Gloria and Bill

HONG KONG —There is nothing more palpable here than the impact of the global financial meltdown that started in the United States and has swept through other major economies in Europe and Asia. This bustling city is apparently feeling the economic slowdown as Hong Kong’s businessmen lament their business this year has not picked up as projected for this time of the year. Retail business, though, appears to remain buoyant as can be gleaned from as much as 30 to 50 percent discounts offered in stores at all malls here.

I bumped into my former colleague in media, Daniel “Danny” Yu, who now runs his own monthly business magazine The Asset but used to work at the defunct Business Day. He has been living here for the past 20 years and has seen the ups and downs of Hong Kong to discern the latest developments taking place here, this time as a result of the financial crisis in the US.

He excitedly told us about the auction conducted by Christie’s here last Sunday where the “missing” Juan Luna masterpiece was put on the block. The oil painting done by the famed Filipino painter was expected to fetch as much as HK$8 to HK$10 million. However, he said, it was sold way below that, at only HK$5 million or roughly P35 or P36 million.

While it was supposed to be an open bidding, phoned-in bids were also accepted. As nosy as he is as a journalist, Danny Yu naughtily suspected that the phoned-in bid might have originated all the way from Manila. He wisecracked that the secret bidder might be someone from the Government Service Insurance System who looks and talks like its general manager Winston Garcia. This is in reference to Garcia’s previous controversial GSIS acquisition of a small Juan Luna oil painting entitled “Le Parisienne,” the purchase price of which was criticized as too stiff from estimates of art experts and connoisseurs.

Anyway, Danny Yu was actually teasing Lopez Group chairman Oscar M. Lopez who was participating in the Clinton Global Initiatives (CGI) Asia meeting being held here. He wisecracked to Lopez that he might be the other bidder who lost this time to Garcia. The Garcia-Lopez corporate feud over Meralco is public knowledge following their tiff over the botched attempt of the GSIS chief to wrest control of the Meralco board from the Lopezes using the combined GSIS and other government shares in the public utility firm.

Following their defeat in the legal battle in court on the tumultuous Meralco board meeting earlier this year, the row ended after Garcia sold the GSIS shares in Meralco to San Miguel Corp. Recent reports have it that even the government shares owned by the Social Security System will be sold by newly appointed SSS administrator Romulo Neri to the SMC group headed by its president and chief executive officer Ramon Ang.

Anyway, the GSIS chief is the least of the concerns of the Lopez patriarch, who is more excited about his conglomerate’s participation at the CGI here. No less than President Arroyo acknowledged the presence of the Lopez patriarch among the top Filipino business leaders and philanthropists who she saw seated at the front row at the plenary session of the CGI Asia meeting. She was one of the five panelists at the opening plenary of the CGI Asia meeting organized here by her former Georgetown University classmate, ex-US President Bill Clinton.   

The CGI is organized by the Clinton Foundation headed by former President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton who was repeatedly introduced here as the 42nd President of the United States of America. No less than Mr. Clinton himself presided over the opening plenary session where he fondly introduced President Arroyo with compliments, saying her college classmate was “looking 20 years younger” than him. He even exaggerated it a bit by hastily adding, “Make that 30 years.”

But Clinton’s flattery did not elicit girlish giggles from the 62-year-old President Arroyo. She and Mr. Clinton were classmates at Georgetown University in Washington where she pursued her foreign relations degree while her father, the late Diosdado Macapagal, was the president of the Philippines.

Their reunion came after a long while since Mr. Clinton stepped down from the While House in January 2001 while Mrs. Arroyo, then as Vice President, was swept into office after the EDSA-2 people power revolt and replaced deposed President Joseph Estrada.

The last time I saw the two of them walking down memory lane was during the first state visit of former President Fidel V. Ramos at the White House in Washington that I covered. Mrs. Arroyo, who was then a neophyte Senator, was invited by FVR to join his official delegation along with the late Sen. Blas Ople and Sen. Francisco Tatad.

We were all gathered at the White House when FVR had a joint press conference with then President Clinton, who kept glancing in her direction and made special mention of the presence of his college classmate. Mrs. Arroyo later told us she remembered the young Clinton as one of the campus heartthrobs. And because at that time her father was still the President of the Philippines, she too, was some sort of a celebrity student whom Clinton befriended. 

In an obvious attempt to return the compliment of her college classmate, calling him simply “Bill,” President Arroyo congratulated him for the nomination of his wife, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, as the new US State Department Secretary once the administration of US President-elect Barack Obama takes over in January next year.

While Mr. Clinton served for two consecutive terms at the White House, Mrs. Arroyo would have served longer than her college classmate. She would be the Philippine president, next to the late President Ferdinand Marcos, who served longest in office at Malacanang. Marcos stayed in the Palace for nearly 20 years while Mrs. Arroyo would serve half of that by the end of her term in June 2010. That is, if there would be no Charter change that would either allow her to extend her term to serve in transition to parliamentary system of government and to run next as prime minister. That we will see once her allies in Congress finally agree on the mode how to carry out the Cha-cha.

In the meantime, President Arroyo and Mr. Clinton enjoyed reminiscing their good old days during their college years at Georgetown University when they used to call each other as Gloria and Bill.