Hands off leader

The United Nations has issued an appeal to the world for it to send more aid to the Philippines, where close to a million people continue to struggle to get back on their feet after the ravages of typhoon Pablo late last year.

Specifically, the UN is appealing for $76 million in aid, readjusting upward its original appeal for $65 million, saying nearly a million Filipinos in Mindanao remain displaced. Of the original assessed amount of aid needed, only about $28 million had been raised.

 That the UN should step into the picture and launch an appeal for aid clearly indicates that whatever the Philippine government itself has done to meet the lingering problem must have been very inadequate.

And yet how ironic that while the UN felt concerned enough to launch an appeal for help on behalf of the Philippines, the country’s president was somewhere else, galivanting in Davos, where his presence was neither required nor necessary.

Davos is a place in Switzerland where world leaders in business, politics and academics meet annually for the World Economic Forum to help shape the various plans and programs to help improve global conditions. Aquino has no part whatsoever in the forum itself.

As this was written, Aquino did speak for about 10 minutes, at a panel discussion on the sidelines of the main forum. A photo of the president speaking, which appeared in a Philippine daily, clearly indicated how small the venue was.

Behind Aquino in the photo was a chest-high cabinet on which rested a gilded clock and a vase with white flowers. Behind these ornaments was a slim floor-to-ceiling mirror on which were reflected a few seated listeners. Clearly, he was not speaking to the world from a vast stage.

In other words, our president was just a minor actor in a huge global production and as such could have foregone the unessential trip in favor of more pressing matters that required his focus, like the one that drew the attention of no less than the United Nations.

Prior to his departure for Davos, much of the criticism against the needless trip dwelt on its cost to the country. Reports quoted a figure just short of P50 million. Frankly, I have no quarrel with the cost, big or small. If P50 million was what it required, so be it.

 To me, any official trip of a president, any president, should be amply reinforced with the kind of money befitting his stature as leader of a country. If former president Gloria Arroyo had an expensive steak dinner in New York, I expected nothing less from her. Dapat lang.

In fact I was aghast when, during his turn to visit the United States, Aquino, in a silly attempt to project himself the exact opposite of Arroyo, forced himself to eat a hotdog lunch on the sidewalks of the Big Apple. What a hypocrite.

There are certain dignities that the president of a country needs to preserve and protect on behalf of his countrymen. For poor as we are, we are not about ready to swallow the mental picture of our president eating hotdog on some sidewalk just to project an image nobody believes.

Forget presidents. Even the average Juan who gets the chance to be in New York would probably move heaven and earth to at least get a taste of what New York is all about. It makes no sense and proves nothing for anyone to travel halfway around the globe just to eat hotdog.

Nevertheless, despite feeling betrayed and humiliated by that presidential antic, that US visit of Aquino was still important enough to require his presence. He was at several business functions and attended both a UN General Assembly meeting and an Asean-US dialogue.

But Davos? Look at the picture again. It looked like Aquino was inside some restaurant function room talking to a wedding entourage. Clearly it was not the setting for a high-powered conference requiring the presence of heads of states and CEOs. It was a pure waste of time.