relatives never bothered to come get them. (Perhaps this is because unclaimed corpses have to be buried by the State at government expense. But I’m not blamecasting. Possibly the bereaved families simply couldn’t afford it.) Not to try to sound superior, but such a thing would be unthinkable in our Philippine context.

We have a couple of virtues, in retrospect, which we still can extol. And these are family ties. (Those ties, naturally, can also be a drawback and a drag on national progress, owing to nepotism.)

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The past three days here in Paris were glorious and sunny, but it began to drizzle yesterday. Thus, GMA got a comparatively wet welcome.

Our Ambassador to France, Mr. Hector Villaroel, led the officials and community here in welcoming the President at the Orly Airport. She was also met, I’ll also have to mention with a blush, by my wife, Ambassador Preciosa S. Soliven, who is our envoy to UNESCO and the Secretary-General of the UNESCO Commission of the Philippines.

The President was accompanied by the First Gent, Atty. Jose Miguel Arroyo, but there was no Jose Pidal in sight. Also in the party were Congressman and Mrs. Prospero Nograles, Rep. Rodolfo Bacani, Rep. Antonio Eduardo Nachura, Rep. Abraham Kahlil Mitra, Presidential Spokesperson Ignacio "Toting" Bunye, speech writer Silvestre Afable, Jr., and others.