EDITORIAL - Holiday will prove to Asean how crazy Filipinos are

So, the president has finally declared a four-day holiday in December in the cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapulapu, where the Asean Summit is to take place. But was the holiday really a surprise or a foregone conclusion?

One must remember that no president in Philippine history has been as quick as President Arroyo in declaring holidays. She has been on a holiday-declaring spree since the first day of her presidency.

Actually, this bent is rather strange for someone who earned an economics degree from one of the best schools in the USA. In more stable countries, a holiday can actually be good for the economy. In a struggling one like ours, however, it can drive things to the brink of collapse.

The underlying argument of Arroyo in embarking on her principle of holiday economics is that giving people more time in their hands will boost tourism, one of the few remaining sunshine industries, on the assumption that spare time automatically converts people into tourists.

But there is a fatal flaw in that over-simplistic argument inexplicably pushed by a US-educated economist. Arroyo seems to have missed the fact that having more time in one's hands is not synonymous with having more money in one's pockets.

Arroyo forgets that the biggest chunk of the population is so poor that even if she gives them pocket money to hie off on a vacation, they will most likely just wait for her to turn her back and then pocket the money and stay home.

The only ones who will go off on a vacation during holidays are the same people who have been going on vacation ever since holidays were invented. And even then, because of increasingly hard times, their numbers are even dwindling.

Now, if the sought-for compensating kick to tourism does not happen, the losses to business on account of the surfeit in unnecessary holidays will go unredeemed once the final economic figures are tallied.

As to the other alibis for the holiday, such as allowing people the chance to get a feel of the summit, that is a lot of bull. Summit venues are off-limits except to the most essential of folks. Poor holidaying Juan cannot just come knocking. If he insists, he will even be shot.

Security? It is better to let people stay indoors in their classrooms or in their places of work than have them out in their streets where the heat of the sun can drive them crazy. Who knows but somebody might just flip, pick up a stone, take aim, and wham.