And please don’t forget to flush!

One of the most applauded portions of President GMA’s speech last Wednesday at the MOPC dinner in the Palace was her remark that the taxiways of NAIA-3 – after the government’s takeover of the long-stalled PIATCO terminal – are already in use.

The President is right to have pushed through the "seizure" and de-mothballing of that sordid White Elephant. She gave the lawyers more than a year and a half to argue the case to perdition, got flak in foreign courts, endured jibes and insults on the case. In fact, the government, especially after the international airport manager was barred by PIATCO security guards from even entering the terminal-3 building to inspect it some months ago, was made to look weak and toothless. Imagine the government’s airport chief being locked out and humiliated by a bunch of private watchmen in his own airport.

The Chief Executive says she is pushing through with the opening of Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA-3) and that’s that. Damn the torpedos and the legal "barricades" which have for too long been set up by the pesky PIATCO lawyers in a desperate attempt to bar the way. GMA’s invocation of Presidential power is an example of the ethical use of power to pursue the public good.

The Supreme Court has, in a sense, already upheld her, initially, by issuing – in a two-page resolution – a temporary restraining order to Pasay City Regional Trial Court Branch 117 Judge Henrick Gingoyon and the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (PIATCO) to stop the release of $62.3 million to the consortium which built the terminal as a downpayments for the expropriated facility.

The President told us at our Manila Overseas Press Club dinner that the government would pay all that is legitimately owed the contractors and builders, "but first we will have to determine what is actually due and what was properly spent to build the terminal". This is fair. In the meantime, the President is right: Let’s just get NAIA-3 operational and going.

Just do it!

In response to a query during the open forum as to whether she planned to go on a state visit to Berlin in April, she replied that she did not know if she’d go since "I want to stay in the country while we have to solve domestic problems".

This is the same remark she made to this writer at a lunch in Malacanang last December in which I had asked the same question. "I don’t want to go to Germany if I don’t have anything positive to report on, say, the NAIA-3 stand-off."

She had, in November, even sent Trade and Industry Secretary Cesar Purisima to Germany as a "troubleshooter" to try to arrange some sort of deal with Fraport, the German consortium involved, and the German government. But all those earnest efforts failed – I think Fraport hung tough, so here we are.

Mrs. President, you’ve done your best to reach an accommodation but talking time is over. Just do it!

* * *

There’s a great deal to be done, in truth, to "fix" that darned PIATCO Terminal, and I don’t mean just legally. Aside from the deterioration of the equipment inside owing to more than a year and a half of stalemate, much was left undone according to independent sources.

During the six months it will take to get Terminal-3 going, I submit that the government go all-out to improve the existing NAIA-1, which is a disgrace.

For instance, I spoke too soon when I praised the NAIA’s "new" toilets. It turned out that I had been shown, in early December, the ONLY modern toilet installed in the NAIA-3 since our Liberation from the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986. It seems that too much democracy leads to smelly toilets.

When we left for Paris last December 26 – Sus, the day of infamy of the terrible tsunami – I got to see some of the other toilets at the NAIA-1 and they were unchanged, still putrid, lacking water or paper towels, and simply awful. (We left by Cathay-Pacific for our transfer to Air France in Hong Kong and learned about the tsunami only when we were boarding).

On my return from Amsterdam, via Bangkok, I visited another toilet in the terminal near the Lufthansa’s appointed luggage carousel, and it was stinking and dirty.

Here we have our officials from the President on down ululating about the prospects of attracting more tourists and investors. But we haven’t bothered to install new toilets or improve the ones we have. First things first, I’ll repeat. If we don’t show foreign arrivals we’re attending to the basics, how can they believe us when we brag about our achievements in grander matters?

I hate to dwell on something which sounds so petty as a matter of toilets, but as I read in the Financial Times of London some weeks ago – as usual, when I’m trying to resurrect it, I can’t find the clipping I so carefully put aside – that "the state of a nation is defined by its toilets". I believe it. When I first went to the People’s Republic of China in 1964, the airports were junk and the toilets were antideluvian. Just look at China’s major airports today. Go to the sparkling toilets in Pudong airport in Shanghai, or those in Beijing. Our NAIA-1 in contrast stinks like a sewer.

* * *

As a war correspondent, I’ve spent weeks, even months, in places where there are no toilets, but we must understand that in peacetime, the demand is for clean toilets, particularly in the "war" to attract investors and tourists.

Our rivals in the region have long ago passed us by. While we slept in our squatter-surrounded airports, with our terminals slowly falling apart, our neighbors built Changi International Airport, Don Muang Airport, and an even more sparkling terminal in Hong Kong. Sanamagan. Even Malaysia, where the Bhumis used to look like hicks who had just come from the kampungs (villages), has reared up its Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, constructed a completely streamlined airport, and passed us by.

What have we got left? Our traffic, our pollution, and our bombastic speeches.

One Thai friend told me, in a moment of surprising candor – surprising since Thais are so painfully polite they never tell you the truth about yourself – "Twenty years ago, we used to envy you Filipinos. Now, we pity you."

The one emotion we mustn’t endure is pity. Sometimes being heaped with scorn is better.

It’s time for a reality check – and for us to get moving.

After we fix the airport’s toilets, hopefully in the Year 2005, let’s move on to EDSA. In case we forget, EDSA is our country’s Main Street, its most important traffic artery.

What do we see? A dingy, ugly boulevard, in gridlock much of the time. The buildings alongside it are dirty, unpainted, and an architectural mishmash. Absolutely no zoning has been enforced. There have been no attempts to beautify it along any stretch. No trees to line the boulevard, no flowers, just smudged, repulsive and neglected façades.

For that matter, I wish I could say it is poorly lighted – but the truth is that EDSA is unlighted. EDSA is a national road – and, therefore, is the responsbility of the national government. So Malacañang cannot sidestep the question and blame the local governments along the way.

By golly, even the pedestrian overpasses are obnoxious-looking and tatty, without even a stab at painting any of them in pretty colors, or in any color at all!

Our people have, for generations, prided themselves as being a warm, caring, and sympathetic race, devoted to beauty and striving for the finer things in life.

Our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, was a writer, poet, sculptor, painter – and a lover of all things beautiful, including beautiful women. Why have we not followed his lead?

EDSA, I submit, should be declared an insult to our national character, not a reflection of it.

Let’s do something about it, once and for all.