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For the nation collectively and for President Gloria Arroyo
personally, abbreviating her 10-day trip to the United States will
do a lot of good.
She is needed back in her country where a great
deal of recovery work, rescue effort, rehabilitation and
humanitarian projects made necessary by the destructive Typhoon
Frank need more muscles and money to reach the biggest number of
victims.
The work continues even if the weather has
improved. There will be many businesses to rebuild, property to
rehabilitate and personal wounds to bind and administer to.
Property and agricultural losses had reached
more than P4.27 billion as of Tuesday morning. The damages struck
fisheries, rice, corn and high-value crops.
Extensive damages to roads, bridges, schools and
commercial boats have been reported.
A total of 291 persons have died from the
typhoon, which do not include the 70 dead from the Sibuyan Seas
tragedy. The ferry had a passenger and crew list of more than 350,
most of whom have not been accounted for.
Public health is at issue because of poor access
to cheap medicines and the damage to the environment. Disruption of
water supply in many parts could mean an outbreak of intestinal
diseases.
Another major oil spill threatens the waters
where the ferry MV Princess of the Stars capsized and sank Saturday
afternoon.
The tragedy’s political cost
The economic and social losses will require
greater attention and husbanding. The political costs could mount if
the nation misses her leadership at a time of major rebuilding.
By cutting the trip short even by two to three
days would save on the expenses that could otherwise go to more
useful activities.
She would shame the congressmen, Cabinet members
and other hangers-on who are clutching at her coattail and whose
trips are being paid for by the Filipino taxpayers’ money.
She has met and discussed “urgent” problems
with US President Bush. This is the highlight of her trip. The trips
to the US Congress are for thanksgiving and solicitation of support
that the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC, and the professional
lobby group Manila hired last year could very well carry out. She
has a Council of Foreign Leaders in Washington to help her.
The trip to the US suffers in significance when
we consider she is visiting a lameduck president, a chief executive
who toured Europe two weeks ago to mend fences with European Union
governments and to prop up support for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Obama, the leader to visit
Truth be told, the leader she should have spent
more time on—without the appearance of politics—is the
Democratic presumptive presidential candidate Barack Obama who,
according to most professional polling organizations, looms as the
next American president.
The Philippine government or the Filipino
president should begin a period of building relationships with Mr.
Obama whose policy toward Asia, including Manila, will be one of the
most important US foreign concerns in the next six years.
He clearly needs a fresh perspective on the
Philippines and Southeast Asia, especially with the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations. We doubt that he has a good grasp of
Filipino-US relations.
It is not enough that the president could pick
up the phone anytime to talk to any official or to her entire
Cabinet. Like China’s prime minister, whose daily presence at the
disaster sites in earthquake-struck Shenzen gave Beijing’s
military regime a human face, Mrs. Arroyo’s visibility, through
personal visits and regular trips, would hearten grief-stricken
Filipinos and mobilize the bureaucracy.
Leaders faced with crises
Numerous have been the national leaders who have
aborted their foreign trips or cut them short on account of a grave
domestic emergency, such as a natural disaster, a man-made
catastrophe, an epidemic or political instability.
Prime Minister Ben Netanyahu cancelled a trip to
Jordan in 1997 when two Israeli military helicopters flying to
Lebanon in fog and rain collided in midair and killed 73 troops and
air force crewmembers. Ukraine’s prime minister cancelled a visit
to the US in 2000 because of a mining disaster at home. President
George W. Bush decided to cut short a trip to Asia in October 2001
after the 9/11 attacks. China’s President Hu Jintao postponed his
trip to Washington in 2005 due to Hurricane Katrina.
Domestic and foreign crises rub the sheen off a
foreign visit and validate staying at home. This travel will be
forgotten soon, but not the images of presidential isolation from a
national drama. The storm has not passed. There is more work to be
done here than in America.
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