Author Dan Brown
once referred to Manila as the “gates of hell” in his novel Inferno,
while actress Claire Danes disparagingly described the city as smelling of
cockroaches “with rats all over.” Naturally, the two drew fire and brimstone
from Philippine tourism officials and from “indignant” Filipinos who, with
their misplaced sense of nationalism, were unable to accept being told the
truth by foreigners.
Members of the city
council of Manila – like the three monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil when
it came to their fiefdom – went so far as to declare Danes a persona non
grata as if she cared being barred from ever returning to the Philippines.
Fast forward to the present and hardly anything in the Philippines’ capital
city and nearby environs can be said to have changed for the better.
As the world
celebrated Environment Day last Friday, the Philippine Daily Inquirer
ran a front-page photo on June 8 of what it aptly captioned as the “Bay of
Trash” in which a fisherman “heads into the waters of Manila Bay, walking past
tons of garbage scattered on the shore of Freedom Island in the Las
Piñas-Parañaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area.”
Also last June 8,
the Philippine Star featured on page 1 a news item entitled “Livable Cities: MM
ranks low” with an accompanying photo on page 5 of a row of shanty homes
sitting atop a “sea of garbage.” The paper rued that “poverty and lack of urban
planning have been blamed for pollution in the Metropolis of 12 million
people.”
Duh. A veritable
bay of garbage being in a critical habitat and ecotourism area? One just needs
to open one’s car window while travelling along Manila Bay on Roxas Boulevard
and Coastal Road to have one’s nasal cavity assaulted by the stench
of decay, decomposition, mud and filth. And the Philippines wants to sell
many areas in Metro Manila as eco-tourism destinations? What irony. What
depravity! Even Boracay is now reeling from pollution due to national and local
government mismanagement of the island as a top world tourism
destination.
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