Dinner with the President

At the outset, lest I am misunderstood, let me say that I felt honored by the invitation to join three other columnists for dinner with the President at Malacañang last Tuesday. And before everything else, I would like to say, thank you for the invitation and the ego boost that goes with such an honor.

But strictly speaking, I have no right to feel good about myself for having shared a meal of pancit molo, lapu lapu and some kind of meat loaf with my country’s Numero Uno. I was there to represent my readers, so to speak. I was there to probe and ask questions. I was there to get insights on how she thinks. I was not there to just banter, wasting the President’s time.

Silly ol‚ me, I actually sat down before I drove up to Malacañang, to write down some questions. I remember doing that too when I had the same opportunity to see and talk to then President Ramos. But unfortunately this time, I didn’t get the opportunity to probe and follow up. There just was not enough time between 7:30 and 8:45 pm, given that there were three other columnists eager to do their thing and she also had to take more than a few phone calls in between.

She was asked about the exchange rate and she said she thought it would improve. I would have wanted to follow up with a question why she thought that would happen but some other topic came up quickly. Also, how was I to know that two days later, she was going to ask the BSP to do all it can to bring down the exchange rate to the level of P50 to $1... like it is possible to go against market sentiment without burning our puny international reserves.

I wanted to ask her questions that I wouldn’t even dream of asking Erap. Since she is an economist, it would have been nice to go deeper into her tax policy...like how can that deliver more revenues when rates are being cut. Is she adopting the Reagan supply side approach that says tax cuts will generate greater revenue collections in the long term? If so, how will the government manage in the short term?

This is important because Reaganomics is also known as voodoo economics among many economists. But she gently cut me off by saying that the Finance guys are still working out details of her tax plan and then, there is still Congress that must act on it. That’s it for a major plank of her SONA.

I was curious about a program she mentioned in passing in her SONA, the Personal Equity Retirement Account or PERA. I asked her if this is the same as the American IRA scheme where we can set aside a portion of our salary for placement in an investment account and not get taxed for it until we use it upon retirement. She said that is precisely it. She said she didn’t have the details nor the timetable because Lito Camacho and his boys are working on it.

I had some more questions on my list about export strategy, how to encourage more private sector participation in infrastructure development and how to maximize the impact on the economy from the earnings of OCWs. But I gave up and just joined the banter or small talk. After the dessert of watermelon and mango slices, and before my second sip of coffee, she casually looked at her watch. We took that to mean the meeting’s over. It was, how could I put it, so bitin.

As we walked out of the Palace, the Presidential car was waiting with motor running, along with the usual convoy of security Nissan Safaris. She had another appointment. Wow! I thought. The President’s day isn’t over yet. I wonder how she manages such a punishing schedule. I know it would kill me.

Maybe she shouldn’t have squeezed in our dinner into her busy workday at all. I can’t help feeling that she must have thought we were an intrusion. It was not productive, anyway, even if the gesture might have won her some PR points. This dinner should have been an exercise in winning our confidence, to set us on fire to spread the good word. There was no enthusiasm in our desultory conversation.

She was very formal, smiling now and then as if on cue. She seemed afraid to ruin an image she was told to project. She lacked the fire and the passion of a Margaret Thatcher or even the refreshing candidness of a Cory Aquino. No indefinable aura of the kind that will mesmerize a nation to follow her to the ends of the earth, if necessary, emanated from her.

Yet, I know this is not the real Gloria. I miss the old Gloria I knew as a senator. She was warmer and more hands-on with facts and details. I know it is unfair to compare. Being President, an embattled one at that is so different from being just one of 24 with no line responsibility and only an occasional privilege speech to deliver.

I miss the old Gloria, so sure of herself as she coordinated staff work for FVR in Seattle during the first APEC meeting in 1993 but still finding time to have lunch with us, feeding us juicy morsels of insights and developments from the Summit. Last Tuesday evening, she seemed remote, uneasy, maybe even a little nervous. Given her problems, I don’t blame her.

The only thing we got from her that could have made our journalistic juices flowing was her plan to move Lanny Nañagas to DBP but she swore us to secrecy not once but twice. Imagine my surprise the following morning upon seeing the headline in another paper not represented that evening. Seems like one of her boys is playing favorites among the dailies and leaked the information. So much for official embargoes.

But in the next to nil chance that I am invited again to have dinner with the President, I will still enthusiastically drive through congested Shaw Blvd. and the absolutely crazy Sta Mesa traffic to Malacañang in the hope that it would be more than a PR exercise.

And hopefully too, they won’t schedule me again on a Tuesday evening. Last week, I missed an original episode of Ally McBeal for the bragging right to say that I had dinner with the President. I sat to her left. (They should have completed the PR exercise and sent me autographed photos the next day. But they aren’t that efficient in their own game.)

I hope her PR handlers would realize that some of us really want to get more than just a false sense of self-importance. They are also shortselling her because until last Tuesday evening, I was convinced from previous exposure to her that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was a lot more substantial than the sound bytes we got. She came across as much too packaged... for 2004, I guess.

Market terms

Here is the continuation of the market terms e-mailed to me by reader Orly Morabe.

Bond – Famous British agent. Also, type of relationship that does not usually develop between broker and client.

Capitalization – Process by which lowercase letters become uppercase letters. Compare: Large-cap Companies that use large letters in their logos; e.g., GM. Small-cap Companies that use all lowercase letters in their logos; e.g., amazon.com.

Commodities – Something tangible, of value, such as gold, sugar, beets, etc., as opposed to advice given by a broker.

Futures – What you and your family will not have if you let the broker talk you into buying a gold, wheat, pork-belly, or soy "contract."

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])