EditorialHave gang, will travelPhilippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:05:00 06/23/2009
BY the time president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo returns from her swing through Russia, South Korea, Japan and Brazil, she will have made 52 trips to 30 countries in eight years and spent billions of pesos in taxpayers’ money. There can be no doubt that she is the most widely traveled president in Philippine history. If someone would only bother to authenticate it, she could very well bid for the title of the most peripatetic head of state in the world.
Here’s a list of the countries she has visited: United States, 10 trips; China, 7; Japan, 7; Malaysia, 6; Brunei, 4; United Kingdom, 3; South Korea, 3; Thailand, 3; Hong Kong, 3; Mexico, 2, Italy 2; Bahrain, 2; Dubai, 2; and 1 each: Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, Kuwait, France, Chile, Vatican City, Saudi Arabia, Macau, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Dubai, Peru, Qatar, Egypt, Syria, Russia and Brazil.
The President’s entourage on these trips has been almost invariably large—from about 30 to 192 (the 2007 trip to France, Spain and the United Kingdom). There is nothing to justify the travel of such huge delegations on presidential trips. The Philippines is not a world power, the trips were not of global importance and the Philippine president is just a dot in geopolitics, unlike the US president. The Philippines is not a rich country, unlike the United States.
A comprehensive estimate has not yet been made of the public funds spent on the President’s travels, but judging from the frequency and length of the trips, the great distances traveled, the people included in her entourage, the airplanes chartered to fly them and the posh hotels where they were billeted, the total could easily run into billions of pesos.
Just to give the readers an idea of the money spent on these extravagant trips: Senator Panfilo Lacson said about P800 million was spent on foreign travel in 2008. A news research report based on the Commission on Audit’s report on the Office of the President said in December 2007 that P482 million, or nearly a fifth of the OP expenditures, was spent on travel expenses in 2006. It was more than double the P210 million spent for travel expenses of the Office of the President in 2005.
In January 2008, Ms Arroyo flew to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with an 86-member delegation composed of Cabinet officials, legislators and local officials. Attending the Davos forum is not cheap. To give you an idea: The world’s largest businesses pay 42,500 Swiss francs (26,300 euros or $38,700 or P1.6 million) apiece for annual membership and an extra 11,000 euros (P668,646) per person to attend the meeting. A two-star hotel in Davos costs $300 a night.
Ms Arroyo has not allowed public opinion to get in the way of her proclivity for going on extravagant foreign travels. Last year, for instance, she continued on her trip to the United States even after Typhoon “Frank’’ battered Central Philippines, leaving thousands of people homeless, destroying millions of pesos in public works, crops and private property, and sinking the MV Princess of the Stars, with a loss of 807 lives. She is supposed to be the “mother of the nation,’’ but instead of returning home immediately to look after the needs of the typhoon victims and to commiserate with the survivors, she and her entourage traipsed off to foreign shores. She was like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned.
An observer of these presidential trips gets the impression of a chief executive who wants to squeeze the greatest personal, material and financial benefit from the perks of the office, and the taxpaying public be damned! Especially now that she is scheduled to bow out of Malacañang (actually, we don’t know if she will really leave the seat of power in 2010), she can be expected to go on more foreign trips paid for by taxpayers’ money up to perhaps April 2010.
It is well that the Senate committee on finance will conduct an inquiry into Ms Arroyo’s foreign trips. The taxpaying public will then get an idea of how profligate she has been with their money. Or how insensitive she has been to the suffering of the people whose urgent needs could have been ministered to with the billions of pesos that were spent on foreign junkets. Let the profligacy of Ms Arroyo be disclosed, and then watch the people weep and gnash their teeth.
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Topic: Our Poor Nation Has a Jet-setting President (Read 1224 times)