Delegates attending an international conference in the Philippine capital might not see what they came to discuss: abject poverty.
A makeshift, temporary wall has been erected across a bridge on a road from the airport to downtown Manila that hides a sprawling slum along a garbage-strewn creek.
Presidential spokesman Ricky Carandang defended the wall’s installation, saying yesterday “any country will do a little fixing up before a guest comes.”
Photo: EPA
He expressed hope that this week’s annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Board of Governors, which includes finance ministers and senior officials from 67 member states, will show the Philippines is open for business. The lending institution, which is headquartered in its own walled compound in Manila, aims to cut poverty in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We need to show our visitors that Metro Manila is orderly. We owe it to ourselves,” Metro Manila chief Francis Tolentino said. “I see nothing wrong with beautifying our surroundings. We are not trying to keep the poor out of the picture.”
There was no immediate comment from ADB.
The Philippine Communist Party recalled that former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos — notorious for living an ostentatious lifestyle — was ridiculed for trying to hide squatter colonies. She erected similar whitewashed walls along the route of foreign visitors to the Miss Universe pageant in Manila in 1974, and other international events.
“The government should face reality. If they don’t, how will they know the problem, how will they solve the problem?” asked Renato Reyes, secretary general of the largest left-wing group Bayan. “By covering the truth, they lose the energy or intention to resolve the problem.”
About a third of Manila’s 12 million residents live in slums, and a third of 94 million Filipinos live below the poverty line of US$1.25 a day. Overall, more than half the population in Asia remains poor.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion