The market within

Everything here that I cite, statistics that I mention, realities that I allude to--these were all widely known when I wrote this piece in 1995. They were not secret statistics nor hidden prognoses. They were not unavailable road maps. They were all out there in the open media.

Today, we see clearly the Asian countries that had taken the information, processed it into working knowledge, and applied it to their own economies. Thailand has suffered temporary political turbulence, but the whole country--whoever the man on top and whatever his title--has already internalized the capitalist lifestyle and, from all indications, will no longer depart from it. Vietnam is Asean heir apparent, able to blend Western dynamism and Asian grandeur. Cambodia tags along, a little more slowly perhaps, but certain to get there just the same. All of them, I'm afraid to say, ahead of the Philippines.

The greatest wonder of them all? China, without a doubt. Each Chinese city is a total market, so infinitely exciting to Western capital and industry, to global tourists and consumers. Yes, including us Asians. Only 28 years since Chinese leader Deng Xiao-ping directed his country toward the path to economic reform and 35 years since the late US President Richard Nixon shook hands in Beijing with Mao Zedong, China has cemented its place as the world's emerging trade giant. Now fully awake to its potential, it can--if it so wishes--step over everybody else.

The Philippines? We missed our chance in the late '50s and '60s. Had we worked hard at it, we could at least have ensured a dignified life for all Filipinos. How sad that not one of our leaders ever successfully pursued--or wanted to pursue--a total development view.

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Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 18 April 1995

In the span of two decades--argued against the timelessness of infinity, it is not even the twinkling of an eye (as the cliché goes)--Asia registered growth rates that overwhelmed the whole world. Was it not only a decade ago that US and then-Soviet leaders were proclaiming the coming of age of the Asia-Pacific century?

The rocket-propelled growth of the region in the decades of the '70s and '80s reduced the number of East Asia's chronically poor population from 400 million to 180 million, even as 2/3 parallel population growth was also registered. By IMF estimates, of the $7.5 trillion (in 1990 dollars) by which gross world product in 2000 should exceed that of 1990, half would come from East Asia, according to The Economist (1993 figures).

The World Bank said it differently but came to much the same conclusion: Between now and 2000, Asia will contribute half of the growth in world trade, even as it accounts for 3.5 billion of the world's total population of 6.2 billion.

More than 1 billion Asians--almost the entire combined population of North America, South America, and the European Union today--will be living in households with consumer-spending power, while more than 400 million will have disposable incomes at least equal to 1993's rich-world average.

Said The Economist: It creates "some of the biggest business and financial opportunities in history."

Some other time, we can trace the history of Asia's revolutionary growth and examine each move in this brilliant two-decade economic turnaround. That's another story for another day.

For now, let us concentrate on Asia today. Skeptics may well say The Economist's figures are two years old. Much could have happened since then to turn Asia's clock sadly back.

But the Asian Development Bank does not think so. In its annual "Outlook" report, released only this month, the bank said the Asia-Pacific region will enjoy high economic growth in 1995-96.

The newly industrialized territories--Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan--will register at least 6.7 percent annual growth in 1995 and 1996. The developing nations of Asia will post 7.6 and 7.4 percent gross domestic product growth in 1995 and 1996, respectively.

The Bank's reasons for optimism: the continuing flow of foreign capital to developing Asian nations, fueling continued economic growth, and the sound macroeconomic policies that will prevent countries in the region aspiring for NIChood from going the way of Mexico.

Of course, the Bank also issues the usual caveat, especially to Asia's countries-in-a rush: these economies must upgrade their manufacturing bases (italics ours) because, whether these countries like it or not, lower-wage suppliers are ready to challenge them with the usual come-ons (price, quality, delivery) in the export markets they consider theirs.

You may question the source of that optimism. The ADB, a bank that services the region, has to be optimistic about Asia: Is it not its raison d'etre?

Those who seek a more global authority may want to take it from the World Trade Organization (WTO). In its report on world trade, also released earlier this month, WTO took special note of the growth of Asian exports in both volume and value terms in 1994. In value, Asian exports totaled $1.10 trillion, or a rise of 15.2 percent over 1993. WTO also included eight Asian countries among the world's leading trading nations, covering both exports and imports. Among these leading Asian traders: Japan, China, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand.

Is it only an accident that these six countries are also NICs or aspiring NICs? Or is there merit in my firm belief, which I expressed at a farewell given by colleagues in the international trade publishing group that I was then leaving for The Evening Paper with the prospect of writing on trade and helping local exporters, that global trade remains the engine for national economic growth--if only we can pursue it with true discipline down the production line?

But I am straying away from my original thesis today: that Asia is now too big and too tempting a market for Filipino exporters, who may still be passionately running after America and Europe, to ignore. And unless our local exporters start looking at Asian markets, they may find themselves a little too late again in reaping the fruits of the revolution--surely, the Filipinos' sad story.

Already, manufacturers in neighboring countries are tapping the billion-plus consumers within Asia itself, including us. Just go around our supermarkets, department stores, and duty-free shops. They are all awash with electronics goods or breakfast cereals from Malaysia, glassware from Turkey, soft towels from Taiwan, silk from South Korea, canned fruits from Indonesia and Singapore, and everything else from China.

These supplier countries are all looking inward now, within their own region. As an exporter from China once told me, "Too much trouble keeping up with Americans' funny quotas."

China itself is both a supply and consumer market: 16 million affluent consumers with per-capita incomes of $1,000-$4,000 (1993 figures). By 2000, the number of China's consumers with spending capacity should rise to 150 million.

In the Shanghai-Guangzhou area, consumers are willing to pay for anything imported and with a foreign brand name--plus, of course, the quality they hope goes with the products. In Shanghai, new concrete-and-glass, Western-style department stores and shopping complexes are rising, seemingly overnight.

The town of Zhuhai (the special economic zone bordering Macau), for example, with its population of 800,000, is base to more than 2,600 foreign-invested projects, some of them producing high-tech goods. The new wealth, especially in the hands of Zhuhai's yuppies, is translating into eagerness for trendy imports.

And for those who are afraid of dealing with the humongous China market, there's South Korea and Taiwan, once known only as suppliers to consumers in the developed world. Both are now sizable consumer markets for imported goods. Taiwan is one of the world's 25 richest countries.

As for South Korea, its department stores have begun to target reasonably priced, midrange imports. With the country's distribution markets liberalized in 1993, some South Korean retailers have branched out from the cities to the provinces, attracting shoppers with lower-priced imports from the country's developing neighbors.

Why shouldn't some of those goods come from the Philippines?

-- NBT

Women's world

Whenever I meet any of those women who treat the woman issue with such seriousness, I usually just smile. I have never felt a personal need to adopt the gender issue as a serious crusade. Many women columnists have taken on gender equality with great passion, devoting column after column to the various issues under the subgroup, taking on the campaign for fairness and equality with men as their life advocacy.

I am afraid I cannot join them in their crusade. I am comfortable in my own skin. I do not think I am unequal with themen. I have always done my best and been allowed to be the best I can be--as me. I don't intend to demand equal opportunities with men in pursuits that do not appeal to the essential me.

I certainly don't want to be the family breadwinner, unless the most drastic of circumstances demand that I be. In which case, as an editor, the inequity will not be between me and a man but between me and a foreigner. I certainly don't want to have to change a flat tire simply because I believe I should be the equal of all male drivers. I don't want the opportunity to be an F1 driver: They can have the experience; let me be the excited, happy spectator. And I certainly want to be able to assume the flaky-woman role in front of a man whenever I want to, totally uncaring whether or not he thinks I am intellectually inferior--better, in fact, if he thinks at first that I am intellectually inferior.

I have never felt a man was unfair to me because I am a woman. If I have ever felt unfairness--and yes, I have felt it many times--it was because I was Filipino (not Filipina), because I was middle-class, because I didn't have enough money, because I preferred not to accept a particular challenge. Also, because I didn't want to stoop down to a certain level or to rise above it.

The gender issue has never been primary to me because there's another issue that will always be more important to me. I grew up with a front-seat view of poverty in the Philippines. From as far back as I can remember, we had gasoline boys and housemaids. From as far back as I can remember, we had millionaire relatives and wealthy, wealthy friends. Even now, I don't look at them all and segregate them into unequal men and unequal women. I look at them all and see unequal people.

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Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 25 August 1995

A star witness taking French leave for a breath of fresh air. A troubled housewife flying over the EDSA-Ortigas interchange. An American wife being warned she may not be woman enough for Beijing because she happens to be US First Lady. And Muslim holy men making noises over the Beijing conference document.

For womanhood, what a life!

But the coming weekend should provide welcome pause to Filipino women as the days bring them closer to the United Nations International Conference on Women and as their own actions afford them the glory of empowerment.

Jessica Alfaro should be the first to savor the sweet taste of woman power. She has had us all--men and women alike--in the grip of a secret more complicated than a Chinese puzzle. She alone (except, she says, for a tabloid columnist, and he only to support) knew why she left her safe quarters at the NBI building; she alone knew why she returned. She will not divulge more, and who are we that she should tell us? She is woman enough to keep her peace and break it only when she desires. How like a woman, indeed, and let no man sneer: Her personality adds its own intriguing chemistry to an event that has held a nation in thrall for four years.

The woman who leapt to her gruesome end gets only a cameo role, a short stint in the sunlight. Still, for the small circle of people touched by her brief and dazzling appearance--those who knew her and those who personally witnessed the finality of her choice against life--the impact can be no less. Again, who has the right to blame anybody, to explain the unexplainable, to damn the dead? The whole mystery has never been one where she has now gone.

What they all force on First Ladies, you wouldn't believe. To demand that Hillary Clinton should not go to an international conference on women (for which she possesses every credential, honors and foibles alike) in sensitivity to the state of Sino-American relations is really the height. A lesson resides there for us who think all that power, prestige, and influence spell freedom. Nobody is more captive, indeed, than she who has all that power, prestige, and influence.

As for a 1,000-year-old bastion of Islam in Egypt, it has certainly closed its doors to the Beijing women's conference. According to the Islamic institution Al-Azhar, the conference aims to create a new kind of life contrary to religious values, and to destroy moral barriers and deeply rooted traditions. Al-Azhar has reiterated that Islam does not discriminate against women. What the effect of such a pronouncement will be on many fundamentalist Muslim women can only be suspected. Will they submit in complete assent, or go to Beijing in dissent?

Who can tell? Each case above partakes of its own dimensions, both human and woman. We want to subscribe to a gender-free world where not even the word gender exists. Yet, women's minds, hearts, and spirits are obviously very different from those of the others.

No wonder Senator Francisco Tatad, hoping to make it in a committee on women, must, in their company, look askance at a world he cannot even start to understand.

-- NBT

Using aid

Is there aid to use? It is obvious how much harder it is today to get our share of global aid. The rich world's attention span when it comes to lending money to the poor world is often just as short as a child's. Why else does the world cheer a Bono, or a Buffett, or the Gates couple? Why has philanthropy by the rich become news? Why else is Africa such a raging sore?

Traditional lending institutions have become ineffective, partly because they are not getting enough of the product they are supposed to sell: money. The money of the world's rich countries is going to wars, to armaments, to their own industrialists. Can we still get money from the world's rich?

Do we need to? I go to my hometown, which now calls itself a city, more often these days. Such a different hometown now: mud and water and dirt on the streets, floods at high tide and during the typhoon season, dirty and polluted rivers, nonstop growth of squatter communities surrounded by garbage and rickety shanties.

I doubt that we can get aid from anybody to fix my hometown. I doubt even that my hometown needs aid money. What it needs are: a vision; a determination to realize that vision; and a willingness to work hard to improve, create, and produce, not for the benefit of individual pockets, but for the benefit of the place and its residents.

Sadly, the now-city's leaders since the '70s, when I left my hometown, have been totally deficient in all those.

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Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 17 October 1995

It is not only in food supply, especially of grains and cereals, where the world's people can anticipate major shortages as we approach the next millennium. There is one other resource crucial to development, especially of the world's poorest nations, where a shortage has already started to break: global aid.

The semiannual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the world's two largest lending institutions, last week in Washington D.C. presented the disheartening prospect of huge reductions in contributions for the International Development Association (IDA) from the United States and other rich countries of the West. The IDA is the World Bank affiliate that provides interest-free credit to very poor countries.

Funding shortfalls from donor countries to the IDA "present a very serious risk to poverty reduction and economic growth in the world's poorest countries," said members of the joint development committee of the IMF-WB in a statement released during the meeting, a signal--if ever there was one--of a threat approaching crisis proportions for the two organizations.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who calls the IDA the "very linchpin" of aid for the world's poor, one that serves as a foundation for other assistance, said a "weakened IDA would greatly reduce the possibility of having a stable world ... This is a very dangerous moment for IDA."

Wolfensohn's anxiety is firmly anchored. The IDA's $18-billion pool of funds set aside by rich nations for poor countries has emerged as one more political symbol in the budget battle between the Clinton administration and the Republican-controlled US Congress.

United States President Bill Clinton has asked Congress for $1.386 billion in foreign assistance funds for the fiscal year that began October 1. The House is offering only $575 million; the Senate is willing to go up to $775 million. The difference will be discussed by a conference committee, which should settle the issue before the month is over. Very few expect Clinton to get what he is asking for.

And if the United States decides to cut back on its IDA commitments, will the 233 other donor countries decide to play the same tune? After all, it would be only too easy for IDA donor countries to protest that they have their own funding problems, too, and that it is time to start focusing on their own domestic hearths and disadvantaged sectors.

******

Even in Asia, the region's--and also the world's--largest donor, Japan, has already set a ceiling on any expansion of its overseas aid budget. Suffering from periodic convulsions spawned by a recession-hit economy, natural and man-made calamities, and a runaway banking sector, Japan has deemed it prudent to cut costs.

One of the areas to get a new ceiling: the government's overseas development assistance, its ODA.

In 1995, Japan's ODA growth cap stood at 7.7 percent. In fiscal year 1987, it hit its lowest--7.5 percent. Fiscal year 1996 will set a new low: 7 percent.

What's more, the Japanese have become more discriminating about the purposes and practices resorted to by recipient countries. In effect, the Japanese are saying--oh so politely, as is their wont--that their money is being abused in many Third World countries.

Setting new guidelines of severity in the utilization of ODA funds, the Japanese have issued at least three specific policies: grants cannot be used for military purposes, there will be a definite shift away from unquestioning support for economic growth, and more allocations will go to programs that include population control and environmental protection.

These policies are intended to inhibit "inappropriate development" and persuade recipients of Japanese aid to place "greater emphasis on issues such as human rights, environmental protection, and social welfare."

New guidelines, this time issued by Japan's Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF), mandate that countries receiving yen credits submit environmental assessment reports, including studies of ways to limit the displacement of local residents and consultations with affected communities. Yen credits from the OECF carry minimal interest rates of 1-3 percent and are earmarked for infrastructure development in recipient countries.

Although admitting that many developing nations have protested against the guidelines, calling them "a form of political conditionality," Japan has remained steadfast. In September of this year, in fact, it submitted a 14-page policy paper to a 185-member UN Working Group meeting on a global economic plan of action.

The Japanese were adamant in their stand: Development aid should be "conducive to the peace and stability of a recipient country."

What would convince Japan that a borrower will use the loan money wisely? Accepting the limited--and widely divergent--capacities of the least developed countries, particularly those in Africa, the Japanese require that aid recipients improve their own domestic development resources first.

In very concrete terms, Japan wants recipient countries to cut their military budgets, collect taxes efficiently and effectively, and combat corruption in the government bureaucracy.

"This, in turn, is likely to produce an increased flow of development funding," promises the Japanese policy paper submitted to the United Nations.

******

Japan's more developed approach to aid applications was also a subject of intense deliberation by the Asian Development Bank, which depends heavily on Japanese aid for the bulk of its loan packages to member countries.

The ADB notes with increasing alarm the falling allocations in rich nations for aid and assistance. Total aid from the industrialized world fell 8 percent in 1993 to $56 billion from $61 billion in 1992. The trend does not appear ready for a change, according to ADB President Mitsuo Sato in July of this year.

With development resources for poor countries becoming "increasingly scarce," Sato stresses the need for their efficient use. ADB itself, he said, will be keeping a tighter watch on how aid money is spent by the recipient and whether it achieves maximum development impact.

But there's the rub: How can development aid be utilized to achieve maximum impact?

M. Adil Khan, an ADB consultant from Australia's University of Queensland, provides answers from a specialist's viewpoint. "Recent experiences of development management in most developing countries suggest there are growing gaps" between what is planned and what is implemented, between what is intended and the actual outcome.

Even in cases where implementation of aid-funded projects was satisfactory, such projects may not fare well in sustainability. Khan urged recipient countries to look beyond implementation and completion of aid-funded projects to their "full development impact and sustainability."

The IMF-World Bank joint development committee expressed basically the same sentiments, but in simpler, easier-to-understand terms. Their statement is something developing countries should take to the drawing boards to determine how best they can be accomplished.

IDA funds, said IMF-WB, should go to social spending and poverty-reduction programs that increase access by the poor to land, credit, and basic services that, in turn, promote broad and escalating growth and create many new jobs.

In the long run, only such aid- and assistance-funded projects can guarantee sustained development for recipient countries.

-- NBT

Election truths

We go to the polls once more in May. Will it be another useless exercise?

My memories of political exercises go back to my grade-school days in the town of Malabon, where my father--a prewar mayor of that small town--held informal caucuses with political allies in his gasoline station located right in the middle of the main street leading to the municipal building, only a few steps from the town market, the imposing church of San Bartolome, and the church-attached premier Catholic diocesan school.

My father was a loyal card-bearing member of the Nacionalista Party--so loyal governors and congressmen came to his table at fiesta time and sent huge wreaths for his wake--at a time when national politics was a battle between only two political parties, each one with its own pronounced political platform and its uncorrupted political followers.

Elections were exciting then, not for the violence and the cheating that are de rigueur these days, but for the atmosphere of total political involvement and commitment to a party and its candidates, both on the national and local levels.

After each election, the town would settle down, the politicians content to take a backseat as the real life of the small town took over again. Malabon's great fortunes were founded not on politics, but on business. Politics was only a necessary adjunct to the interisland businesses that provided the town with its legendary millionaires and their legendary family names.

If there were any politics pursued in between elections, which were held every four years, it was always quiet spadework--building up membership, manning the ramparts, working the streets and the houses to ensure the votes came in at the next election.

Town-wide, in those days, voters knew who to vote for, what their qualifications were, what records they brought with them. These days, there is none of that kind of in-your-face familiarity. Rumors abound everywhere about everybody, everybody denies every damaging or unflattering story, nobody knows the truth, nobody tells the truth.

Yes, all these in Malabon, now a city. Its politics, like the rest of the country's politics today, has gone big, strident, questionable, violent. It is no longer a small town.

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Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 8 May 1995

Cast your vote for the good...

For the few remaining hours left to those who have not yet cast their votes, let them be worthwhile hours. Hours of pitiless cross-examination--of the candidates, of their qualifications, of the voters' goals, of this election's end-goals.

There are few givens that the Filipino electorate can start from.

We are a country that has been left behind by time, by contemporary events, by progress, by other developing countries. If we want to catch up, we have to work double-time, even triple-time.

Even then, we may not catch up. And catching up, remember, is only reaching our neighbors' level as of today. While we are catching up, they are already moving ahead.

We lost close to 20 years, remember?

As voters who still have to make it to the polls take the rest of the afternoon to cast their votes, and as those who have already cast their votes spend the rest of the day following the results of today's elections, let those results reflect a people's fervent prayer for grace, truth, wisdom, and deliverance.

The lessons of the past have not been so long ago that we can no longer remember them, nor so immaterial that we do not need to remember them.

They are, in fact, so memorable that we can state and restate them in words of one syllable: Let the good reign, and the bad lose.

Let those who have the interests of the people and the country in their hearts triumph, and those who have only their own personal interests, only their own wallets in their political agendas, fall by the wayside.

To defeat the second, we have to make sure that we recognize the first.

Before those of us who have already voted even made it to the polling places, they should have thoroughly studied all the candidates for national and local offices, gone over their backgrounds and experiences with a fine-toothed comb, and determined which ones could best contribute to the country's catch-up efforts.

There are candidates who talk a lot of sense but really do nothing; their records will prove they spent the past years in office or out of it doing just that: talking.

On the other hand, there are candidates whose words may falter but whose deeds are direct and purposeful. Are those deeds focused on the people, the improvement of community and society? Or are the actions inward-looking, directed toward their own personal aggrandizement and not the people's?

We have always thought that, shorn of emotion and prejudice, bereft of personal attachment or gain, each and every thinking voter will not find the choice between various candidates such a difficult task.

Each candidate brings with him a composite biodata, so to speak, a picture of his past that will guide us in making an educated judgment of his present and future--and therefore of his constituents' present and future.

Studying that composite, complete picture of each candidate's past is the best technique for intelligent voting.

...and protect it

But the problem extends beyond casting your vote at your polling booth (if you are lucky enough to find it). As every election enthusiast is fond of warning, "Your responsibility does not end with your vote."

In fact, the hours after the polling booths close are even more critical hours. Those are the hours that separate the innocent from the depraved.

Has it not become a visual cliché of Philippine elections, those photographs of civilians of various stripes protecting ballot boxes at risk to their lives, to defend the rightful will of the electorate?

As the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting declared over a radio program yesterday, there are many more processes that follow between the casting of a ballot and the recognition of the rightful winners of an election. In fact, it may even happen that the rightful winners never get to sit and serve. This is no longer an oddity in Philippine politics.

Unfortunately, this is often the hardest part of the voting exercise, the one that demands the greatest devotion and persistence.

Guarding the faithful reflection of one's political decision demands that Filipino voters give a little more of their time to policing the exercise.

We hear of the increasing number of religious, social, and civic organizations who are getting involved in post-poll activities, and we are glad. We wish more of the silent majority will join these organizations.

But each Filipino voter should also be sure that these organizations do not have political agendas of their own, that they do not have political favorites.

That is another task that devolves to each individual voter. For ultimately, each Filipino's vote is his own. It is his to cast--and his to protect.

-- NBT

'Clean and green'

I love going to the countryside. To me, the country is home to the two coolest hues in the spectrum of color: blue and green.

The blue of the skies, at times clear and brilliant, at other times greyish and forbidding. The blue-green of water, burbling in brooks and streams, singing in rivers, lapping against sand, impenetrable in lakes, frothing angry or playful from beaches overlooking the infinite. The blue-green of mountains, majestic in the distance, a reminder of scenes and sights of my past, now permanently alive only in my mind's eye, sentimental places and memories already beyond revisiting. The green of forests and trees, of meadows and gardens, of potted plants and tiny leaves.

Since the end of my journalistic career allowed me to encourage my creative ambitions, I traveled the nooks and crannies of the serene towns and barrios of the provinces to the south of Metro Manila--Quezon, Batangas, Laguna.

As I drove away from the towns to the rural areas and wildernesses of this region, I would imprint in my mind the images of idyllic country life: old-style farmhouses ringed by mango and coconut trees, with the occasional carabao or horse or even free-range chickens lazing about, smoke billowing from outhouses; huge plantations protected by stone walls from the streets, with only their rooftops visible through heavy canopies of trees; unprofessionally but heartily landscaped gardens surrounding schoolhouses lying motionless in the sun. And always--always!--water in rivers and streams, flowing down from hills and mountains through irrigation canals to join up with the lake and the sea beyond.

In these places, "cool and green" continues to be an appropriate description. But no longer in Metro Manila or in other highly urbanized localities, where buildings eat up parks, centuries-old trees are cut, and squatters gleefully pollute waterways with the wastes of their miserable existence--and all with government approval!

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Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 14 November 1995

The giggles from youngsters watching the television coverage of a recently concluded beauty contest, held in a mountain resort up north, were all too audible when one contestant came up with her "clean and green" impression of the Philippines. She must have picked up the phrase, quite automatically, from intermittent posters on zigzagging routes to the resort, or along the mountain city's roadways, totally unaware of the fact that the Philippines, whether on the ground or from the air, has long ceased to be clean and green. In fact, even the mountain resort where the beauty contest was held had long ago turned into pathetic brown.

Nor is Metro Manila looking any younger and crisper. It looks, to be kind about it, decidedly old and faded. A tourist traveling down Metro Manila streets is bound to bring home with him contrasting images of the Filipino people's respect, or lack of, for his environment.

On the one hand, you can look out from Makati's high-rise buildings and see stretches of green parks and tree-shaded thoroughfares, including parts of Gil Puyat Avenue and Paseo de Roxas. Outside Makati, one can still find tree-shaded streets in older communities like San Juan and Mandaluyong. Nor should we forget the welcome canopy of age-old trees, their branches joined, over the streets of New Manila.

On the other hand, the concrete ribbons in the Cubao commercial district are not only gray and ugly, but also dirty and smelly. Even the celebrated flyovers, at their birth sprouting fully landscaped crawl and pedestrian spaces at EDSA level, have already lost much of their green to dust, smog and human neglect.

And the center island of Pasig's Ortigas Avenue Extension from near the Meralco Building to E. Rodriguez Avenue, which had gone to weed but was still home to fully grown though scraggly trees, has now been torn out--with the approval of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, we were adequately warned--and is being cemented to provide more road space for cars. What is being constructed right at the center is a very narrow ledge made of hollow blocks. Can we at least look forward to a future glimpse of green somewhere along this perennially traffic-clogged stretch?

Only last week, certain comments of the controversial, newly installed congressional representative from the first district of Leyte were played up in the newspapers, including her quip about Mrs. Amelita Ramos's clean and green program. We can say all things about the former first lady (Imelda Marcos), but one thing we must acknowledge is the fact that when she did, she went into the cleaning and greening of Metro Manila as if it were her life's mission--to the point of being ridiculed for creating Potemkin villages to hide the ugliness and poverty of real life.

There must be a middle ground somewhere--and a person who can lead us in mining the rich deposit of ecological concern and aesthetic commitment among the residents of Metro Manila. Sometimes, all it needs is somebody to concentrate on the job instead of taking it on as one more adjunct to an already long string of official duties and responsibilities.

Who does not dream of a really clean and green Metro Manila?

-- NBT