Summitry

Like most everyone else, I haven’t the faintest idea of what was achieved at the National Socio-Economic Summit. President Arroyo should stop calling summits. They tend to generate unnatural expectations and you know how it is – the higher the expectations, the deeper the disappointments.

Summits are also natural magnets for opposition flak, especially when the opposition isn’t invited. How can you expect a moratorium on political bickering (the President’s Christmas wish) if you can’t even send the opposition a courtesy invitation to your socio-economic summit?

Not that I can blame the President completely. Our opposition isn’t interested in constructive opposition or critical collaboration at all, but only in getting her out of Malacañang by 2004, preferably earlier. Kuya Edong Angara has been a major disappointment to his original fans, but maybe he’s aiming for a different constituency for the 2004 race.

Whether or not opposition members were invited to the summit, they would have found some reason anyway to carp against the administration. That’s this opposition’s objective: to oppose everything, including national progress if the glory will go to Gloria. So the President decided to keep the summit exclusively for friendly forces.

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I can see why summits are called. They sound grand and they’re supposed to create the impression that the government is doing something about major problems.

But summits can be unwieldy, especially if the topic is too generalized, as in a socio-economic one. Apart from airing complaints that have already come out in the press and giving best-efforts pledges, what can summit participants accomplish in half a day? Given the circumstances in the country today, it will be better for the President to just summon concerned groups to meetings at Malacañang to tackle individual problems.

And if she wants to quickly satisfy public expectations, the President may want to focus on just one problem where positive results can be immediate and tangible.

Fidel Ramos, who won the presidency by a razor-thin margin, earned high points early in his incumbency by giving us back electricity. Most people didn’t care how he did it; there was just great relief that sweating for up to 12 hours daily was finally over and food no longer spoiled in ruined refrigerators. Then he reached out to rightist soldiers, and we never had to worry about the "coup pals" again.

Once you prove you can do something, it’s easier to get public support and blunt criticism. Then you can get more things done. And hopefully the investors will start coming.

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So far the high-profile battles President GMA has chosen to wage have produced disappointing results. Abu Sayyaf terrorists are still doing their thing, and now she has Nur Misuari to worry about. Tying yellow ribbons to soldiers’ rifles is cute, but will it achieve its aim, which is to remind troops that there are Abu Sayyaf hostages to be rescued before Christmas?

With communist rebels torching the buses of people who refuse to give in to their extortion, and executing soldiers on the eve of a truce, President GMA shouldn’t harbor any hopes of winning a peace prize. The best peace deal she can get with these communists is one that, like the pact forged with Nur Misuari, will eventually be broken.

Achievements in the fight against criminality are quickly overshadowed by more kidnappings and sensational cases such as the still unsolved murder of Nida Blanca.

Whether or not First Gentleman Mike Arroyo is innocent, the accusations hurled against him have cast a shadow on the administration’s campaign against corruption.

With campaigns against criminality, corruption and the Abu Sayyaf stalling, President GMA may want to look at her country’s premier region and tackle more mundane problems. Our days are ruined as soon as we leave our homes and see the piles of garbage, smell the pollution and get stuck in traffic. There are people whose days are ruined as soon as they wake up and find there’s no water coming out of the shower.

The President, motoring around town in an air-conditioned luxury car in a cocoon of security escorts, her household garbage surely collected regularly, her water supply surely abundant, may wonder what all the fuss is about. But these are the problems that make us curse the government every day, that make us wonder where our taxes go. These are problems that won’t be solved by yet another summit.