Absentee

Former president Fidel Ramos expressed disappointment that President Duterte failed to attend both the gala dinner for the APEC summit and the traditional group photo session where the assembled leaders don the national costumes of the host country. Absence in both occasions may be considered an affront to the host leader.

On both occasions, Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay stood in for Duterte, although he appeared uncomfortable in that role. At least his appearance as stand-in is not as bad as that summit meeting in Bali where former President Noynoy Aquino, who claimed to be unwell, asked his media operative Ricky Carandang to stand in for him in the group photo.

This is, however, the second instance Yasay was asked to stand in for Duterte in highly important photo opportunities. At the ASEAN summit in Vientiane, Duterte felt unwell at precisely the most high-profile moments, requiring his foreign secretary to stand in for him.

The two Filipino leaders – Aquino and Duterte – seem to share a propensity for excusing themselves during the highlighted moments of summit meetings. Their peers in both the ASEAN and the APEC must consider this propensity among Filipino leaders a little strange.

Duterte’s propensity for disappearing during the most important summit moments appears to be chronic. He has attended two summit meetings. He skipped the gala dinner and photo sessions in both.

Ramos points out that it is the duty of the President to be present, and to be visible, during these events. They represent their nations. They devalue the events by their absence. Whether it be Carandang or Yasay standing in for their respective presidents, the effect is the same: one head of state is absent from the photograph.

The Palace tried to downplay President Duterte’s absence during the most visible points of the last APEC summit in Peru by saying these were merely “ceremonial” events. That is a lame excuse.

The entire APEC summit is a ceremonial event. There are no hard negotiations happening here. Leaders show up to be seen and to express solidarity. The gala dinner and the photo opportunity are the high points of this ceremonial event.

Note that the APEC has no standing bureaucracy. In fact, the grouping’s name does not even have a noun. It has no enforcement powers. All it does it gather the leaders together once a year as a demonstration of solidarity. The group photo is the main testament to that.

Hosting the APEC is rotated among its member economies. All through the year, the host country organizes ministerial meetings. It is in those ministerial meetings that consensus on points of action are forged. The leaders’ meeting happens towards the end of the year and seals the results of the ministerial meetings.

Appearance at the gala dinner is an opportunity for the APEC leaders to network with their peers and raise at the highest level whatever concerns they might have. If other leaders have things to informally take up with our leader, this will not happen if our leader is absent. We do not know what opportunities were lost because President Duterte yielded to jet lag.

Attendance at the gala dinner is also the opportunity to thank the host leader for a year of work for the regional undertaking. Absence in this dinner is extremely impolite.

The “graduation photo,” funny as this event might sometimes seem, caps a whole year of meetings that give life and substance to the APEC. It is not a mere “ceremonial” event. Whoever thought up this excuse does not know how APEC works.

President Duterte’s absence in the highlight events at Lima, Peru cannot be so easily discounted. Citizens deserve an explanation, whether this be about his jet lag or about his health in general.

The official story is that the President suffered from the effects of jet lag. The dinner, they tell us, coincided with his sleeping time. Dinner Peruvian time, if I have my time zones correct, is morning here. That could not have been his sleeping time.

Besides, the other East Asian leaders travelled roughly the same time zones to get to the summit. How could it be that all the rest of them were wide awake?

Long-haul travelling requires a lot of physical preparation, management of sleeping time, intake of liquids and some exercise on board to minimize the effects of jet lag. Did President Duterte do this or did he spend his time during the flight bantering along the aisles as he usually does?

Summitry requires a lot of exertion. Schedules are tight. The days are long. One needs a lot of personal discipline to prepare for such events, especially if this involves long flights. That discipline Duterte does not appear inclined to cultivate.

The President travelled that far to represent the Filipino people, not himself. He should not so whimsically skip events because they were just “ceremonial.” It is duty to physically prepare to be at his best during the summit.

If it was not really jet lag that made the President a truant, then only two other possible explanations for his absenteeism.

The first is that he was avoiding certain leaders he had badmouthed in the recent past. If this is the reason, then the President should learn that being impolite has its inconveniences. In this modern world of summitry, he would keep running into them again and again.

The second theory, put forward by a losing presidential candidate, is that the President is not healthy enough to complete his term.  This is vastly more serious and calls for real transparency.