Friday, January 12, 2007 Editorials: A lasting experience
DESPITE the criticisms and the presence of placard-bearing demonstrators, the 12th Asean Summit and the activities related to it started without any untoward incident.
Today, as the main summit events formally open, those who were involved in preparations and planning for Cebu’s hosting of the gathering can start relaxing and awaiting its successful conclusion.
But the path to this “opening” was not well paved.
It was difficult, arrayed with barriers and restraining forces that could have easily fazed people of lesser stuff, and those with still lesser determination and patience.
But persistence and the ability to withstand withering criticisms from political opposition and detractors, as well as from militant groups, have apparently paid off.
Proponent
It is not easy when one plays the role of proponent or advocate, as Cebu City, Cebu Province and the Palace were in this instance.
With a public hardly informed beforehand what the Asean is, or what the summit means, public opinion could not be expected to favor the group doing the preparation and planning.
The way to the summit, indeed, was an uphill climb.
Providential
Thus, its postponement last December may have been providential, after all.
It gave the organizing group a breather, time enough to ease the critical pressure against its harried members, and in a manner of speaking, cause the summit’s gung-ho critics and militant demonstrators to lose their momentum.
The government’s security group, though, would have frustrated them anyway, the summit being too big an event for the administration to allow the militants to muddle it.
Experience
When the Asean summit shall have been over, and we can all look back at it with detachment, those who were involved in its blooming and unfolding, as well as those who watched from the sidelines, can consider it as a very valuable learning experience.
The lessons are not just in the aspect of accommodating similar events in the future, but also in attending to the welfare of foreign visitors, their needs as well as the amenities.
On the whole, the summit has extended to us, Cebuanos, a whole new outlook on our membership in an international community where we have become so inextricably involved in the matter of collective survival.
