No more beso-beso

The Presidential warning has gone international. This week’s Time Magazine, August 23 edition, has announced on its Verbatim page that GMA won’t turn either one or the other cheek.

"Please, all the men in the country, so that I won’t be rude to you, do not attempt to kiss me." The magazine’s Verbatim editor wrote in explanation that thus spake "Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines, addressing affectionate male citizens who often greet her with kisses on both cheeks."

Any potential bandits or kissing Lolos are thus forewarned.

La Presidenta is right, of course. After all, she is the President. And the danger lies in the fact that this is a very kissy-kissy town. You’d think that in the Time of SARS (with apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, Love in a Time of Cholera) men and women would refrain from beso-beso. But this is not so. The chika-chika remains in full spate. I like the way ladies bump cheeks, then blow air-kisses into the atmosphere. But greeting the President of the Strong Republic is another matter altogether.

* * *

The President is flying to Cebu today – she keeps going back to her "bastion" down there quite frequently these days. The Presidential yacht, officially known as our Philippine Navy’s BRP Ang Pangulo, is already there, moored and ready.

Perhaps it’s out there in the New Queen City of the South that she may make some important announcements.

In the meantime, it’s "all systems go" for her state visit to the People’s Republic of China. Ambassador Wu Hongbo, in fact, is flying back to Beijing tomorrow to begin working out preparations for GMA’s arrival there next September 2. She will get the full treatment: a 21-gun salute, and a parade by a composite honor guard – probably on the Tiananmen Square side of the Great Hall of the People.

The Chief Executive, of course, will be attending an international conference involving, I think, some 20 or so nations. However, in contrast to the others, her three-night stay (she’s due home in September 5) will be a State Visit.

She is also scheduled to meet, in particular, with another "State Visitor", Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Alikabok tells me there will be important developments arising out off her talks with China’s President, her host, Hu Jintao. This is the right moment for palaver, because an increasingly prosperous and self-confident China is bent on extending its influence and "friendships" – including its aid, assistance and "advice" portfolio.

When Hu Jintao’s "Third Generation" predecessor, former President Jiang Zemin, took the helm in 1989, China was hemmed in by sanctions by many countries and an ill-repute compounded by a United Nations Human Rights Commission resolution levelled at it decrying the bloody repression, with tanks and guns, of the Tiananmen "pro-democracy" movement, with hundreds of demonstrators crushed by armor and mowed down by gunfire.

It took a tremendous effort by Jiang and his "team" to restore China to international "respectability", smoothing out Beijing’s relations with Japan, Europe, and the United States, preside over the hand-over of Hong Kong, then, in the end, begin holding hands with US President Bill Clinton in 1997 and 1998. (Why, Jiang and Bill even exchanged Fortune Cookies at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC summit in Auckland, New Zealand, even though the Chinese President was being harassed there by demonstrators protesting his crackdown on the peaceful adherents of Falun Gong.)

Jiang Zemin’s most "popular" achievement was racked up in 2001 when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2008 Olympics to Beijing, as well as China gaining membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

* * *

With regard to the Olympics, in a nation of 1.3 billion, I guess there will be no problem with selling tickets.

In Athens, sad to say, I believe The Asian Wall Street Journal expressed its plight correctly when it ran a piece by Craig Whitlock entitled, Hey, Where Is Everybody?

The Games there have entered their fourth day, with very few in attendance. Olympic organizers ruefully admit they have sold only 2.9 million tickets out of the 5.2 million tickets available. Since the Greek government is footing most of the $7 billion "bill", naturally, it’s worried.

In Sydney, where the Games were held four years ago, 6.7 million tickets had been sold. In Atlanta in 1996, 8.3 million tickets were sold. The hoped-for flood of tourists hasn’t materialized, and since there are less than 12 million Greeks, neither are the local folk buying. And their two most-admired Olympians are on the verge of being knocked out of contention by suspicions about their not having showed up for the requisite drug tests, pleading (through their lawyers) they had been "hospitalized" in a motorcycle accident.

The Greeks invented a word for almost everything, including "tragedy", and even our local joke called "demo-cracy". What’s the Greek word for bankruptcy? I already know our local word for it – and it’s NAPOCOR.

But I wish the Greeks all the best! Maybe, as they did in days of Mythology, they’ll pull it off with panache, without the meddling of those mischievous gods and goddesses from Mount Olympus. Where’s Zorba the Greek, now that his hometown needs him?

The trouble with the Olympic Games is that they’ve become too much of a marathon, even on the part of the sports-enthusiasts and viewers. I’ve attended only two Olympics – the one in 1968 in Mexico City (where I ended up covering the student riots and "massacres" instead), and the big one in Atlanta (Georgia). In the latter, we had to run back and from all over the city – fortunately air-conditioned shuttle buses were provided by Coca-Cola (with all the Coca-Cola related products you could drink) and in Georgia it was hot, sticky and humid.

The next time, I vowed, we’d just stay home and watch those Games on television. In any event, alas, I don’t see too much enthusiasm being generated thus far – but who knows?

China is already learning "lessons" from the boliliazos in Athens.

Coming back to La Gloria’s scheduled visit to Beijing she’ll meet with a more confident Hu Jintao and his "Fourth Generation" Politburo.

In their perceptive book, China’s New Rulers, Professors Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley said that "Western governments may find Hu’s earnest and businesslike style a welcome change from that of Jiang Zemin. While Jiang tended to devote large parts of diplomatic meetings to small talk and atmospherics, Hu typically gets past formalities quickly and sets out an agenda for the meeting. . . it has showed something of his personal style. Hu may be dull but he is businesslike."

I dunno. I liked Jiang’s breezy style and his corny sallies at song, backed by pretty songbirds and deep baritoned men, attired in People’s Liberation Army uniforms. Never having encountered Mr. Hu, though, I can’t say anything about him.

The late Chairman Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, an impish but tough as nails little gnome of an "Emperor", with his thick Szechwan accent (even when speaking French – yes, he did) was fun. He was shrewd, wise – and humorous.

* * *

I spoke with Senate President Franklin Drilon yesterday and he told me that the Senate would push forward the idea of offering a "tax amnesty" so that, he said, "we can expand the tax base". He also assured me that all Senate committees would be firmed up today, including – hopefully – the joint Commission on Appointments.

Since the "tax amnesty" scheme is gaining ground in the House of Representatives, an idea which Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Guillermo Parayno strongly rejects, there will be a few fireworks, I’m sure, in the debates over the topic.

In the same issue of TIME this week is an interesting article by Michael Schuman, with Correspondent Nelly Sindayen, datelined Manila. It was headlined "GOING FOR BROKE?" Then, in subhead it warned: "Chronic unemployment, a yawning deficit and uncollected taxes are sinking the Philippines."

The article reports that the 56-year old BIR Chief Willy Parayno, tired of it all, had tried to resign last July. "For nearly two years," TIME said, Parayno "has battled tax cheats and rampant corruption, trying to fix a dysfunctional tax system that is so full of holes the country’s solvency is threatened." The President told Parayno to stay put.

"The Philippine economy," mourns the newsmagazine, "has long been one of Asia’s worst performers, left in the dust while neighbors have raced ahead. Over the past five years, Philippine GDP growth averaged 3.9 percent, compared with 6.5 percent for other developing countries across the region." (By the way, even Indonesia’s economy, its GDP – we learned yesterday – grew 4.3 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter, not bad news for Merdeka Day.)

"Jobs are in such short supply that street demonstrators in Manila last week," TIME pointed out, "protested a government ban on sending workers to Iraq – a ban Arroyo enacted after Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz was taken hostage by Iraqi insurgents on July 8 and threatened with beheading unless the Philippines withdrew its soldiers. The protesters were undeterred by the bloodshed and kidnappings – they said they were willing to risk their lives for relatively high-paying jobs abroad."

Chronically high unemployment, currently 13.7 percent, Time noted, "means about one out of every 10 of the country’s 86 million people is compelled to seek work overseas, often in miserable or dangerous circumstances."

Another observation: "More than 40 percent of the country’s population lives on $2 or less a day – with 28 percent of the government budget being used just to make interest payments, there is little money left over to help the poor."

Well, those are the same things we’ve been saying in this corner, so I won’t belabor or criticize Time’s dire findings.

But this is the challenge which faces GMA, and indeed, our still-squabbling government leaders in Congress – and, by golly, our legislators are not even – with the exception of Senator Ping Lacson – publicly offering to give up their "pork".

"Roll out the barrel" used to be a "good time" tune. "Kick out the pork barrel" might be a more timely one.