Getting things done

KUALA LUMPUR – There is always a temptation to compare what one has left behind to one’s destination on arrival. More so if my point of departure is NAIA 1 after Milenyo, a typhoon so strong we had not seen anything like it for more than a decade. To arrive in Singapore’s Changi seems an infinite traverse. From the disorderly to the orderly, from dark to light and discomfort to comfort. In a sense, even if the contrast is so stark, the comparison is unseemly. Coming from different contexts, while both may be airports these are necessarily two objects. Both airports have to be taken in their own terms. It is also true for myself who must approach my departure from NAIA after a storm and arrival at placid, work-a-day Changi as two distinct experiences.

Over at NAIA, the humidity was oppressive with only a few old fans to cool passengers even for those waiting in the supposed luxury of airline lounges. My friend, Onie Nakpil, the harassed honcho for the Airline Operators Council was running to and fro monitoring whatever emergency measures could be had to lessen the discomfort of travelers in an airport, rendered insufferably humid without air-conditioning.

I did ask him why there were no generators in the country’s premier international airport. To think that even small stores in Makati would have these whirring as soon as the lights went off. Yah? He said, "try to do that" in this land of investigation. He gave me a new perspective I had never thought of. Think of the red tape that airport officials would have to go through just for the purchase of a single generator. What more if it was for generators to keep an entire airport running efficiently in an emergency?

Think of COA, the Senate, the Ombudsman all breathing down your neck for even suggesting an initiative for emergency measures and the media coverage even before a single evidence had been presented.

This is not an apology for those who should be investigated. The perspective to which I was led at NAIA after a storm was about a general climate of suspicion behind every government activity. That is the flip side to the constant blame and carping. It has a cost. We don’t get things done. Worse, the incentive is passed on to do-nothing legislators who earn their keep simply by investigating or more accurately announcing an investigation through newspaper headlines. I am told that a Senate investigation gets an immediate, no questions asked appropriation of half a million pesos each time it is called.

The upshot of such an atmosphere is that we cannot expect even such a simple and basic necessity like buying a generator to use for emergencies. There may be bad and corrupt airport officials but there must be another way of dealing with them without discouraging good airport officials with initiative. There is just no incentive for getting things done. Better to leave things undone and not get into trouble. Who wants to be pointed to as the ‘culprit who bought generators.’ We need to find the proper balance for punishing corruption and getting things done. There may be good officials who might have wanted a more comfortable airport that day but they have been immobilized. "So what is the answer?" I asked Onie. "Privatize it," he said. "Then you will have your generators in a jiffy."

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Exiled big shots. The current joke among journalists this side of town is Thailand’s toppled PM, Thaksin Shinawatra. He waved away the curious horde when asked if he was staying on in London. "Yes," he said, as he entered his sumptuous London apartment, "for a well-deserved rest from politics." As if he had any choice cried the cynical journalists. Whatever. Thaksin, a billionaire former prime minister will not be alone in exile. He will be in good company of other exiled big shots.

The long list of exiles mentioned in Andrew Mueller’s article in Independent Magazine entitled ‘Dun Rulin’’. There’s Abdala Bucaram, Ecuadorian president often compared to our own Erap, who was chucked out of office in 1997 by his Congress, declaring him ‘mentally incompetent.’ He went to Panama but returned in 2005 to try his luck again with governing but he failed to win his countrymen’s heart and minds, tired of his jokes. He is believed to be back in Panama.

Then there is old time Marcos family friend, Benazir Bhutto, scion of an influential Pakistan family and two time prime minister. She left Pakistan in 1999 after her government was sacked for corruption. Others in the list of Thaksin’s companions are Alberto Fujimori of Peru, Charles Taylor of Liberia, Jean Claude Duvalier, booted out of Tahiti almost at the same time as the Marcoses from the Philippines. There are others, but interestingly Imelda Marcos gets equal billing even if she has long ended her exile. "Allowed home she twice ran for president with conspicuous lack of success and eventually opened a museum dedicated to her collection of footwear." Not quite accurate reporting but there you are – another poke at former Imeldific who I hear is off to another medical visit to Hongkong.

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Going global. The debate on globalization may be ongoing but ordinary people are already living it. Consider the last few days about myself. After the devastation wrought by Milenyo, my husband and I were winging our way to a long planned visit to my son, Eduardo in Singapore, then onward to my daughter, Veronica formerly of CNN, now with Al-Jazeera International. She lives in Kuala Lumpur where the broadcasting group’s Asia headquarters is based. (For those interested, they have had ongoing dry-runs before launch in November, I am told.)

The stop-over in Singapore was for a day – barely enough time to eat a dimsum breakfast near his flat in Holland Peak. From Singapore we flew to Kuala Lumpur posthaste. Veronica was not home when we arrived at her lovely home on Kalan Beverly in suburban Kuala Lumpur. She was still in London over the weekend for a surprise party organized by her husband, CNN war photographer Mark Phillips and her friends from school days at the Groucho Club, the watering hole for journalists in London. Immediately on arrival from that transcontinental trip for a night of London partying she was back at her Al-Jazeera desk in Petronas building and husband Mark was off for an interview with Prime Minister Badawi. The pace might be dizzying but to these young people this is as usual. They have gone global.

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My e-mail is [email protected]