Bring Out The Dirty Laundry

The Philippine Star

Thursday, October 31, 1996

Editorial

Three weeks to go before the summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, and Filipinos are in a frenzy — to show the world that the Philippines is not ready for such an international gathering. Every individual or group with an agenda wants to hold the nation hostage by threatening to disrupt the APEC summit during the two-day leaders' gathering. All manner of clotheslines are out, ready to welcome the APEC visitors with the nation's dirty laundry. It's as if the nation wants to know why all those world leaders, foreign delegates and journalists are coming to this unworthy, rotten nation where a human rights violator and opportunist pig lurks in every sleazy corner.

There's the usual bunch of lowlifes creating trouble, kidnapping for profit or robbing banks. But at least this bunch has consistency and doesn't care too much about timing. You know they'll strike with or without APEC, whoever's in power and whatever Jaime Cardinal Sin, Mike Velarde or any Islamic leader has to say. There are the usual incompetents in government, who waited until the eleventh hour to start demolishing squatter shanties that have invaded public parks and private property and clogged up Metro Manila's waterways. Thus were critics given fodder to accuse the administration of violating human rights simply to make the nation pretty for a two-day summit.

There's the group that wants to use APEC to dramatize the problem of East Timor — as if the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta hadn't highlighted the problem enough. It's this country's fate that its first major international event is being used to dramatize the world's waffling on a people's movement for freedom. At least Belo, who by most accounts doesn't hold Horta in high regard, has said he plans to stay home during the APEC summit.

As if these weren't enough, the workers' union of Philippine Airlines has threatened to stage a strike before APEC. Since the flag carrier is in charge of ground handling operations at the airport, a strike could seriously disrupt international flights. A wildcat strike, as far as the PAL union is concerned, should be a wonderful welcome for the APEC visitors. What better way to tell the world that the Philippines is about to go out of business?

This is not the end of the story: an alliance of 1,400 unions, including those at the Manila Electric Co. and the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., have expressed support for the planned wild-cat strike. When power rates are going up and you can't get a line without static when calling even within Metro Manila, what does the public have to say about this?

Of course the workers may have legitimate grievances; in this Third World country, 97 percent of the population feels overworked and underpaid. But only a few resort to national blackmail to get what they want. From the looks of it, the nation hasn't seen the last of the dirty laundry.