Best foot forward

Thank heavens for international gatherings. The road from Rizal Park to the NAIA has been given a fresh coat of asphalt, laid smoothly and quickly with minimal disruption of traffic flow.

On the traffic islands of Roxas Boulevard potted plants have sprung up. In the rush to replant, and possibly because of poor maintenance, some of the bushes are turning brown and might not make it even to the opening this weekend of the ministerial meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The ASEAN meetings – especially the regional forum next week where the United States, Russia and the European Union are participants – are of course the reason for the instant beautification program.

Beautification has not lost its derogatory connotation since Imelda Marcos became notorious for her excesses in promoting “the true, the good and the beautiful” when she was the first lady, Greater Manila governor and human settlements minister.

But instant beautification is exactly what we’re doing now: putting our best foot forward for guests, then happily reverting to our slovenly ways when everyone has gone home.

Chairman Bayani Fernando of the Metro Manila Development Authority is switching from garish pink to a rainbow of colors, painting houses lining MIA Road. Fernando has also offered to paint rusted rooftops around the NAIA with what we hope is not just cheap white kalburo — the type used on tombstones during the feast of the dead in November, meant to last for at least two days before it is washed away by rain.

The other day cops started rounding up street urchins, rugby sniffers and other vagrants especially around the Philippine International Convention Center, venue for the ASEAN gathering. The cops were honest enough to admit that they wanted the street people out of sight for the duration of the ASEAN meetings.

There is nothing wrong with putting our best foot forward, as long as it doesn’t involve corruption and human rights violations. Now if we could only sustain the improvements 365 days a year.

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Imelda Marcos got the basic idea right in her beautification and green revolution projects. But given the suffering of the people during martial law, her priorities were of course questionable. So were her fat commissions from the projects, as well as the methods employed to create beautiful surroundings overnight. Overpriced buildings were hurriedly constructed as monuments to the vanity of Imeldific, giving rise to the term “edifice complex.”

To shield visitors from the country’s eyesores, she ordered the slums along the roads from what was then the Manila International Airport (MIA) fenced off.

Now all the beautification activities related to the ASEAN meetings have rekindled memories in Aber Canlas, Ferdinand Marcos’ chief of what was then the public works, transportation and communications ministry.

Canlas recounted this week that when he was still deputy minister, he nearly became Marcos’ minister of agriculture for his efficiency in greening and beautification.

When the Cultural Center of the Philippines was newly constructed, Canlas recalled, Marcos noticed that the grass was turning brown. The next day when the president visited again, the grass had miraculously turned green. Canlas’ stroke of genius: he sprayed the grass with green paint.

Canlas applied his genius once again on the coconut trees around the Folk Arts Theater, Imeldific’s project, for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. Filipinos had never seen greener coconuts.

He faced a similar problem in Olot, Imelda’s hometown in Leyte where the green had turned brown in a nine-hole golf course that was to be inaugurated by the first lady. Unable to find spray-painting machinery in that backwater, Canlas grabbed spray rods for fertilizer from farmers and finished the job literally overnight.

On inauguration day it rained, but wooden planks were laid out for Imelda and her guests to walk on. One socialite, known for her carnival outfits, arrived so late the planks had been taken out of the rain by the time she reached the golf course. She showed up at the event complaining to Imelda that her white shoes had turned a horrible green. Imelda reportedly sniffed that it served the socialite right for arriving late.

In time beautification came to be associated with whitewashing public suffering.

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We haven’t fully gotten over that mindset, especially because, as the MMDA’s paint job shows, we still resort to instant beautification to cover eyesores.

Our roofs may be gleaming white, but no visitor can miss the shanties right outside the walls of the NAIA tarmac itself as his plane touches down. That’s the first sight that greets anyone arriving in Manila.

It will probably take a generation before we can get rid of urban blight in Metro Manila and achieve sufficient economic growth so there will be no need for Filipinos to live in slums.

The next best thing, when we try to put our best foot forward, is to draw visitors’ attention away from the urban blight. In this we should at least aim to sustain whatever improvements are made as we lay out the welcome mat for visitors.

Those houses on the road to NAIA do look somewhat better with a fresh coat of paint, even if the colors are as garish as the MMDA’s urinal pink. 

The new layer of asphalt must survive the typhoon season without developing potholes. Those potted bushes along Roxas Boulevard, which are turning brown from the shock of being transplanted in a rush, don’t come cheap and must be saved, and nurtured well beyond this ASEAN gathering. Allowing them to die is a waste of taxpayers’ money.

We should work for a clean, green environment even when there is no international gathering here. There are always foreign visitors in our country. When we love our own and are proud of what we have, we don’t even have to think of putting our best foot forward for guests. We know we are showing the world our best. Always.