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Asia Buzz: Below the Belt
Starring Philippines President Joseph Estrada in this low budget, B-grade film
By TERRY McCARTHY
May
3, 2000
Web posted at 3 p.m. Hong Kong time, 3 a.m. EDT
Philippines President Joseph Estrada gets it in the neck all the time, these days. If he announces a new initiative, it is being torn apart in the press before anyone has even had time to work out if it might conceivably be a good idea.
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When he says the public purse has no money for wage increases for state sector workers, he gets lambasted by Cardinal Sin (the well-known expert in economics, Vatican-style) who says wage increases should be granted, along with job security (advice to Cardinal: stick to the rosary beads). When Estrada announces plans for poverty alleviation, the local press immediately zeroes in on the graft potential. When Estrada says he is going to get tough on the Muslim kidnappers, he is criticized for being too inflexible.
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It is easy to see how the former movie star who is used only to adulation gets a bit tetchy when he is constantly barracked by Manila's voluble and highly opinionated press corps. When he went to visit a convent run by Mother Teresa's nuns for the dying on his birthday last week, the Philippine Inquirer couldn't even resist making a snide attack.
The convent is called "The House of Joy," and Estrada spent almost an hour walking around, talking to the patients as is his wont on his birthday. For the Inquirer, the lead to their report--not a column, but a front page news story--said the Presidential visit was to the House of Joy--"not the house of his mistress Joy, but to the convent ..."
The same newspaper chose to write a story about his visit to a slum resettlement area by mocking how the poor people rushed to eat the food laid out in a buffet with indecorous haste (they had been waiting in the sun since early morning and were, understandably, hungry). But the crowd surging forward to the buffet meant some of the presidential entourage did not get lunch, and so the visit was classed as a "fiasco".
Making fun of the poor and making snide jokes at the expense of a house for the dying seems a bit below the belt, but that is where the Manila press corps is operating these days. Not that Estrada doesn't invite it--his own antics are sometimes less than presidential, although of late he has been trying to improve his image after his popularity ratings plummeted.
But the protests go on--now there is a so-called "Silent Protest Movement" against Estrada. What did they choose to do last week? Get protesters together with signs in the middle of Makati in Manila to start a "noise barrage" with car horns. Hard to see how Filipinos could ever content themselves with a silent protest over anything.
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