Making Good on a Promise

CAN JAPAN HELP?

HOUSEKEEPING a perennially chaotic nation made President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo travel-shy in her first six months in office.

Unlike her predecessors whose first itinerary upon assumption of office was to pay homage to the country's main aid donors and economic partners--the US and Japan--Arroyo has chosen to stay home.

But now that she has just committed herself to the improvement of the lot of the poor and the modernization of agriculture in her State of the Nation address, she is finally venturing outside to seek support.

Her very first overseas travel was a low-key neighborly visit to Malaysia, where her main agenda was to seek intermediation in talks with the troubled Muslim south. On the side, she is expected to woo some Malaysian investors for the country's almost moribund steel industry.

	Photo shows President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (center) with husband Mike Arroyo (right).

Arroyo is also making arrangements for a visit to Tokyo sometime in early fall this year. If the planned visit pushes through, it is interesting to speculate what kind of reception she will get.

Arroyo has certainly more things in mind when she comes to Tokyo than to exchange courtesies with the Imperial family and Philippine-Japan friendship clubs in the Diet.

Japanese public opinion is among the most volatile and transparent in the world. Going by the amount of media space Arroyo gets in Japan, the president is simply "not interesting enough," as the wife of a Japanese researcher in the Philippines puts it.

Arroyo is invariably compared with Aquino who, to the Japanese, has a lot of charisma. (There is also need to mention that the name Aquino has a Japanese ring to it.)

It does not help that Arroyo became president through "people power," which lacked the compelling drama of a yellow-clad widow vanquishing an entrenched dictator.

"People power" itself has lost its image of a benign revolution in Japan when scenes of Estrada's supporters trying to overrun Malacanang were flashed on Japanese TV in May this year.

Short on good will, Arroyo will certainly be greeted not only by the chill of autumn air but also public indifference when she visits Japan. By and large, public sentiment affects official reception of foreign visitors.

Likewise, the political equation has changed dramatically in Japan with the rise of Junichiro Koizumi and the overwhelming victory of the LDP in the last House of Councillors elections. Already enjoying unprecedented popularity, Koizumi interprets the election results as a mandate for him to pursue his platform of structural reforms. With the Japanese economy itself clobbered by the prolonged recession, Koizumi is constrained to implement stimulus measures as well.

Going by Koizumi's foreign policy moves so far, it can be told that Southeast Asia, let alone the Philippines, is outside his immediate diplomatic compass.

Koizumi apparently prioritizes diplomatic relations with economic equals, namely U.S. and Europe. In his last overseas stints, he tried to match his political bravado at home with diplomatic flourish in these places.

That he continues to take no heed of the protests of South Korea, Taiwan, China and other Southeast Asian countries in the history textbook issue that redefines Japan's wartime aggression in Asia speaks a mouthful about his sensitivity to Asian concerns.

Likewise, as of press time, Koizumi in his official capacity as prime minister, is still bent on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine where the Japanese war dead , including convicted war criminals, are commemorated, on the anniversary of the end of the Pacific War on August 15.

Always known as a maverick, he pays no loyalty to political factions within his own party the LDP. It is not out of character for this man to pay no loyalty as well to wartime historical obligations which underpin the philosophy of Japan's Overseas Development Aid.

Like the Philippines, Japan is bracing itself for a long period of austerity. Koizumi's structural reforms are expected to bring more bankruptcies and unemployment.

Therefore, it may be too optimistic, even naive, for Arroyo to believe that she could ask Japan to foot the tab on promises she made to the Filipino people.*

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