GMA’s ‘pilgrimage’ from Macau to Riyadh

It’s confirmed that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo stay overnight in Macau after flying there yesterday morning to be Ninang (Godmother) at the wedding of Trade & Industry Undersecretary Carissa Vera-Cruz and businessman Juju Evangelista. (The two were earlier wed in civil rites in Manila, also attended by La Gloria).

Carissa, of course, is Gina de Venecia’s daughter from her first marriage to businessman Philip Cruz, and her stepfather is Speaker Joe de Venecia.

It turns out that after the church wedding in the Mount Carmel Church of Macau, a former Portuguese colony now a Special Administrative Region of China, La Presidenta won’t fly back on the private jet she "borrowed" from a business tycoon, but will spend the night in Macau – not, it’s fervently being stated by Palace spokesmen, to go to the casinos, or meet with any casino taipans (why, the Las Vegas boys are also big in Macau nowadays) – but to rest for today’s long journey to Riyadh, the capital of the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A chartered Philippine Airlines plane, with her official delegation and a contingent of businessmen aboard, will take off early this morning, stop over in Macau to pick up the President and First Gent, then jet off to Saudi.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo left for Riyadh yesterday afternoon (on a Saudia flight) to pave the way for PGMA’s arrival, but her official party includes Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas of Labor and Employment, Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila, Secretary of Energy Raphael "Popoy" Lotilla – as might be expected – but, in addition, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago (as Chairperson of the Sub-Committee on Energy), Rep. Alipio Cirilo V. Badelles (Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Energy), Rep. Benasing Macarambon, Jr. (Lanao del Sur), Rep. Abdullah Dimaporo (Lanao del Norte), Governor Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, or ARMM) – and our Ambassador-designate Antonio Villamor, categorized as Special Envoy to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Also in the team will be National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales.

I’m particularly happy that our friend, Tony Villamor, is back in the service after a brief retirement, and will be our Ambassador to Riyadh.

La Presidenta will visit Riyadh (the royal capital), Jeddah (which is the ancient city where all pilgrims for the Haj traditionally land by air or sea, enroute to the holy city of Makkah), and finally Dammam where thousands of Filipinos from engineers, to doctors, nurses, and oil contract workers are employed in Saudi Aramco which is not just the headquarters of the world’s biggest oil provider, but a "city" within itself.

A permanent Consul General will be appointed to that region, Secretary Romulo told me when we hosted a send-off lunch for him last Friday. This is good news for the scores of thousands of OFWs who previously had to journey to Riyadh for hours by road or by plane everytime they needed passport renewal or other consular documents.

There may even be a stopover in Manama, Bahrain, with the Presidential party crossing back to Saudi via the famous King Fahd causeway, a fantastic bridge several kilometers long connecting Dammam and Bahrain.

Sure, there are many reasons being advanced for the four-day state visit, including GMA taking up with His Royal highness King Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz al Saud, the Custodian of the two Holy Mosques, and other Saudi leaders, the RP bid for observer status in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). There are also almost a million Filipino OFWs working there.

The paramount reason for the trip, however, is the fact that Saudi Arabia owns 25 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, and immense reserves of natural gas.

Energy is the key to survival in a planet where the alarums of war and other disturbances has shot the cost of oil up to $75 per barrel in the last two weeks. (La Gloria and her group will return to Manila next Thursday, May 11).

* * *

Friends from Thailand arrived yesterday and they told me about the latest wrinkle in the energy crunch. Thai farmers for a great part no longer using tractors or other mechanized farming devices. The water buffalo, or Thai carabao has made a comeback. In short, buffaloes who are called kwai in the Thai language, are now being utilized to draw the plough on farms instead of modern tractors.

This is because the skyrocketing price of oil, gasoline and diesel have made tractors expensive to operate, while the kwai (carabao) not only pulls the plough, but its carabao dung is increasingly popular as organic fertilizer.

Be careful, on the other hand, how you pronounce kwai. Like Chinese, the Siamese language is a tonal language. If you pronounce a word differently, it means something else.

Remember the famous movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai in which scores of British prisoners died as prisoners-of-war forced to build a bridge for the Japanese Imperial Army over that river? (The film starred Alec Guinness, etc., and was even more noted for the catchy march it popularized . . . was it, memory falters, "The Colonel Dooley March" or something else? You can be sure an alert reader will correct me, so keep your eye on In-Box). In the case of the River Kwai, the term Kwai means a river with tributaries, just as the Chao Phya river, the "River of Kings" which flows through Bangkok, has four kwai or tributaries.

A third pronunciation of kwai refers to the male organ. So there.

* * *

As for Thailand’s fallen Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, perhaps he’s doomed politically. He and his family should have paid taxes on the US$1.9 billion they earned when they sold their high-tech conglomerate to Temasek Holdings of Singapore. The sale included a cellular network, by golly, TV and even airline share. Thaksin’s clan paid not a single Baht in taxes for their windfall: At least in Thailand, Corporate greed is punished in the end. Over here, it’s rewarded.

Although I did admire Thaksin for his verve and gutsy "management" of Thailand, his reckless and arrogant tongue also did him in. He may still make a comeback since he’s revered by many in the rural population (but hated by Southern Thailand’s rebellious Muslims, where a border patrol chief was just murdered by Islamic terrorists). I don’t weep for Thaksin-baby. He’s the guy who accused us Filipinos of "cheating" to win victory in the Southeast Asian Games. Now, he’s the one who got into trouble for alleged "cheating." Protested by angry demonstrators in Bangkok whose daily "Thaksin Out" marches turned that metropolis into a political battleground.

What the Thais have going for them, on the other hand, is the fact that they don’t let political turmoil or even tsunami disaster deter them from doing business. In contrast, our bitter domestic political wars waged mostly in Metro Manila as well as in the media, make the Philippines look like Ground Zero after 9/11.

We’re always bad-mouthing ourselves and each other. Yet, we’re far from being in the dumps. Even the usually critical Financial Times of London, published simultaneously on three continents, ran as its main story on the FT Back Page (page 12) of last Friday’s issue), a piece headlined "Thriller in Manila."

The article said: "Political upheavals aside, the Philippines is having a good year. The government said yesterday it believed growth in the first quarter had been greater than expected, despite an eight-day state of emergency in February. The stock market is at a six-hear high and external debt spreads are at a historic low. Such good fortune is presenting the central bank with a dilemma."

"Last year, it repeatedly increased interest rates and reserve requirements in order to damp inflationary expectations. Yesterday it chose to keep overnight rates at 7.5 percent. High oil prices – the Philippines imports nearly all of its oil needs – and the liquidity boost from buoyant dollar remittances are the main sources of inflationary pressure. But the central bank is walking a tightrope between controlling inflation and keeping a lid on the currency . . . inflation apart, other indicators are going to right way."

Wow!

Naturally, the FT had to conclude its "Lex Column" with a caveat. It pointed out that "increasing defense spending, for example, is a sensible move to help shore up support from a restive army." It even concede (I disagree) that "giving Congressmen large increases in their discretionary ‘pork barrel’ spending "is similarly astute."

But it warned in conclusion: "Nevertheless, further political upheaval remains the biggest reason why the Philippines may not end the year as well as it has begun it."

We ought to take heed of this warning. We’re ruining ourselves by our doom and gloom attitudes and our non-stop political squabbling. The FT is correct to caution that we’re in the process of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

How Pinoy, sad to say. And how pathetic.

In contrast, for all the noise the demonstrators have been making, Thailand is progressing. Bangkok now has the most fabulous mall in Asia, so huge and luxurious you could drive a car through its corridors one of my friends my doctor, Dr. Mario Ver, who just came back informed. The PARAGON mall, as it’s called, is just next to the old MBK, where you can get cheap and economic stuff.

In sum, Bangkok offers you everything from the extravagant to the ordinary. At the same time, tourism has returned to Thailand’s beach resorts, even those cruelly devastated by the December 2004 tsunami like Phuket. That place has been rebuilt, streamlined and is drawing beach-lovers like flies to molasses, except for the Chinese from Hong Kong and Singapore, who’ve heard tales of "angry ghosts" flitting around from among the tsunami dead. In Pattaya and other beach destinations, there are no ghost stories, only success stories. Amazing Thailand, indeed!

What would make the Philippines amazing for a change is if we stopped fighting each other (I think it’s time we discarded that old slogan of "Wow Philippines" which used to really mean "Wow Gordon" – it might even have been okay in its day, but we must move on).

Our slogan ought to be, perhaps, "Smiling, Happy Philippines – a Nation at Last!" By the way, that’s what The National Geographic Magazine called us in a well-known cover story in, if I recall right (can’t find the back issue) in 1940.

Let’s bring that smile back, and happiness will come along with it.