A flight to the Finnish: And the death anniversary of the former Emperor of the Blue Ants

Our President has taken off for Helsinki, Finland, to give a keynote speech at the 6th Asia-Europe conference there.

Although a busy schedule has been drawn up for La Gloria there, it might be useful for her to take a closer look at the meeting’s host country, Finland itself – and the Finnish people.

While it has been decades since this journeyman journalist has been to Finland, and NOKIA, which is synonymous with that tiny nation (more popular by name than Finland’s real title, Suomi), has expanded by leaps and bounds, this country of 187,000 lakes, I’m told, remains basically the same. With a population of only 5 million (6 percent Swedish-speaking), and a total area of 338,114 sq. km., the country remains 65 percent forest, 10 percent water, 8 percent cultivated land – and the remaining 17 percent urban and small-company "industrial." Helsinki itself has just half a million inhabitants all told.

What’s interesting is that the Finns "harvest" their forests and export lumber, paper, and other wood products without losing their forest "cover." This is because the log "farmer", who owns the tree-filled property he "harvests", immediately replants before he utilizes the next section. In short, there is constant and continuing renewal – in contrast with our archipelago where the loggers eat through square kilometer after kilometer of forest like an army of insatiable termites, and the kaingeros (slash-and-burn artists) decimate the rest.

Another phenomenon is the marvelous, government-sponsored educational system. In 1970, my wife and I attended a number of conferences there, and one of the most effective speakers was the Minister of Economics and Finance (hope I got his title right). When somebody in the audience inquired during the open forum how Finland had managed to repay the billions of rubles in terrible War Damage and Reparations the Soviets had imposed on it when they surrendered to Moscow at the end of The Continuation War of 1944, the Minister explained: "We Finns were basically an agricultural nation, but we realized we had to industrialize in order to be able to generate the money to repay that tremendous war debt. And so, we launched a universal education program in order to teach our people, and reorient our society."

There you are! Education was for them, as it should be for us, the key to progress, prosperity for all – and, eventually, happiness.

One trait we might emulate from the Finns (not their prodigious propensity to imbibe gallons of vodka and other "heartwarming" liquor from morning till night) is sisu. (Be sure you got it spelled right).

Sisu – or true grit, courage and perseverance under the most difficult circumstances – is what made this tough little nation stand up to the powerful Soviet Red Army during the first Red invasion called the Winter War. Outnumbered a thousand to one, outgunned, and without armored units, the redoubtable Finns under the command of the great Gustave Mannerheim (who had once served in the Russian Cavalry), would come zipping in on skis in the night, hose down the Soviet tanks and their crews with icy water, and the tankmen would freeze helplessly in their armored "coffins". These commando attacks, carried on relentlessly, the remorseless Finnish "Davids" against the Soviet "Goliath" without pause, initially halted the Russian offensive in its tracks.

When the Russians inevitably won the war which raged from 1939 to 1940, the Finns were forced to sign a peace treaty in March 1940 in which they ceded huge tracts of land to the Soviet Union. The entire population of the surrendered land, some 442,000 Karelians, were driven out by Moscow and had to be resettled elsewhere in Finland.

In our journey, we went to Musta Kissa (doesn’t mean you-must-kiss, mind you), Lapenranta, and down to Turku. In the latter, charming port city, we were guests of the late Virgilio "Gil" Hilario and his wife, the former Miss Universe (from Finland), Armi Kuusela.

The last time I went to Finland was a week after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown not far away in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the USSR. The Finns – whose Lapland areas had been affected in part by the fall-out – kidded me about flying north to see the "radioactive" girls among the reindeer.

Oh well, I hope La Presidenta enjoys her stay over there in that land which lies in the embrace of the Baltic, from the Gulf of Finland to the Gulf of Bothnia.

* * *

Speaking about tree-planting, there’s been much propaganda about the "Green Philippine Highways" program launched with great fanfare by Secretary Angelo T. Reyes and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The plan is to fight "pollution" by planting trees along the 2,176 km. Pan-Philippine Highway that stretches from Laoag City in Ilocos Norte through Cagayan to Davao City in Mindanao; the 439-km Manila North Road from Laoag through La Union to Bulacan; the 824-km West Nautical Highway from Batangas City through Mindoro, Aklan, and Negros Oriental, to Sibugay and Zamboanga; and Metro Manila’s thoroughfares.

We’ve all seen the television coverage and the film clips of that tree planting program which pledges the planting of at least 516,000 seedlings. I trust that after all the hip-hip-hoorah, the government doesn’t abandon this grand effort, and lets the seedlings die, or the new trees wither away, from neglect, as has happened so often before.

Everybody hails this initiative and we, the public, ought to support it all the way. However, such a plan was proposed before – and not acted on.

President GMA should ask Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo, who’s travelling with her what happened when he, very much earlier, broached the idea in the Senate in 1995.

As a Senator in those days, Bert Romulo had filed Senate Bill 259, entitled "Providing for the Planting of Trees along all National, Provincial, City, Municipal and Barangay Roads". Senator Romulo pointed out that "as of the end of 1991", the national road network totaled 160,560 km. as follows: (a) National Roads, 26,272 km; (b) Provincial Roads, 29,156 km.; (c) City Roads, 3,949; (d) Municipal Roads, 12,820; (e) Barangay Roads, 88,363 km.

Referring to Section 16 of Article II of the 1987 "Cory" Constitution, Romulo quoted: "The State shall protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature."

His bill proposed the "planting of trees along Philippine roadways" as enumerated above. What happened? The bill – as so often happens in the Senate – died aborning.

If the Romulo bill had been enacted into law and implemented, our highways and roadways would now have full-grown trees, and we would be literally drowning in healthy chlorophyll – not gasping our lungs out in pollution.

We are one of the most backward nations in tree-planting, and, for that matter, in reforestation. As Bert pointed out so accurately, "throughout the ASEAN countries, and of course in Japan and the Western nations, trees line the highways, roads and streets." Sus, what line our roads, if not junkyards, drab building fronts, and garbage, are billboards.

Whatta country – our air polluted by vehicular emissions, and verbally polluted, even worse, by political ranting.

* * *

I wonder why China is commemorating the death anniversary of its former "Great Helsman" Mao Zedong. I sometimes wonder whether the idea is to honor him, or to express some kind of subliminal relief that he died at ten minutes past midnight on the morning of 9 September 1976 – before he managed to destroy China entirely.

Sure, in Beijing as all over the People’s Republic of China, there is a great deal of nostalgic "kitsch" about Mao. I myself am an inveterate collector of Mao stamps, Mao posters, figures, and all that stuff.

The late Chairman Deng Xiaoping, the man who really turned China around with his Four Modernizations and his doctrine of pragmatic market socialism (symbolized by his famous assertions, like "to get rich is glorious" and "it doesn’t matter what color the cat as long as it catches mice") personally detested Mao. He had been humiliated, brutalized, and his life threatened during the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. Red Guards had hurled Deng’s son, Deng Pu-fang out of an upstairs window, which resulted in his being crippled and in a wheelchair for life.

Yet, Deng and his government still hung Mao Zedong’s huge portrait at the entrance to the Forbidden City, staring down – with all the tourist cameras popping at it – on the vastness of Tiananmen Square. In his mausoleum at the other end of the Square, Mao lies enshrined – mummified, really, like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Moscow’s Red Square – "sleeping" underneath a blanket consisting of the starry red flag of the country, to be worshipped by thousands of Chinese and foreign tourists daily.

I guess, Mao has become a Poster Boy to reinforce the continuance in control of the Chinese Communist Party and the legitimacy of Mao’s successors at the pinnacle of power.

On the other hand, like his former friend, then rival, the murderous Joseph Stalin – their relationship dated back to the 1920s – Mao Zedong caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history (caused by his demented Great Leap Forward). In all, more than 70 million Chinese died under Mao’s rule – all in peacetime, not in war. He did wage war, as when he sent the People’s Liberation Army against the Americans, South Koreans and their Allies in the Korean War in 1950-53 – a war in which he lost his favorite son.

* * *

I managed to travel through much of China during the Mao era – now bathed by Chinese who never endured it with the nostalgic glow of romance – from Guangzhou to Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang (Mukden), An Shan, etc., and found people living under the most miserable conditions.

Everybody dressed alike and looked alike in drab Mao jackets (men and women appearing to be clones of each other). Everybody recited Maoist cant, and waved the little Red Book like a Bible or Koran. In the end, Mao quarreled with and destroyed all his Marshals, and other Chinese leaders, including fellow "Long Marchers". The only one who endured – and kept China going probably – was Premier Zhou En-lai, who was able to assure Mao that he was content to be forever a loyal Number Two. Indeed, one biographer best described Mao in that period as "The Emperor of the Blue Ants."

Mao’s doctor finally revealed in a book how Mao never brushed his teeth, and was a serial lecher, fancying and grabbing young girls as he travelled along, and keeping dozens of wives and mistresses.

Of the more than 15 books on Mao I’ve read, the most interesting was that which recently came out, MAO, The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Jonathan Cape, London, 2005). Jung Chang’s book, Wild Swans sold more than 10 million copies, and, as a former Red Guard, she knows whereof she speaks. (Jon Halliday is her husband).

Oh well. In 1949, when Mao proclaimed the victory of Communism in Tiananmen Square, he and his peasant armies did change the world – and China, unified by force, began its painful march – bleeding all the way – towards superpower status in the 21st century. For that, we can credit Mao Zedong.