Erased From The Face of The Earth

Several years ago, a few quarters after the inauguration of Gloria Arroyo as the president of the Philippines, I can vividly remember her declaring in one of her State of the Nation Addresses that “we are back on the international map!”. It was with a hint of pride when she declared this, as she lured investment confidence back into the country. I, on the other hand, imagined how on earth countries could be “erased” from the “international map”, whether they were deliberately ignored by other countries, or simply put away as inconspicuous, or to be more apt, irrelevant. I was in third year high school.

Several years passed and I took up the course of Political Science in the University of Santo Tomas, and my political instincts grew to a more than average sense (it made me read daily broadsheets, watch international news particularly CNN, take interest in global politics and economic phenomena). Two years ago, the Philippines caught the attention of the world as its economy grew to a phenomenal 7.3 percent, when it used to average between 3 to 4 percent annually. This was incredible, and everyone was frantic about the outlook for the country known as the “Sick Man of Asia”. The Peso which averaged 56 to a dollar a couple of years back, was performing incredibly, rising against the greenback and finally reaching a seven-year high of 40 to a dollar. Finally, international credit raters S&P and Moody’s upgraded the country’s economic outlook from “negative” to “stable”, which means that the country is safe for investors to put their money on, and which eventually made the country lower its interest rates.

Speculators were a little bit skeptic however, considering the history of political instability the country has had to deal with over the years, and predicted that the economic performance would heavily depend on whether the country could sustain the political atmosphere at the moment which was quiet. I was watching CNN that night, and I remember the Philippines being shown to have a “low pressure” atmosphere and would be experiencing rain for the next five days. I find the CNN forecasts more accurate than the local weathermen.

In a sense, we really were on the international map! Foreign analysts taking interest with the Philippine Stock Exchange Index, Manila being on the headline of the Washington Post, The Economist, and the Wall Street Journal (reporting on the improving economic performance of the country), and finally, CNN forecasting the country’s weather over the next five days! Phew.

And then we fell apart again. Thanks to radical senator Trillanes who staged a coup again in 2007 (amidst the economic growth; he was charged with economic sabotage later on), and also the Food Crisis of 2007-2008 where the Philippines got especially hit being the world’s largest rice importer. Of course, there is to blame the politicking in the country with its domestic political quarrels about constitutional reform and a possible term extension of government officials masquerading behind it. We were slowly erasing ourselves from the international map — because foreigners don’t give a damn about our domestic politics and how we always like to do our laundry in front of the whole world. We were falling from grace. We fell from grace, yet again.

Amidst all these things, I still watched my favorite news channel and waited for the weatherman to come to the bit and show the Philippines being smothered by yet another tropical cyclone being shown on the satellite. Instead, The Philippines was reduced to just “Manila” in the CNN weather highlights showing the highs and lows of temperature. The CNN weatherman used to talk about the Philippine archipelago in detail and how wet or dry we were going to be in the coming days.

Yesterday, as I flicked the channel to CNN just in time to see the weather highlights, there came the map of India, and they were talking about how dry and hot it was there. Next came the map of Japan, and the weatherman reported how average the weather is over there in Tokyo. Next came the map of Southeast Asia, with the Philippines smack right in the middle of it all, and I could see a big low pressure area hovering over the island of Luzon, over Manila. I expected the weatherman to cover this atmospheric phenomenon, which was odd because the Philippines was supposedly in the middle of summer. But he talked about the weather in China and how nice it was there (China is performing well in the global financial crisis), mentioned a few lines about Jakarta (Indonesia is expected to be least affected in the region by the Global Recession because of its heavy reliance on local industry and local demand for it), and did not mention Manila.

It is very wet this summer, and we could not even become so much as precipitate in world affairs, let alone CNN.

Everybody now: *SIGH

Contributing Writer: Mario Alvaro V. Limos,
Political Science student at the University of Santo Tomas

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