A meaningful ASEAN Summit

Hospitality has been a positive trait observed about Filipinos by foreigners. Even before the coming of the Spaniards, this trait has been part of our people's culture.

Our ancestors had different ways of showing their hospitality. Some welcomed their foreign visitors with a blood compact. Surely, the guests in the past must have been invited to feasts as well, as our ancestors were observed to have loved feasting with much food and wine shared among hosts and visitors. Hosting the ASEAN Summit then is acceptable to Filipinos. Why not welcome neighbors and friends from nearby and distant countries, especially if the reason for this reunion is not just the feast but the genuine unity and development of a stronger regional bloc of nations and peoples?

Hosting becomes questionable when the preparations for the visitors are done at the expense of the people of the hosting area. Hosting becomes an issue when the costing is questioned. Where did all the millions come from? Hopefully not for borrowed foreign money to be paid again by the Filipino public generally excluded during the ASEAN feast. Where did all the millions go? Certainly, not for jobs for the unemployed, homes for the dislocated, food for the hungry, care and attention for the poor and needy of the host country and communities.

There would have been no problem if the hosting was done within the limits of our genuine capacities and realities. Existing structures and buildings would have been used and maximized. There would have been no need to rush new buildings and road repairs, no untimely displacement of thousands, children included, uprooted from their school, who, like the rest of their family, have been abruptly dislocated from what they used to call their homes. Months ahead, the public would have been urged to do a thorough clean-up of their beloved communities, cities and province so that millions for sudden, massive clean-up would have been saved beyond the ASEAN fiesta!

The argument is we spend now, we reap more than our expenses later on. For the nth time, our people are promised rewards after the costs. Within an unequal system, will the economic rewards that have taken centuries to reach the continuing, swelling number of the impoverished, finally reach them after this summit? How does one properly measure and compensate adequately for human rights violated, for example? Will those who lost their homes, their jobs, their schooling reap the profits as promised and envisioned by the hosts?

It is definitely okey to show the world the Filipino brand of hospitality. It is, however, unacceptable to force a brand of hospitality and hosting that stretches costs that violate the Filipino poor's present rights to home, employment, education, and other welfare concerns.

Still and all, despite all these issues involving costing and hosting, the world hopes for a genuine, meaningful summit beyond the fiesta preparations. Like the Center for Participatory Governance, Akbayan Partylist, Bisig-Cebu, Alliance of Progressive Labor, Movement for the Advancement of Student Power, and the Olof Palme International Center-Philippine Office, the world expects that the ASEAN will engage in a frank discussion about improving the lives of the people of Myammar and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient who scored a landslide victory in Myanmar's 1990 elections. For that matter, the world hopes that the rights and plight of the people within ASEAN will be much improved by legitimate and responsible governments beyond the expected meaningful summit.

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