A family of note
How do you gauge the worth of a national leader? Through great deeds and courageous acts, you might think. The Central Bank of the Philippines has other ideas.
It has made its own estimate of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's value. To be exact, her value is 200 pesos (HK$29.80) - the denomination of the banknote which features her picture. The bills, which have been circulating for just more than a year, mark a break with the tradition that the only figures pictured on the country's paper currency should be dead national heroes and former presidents. Mrs Arroyo clearly fits neither category.
The Central Bank argues that the 200 peso note, which shows her being sworn in, commemorates the popular uprising which brought her to power. The argument is so weak it needs a life-support system. First, any picture marking the uprising should be of the crowd of hundreds of thousands who turned out to stand and be counted, not of Mrs Arroyo, who only showed up to be sworn in when everything was over.
Second, if anybody symbolises people power, it is former president Corazon Aquino, who actually participated in the struggle to overthrow a dictator. Yet she has not been honoured by the Central Bank.
Mrs Arroyo did not order her picture printed on the note, but then she did nothing to stop it, just as she has done nothing to stop the ongoing proliferation of her family name. A huge airport complex in the former US military base, Clark Field, was suddenly renamed the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport, after Mrs Arroyo's father (a former president whose face appears on the opposite side of the 200 peso banknote). A controversial road in Manila, which critics say was overpriced by 600 million pesos, also bears his name. One bridge on the road has been named after Mrs Arroyo's mother. Like some airborne virus, the Diosdado Macapagal appellation has attached itself to a park, an auditorium, a stroke centre in a public hospital, a dam and a convention centre.
The fact that an unremarkable former president is being so fulsomely honoured when his daughter happens to be chief of state is suspicious enough. The point that each mention of Macapagal calls attention to Mrs Arroyo herself - providing publicity at the taxpayer's expense - raises questions about the propriety of the naming frenzy.