THE Philippines is like a beautiful woman with pimples. Every time there is news about her the cameras zoom in on the biggest pimple and everyone thinks it's bad. If only they would zoom out then she wouldn't look so ugly.'' To many Filipinos, this is how their country is treated by the foreign media. A Filipino tourism industry executive shared the theory with me last month as I was about to bid farewell to the archipelago after 21/2 years as the South China Morning Post's Manila correspondent. Indeed, throughout that time, I had heard Filipinos complain that too much of the news coming out of the Philippines was scaring away tourists and investors.
Although as a news story the Philippines appears to have fallen off the map recently, most of this period generated major stories: the biggest volcanic eruption the century, the departure of almost 20,000 US servicemen, the chaotic homecoming of former first lady Imelda Marcos, the costly onslaught of daily power outages lasting up to 10 hours and the transfer of the presidency from former housewife Corazon Aquino to military man Fidel Ramos.
It was also during this period that the Philippines shook off the euphoria from the heady days of the ''People Power'' revolution and began dealing in a substantive way with the mess left behind by the Marcos family and their greedy cronies.
Monopolies and government-owned corporations began to lose their privileged status, and the first formal charges were filed against Mrs Marcos - although I expect she will never have to spend a single day behind bars. With the Americans gone, jobs for some 40,000 Filipinos and huge amounts of American aid have evaporated. For the first time in decades, the Filipinos are learning to fend for themselves.
Since arriving in the Philippines, I have sensed that foreign investors and businessmen are being made more welcome; but in the airport lounges and hotel restaurants where European and American executives pass the time, one still hears far too many complaints about red tape, protectionism and rampant corruption. Most recently, the representatives of foreign firms have begun to notice with justifiable alarm a propensity among labour unions to demand unrealistic salaries and perks.
In Manila there have been changes, too. No one thought it could be done but decades after they first appeared the city's notorious girlie bars have been closed down and the red-light Ermita district has been left a darkened canyon. But as Manila mayor Alfredo Lim was nailing the last closure sign to the 70 or so bars, just a few blocks away, in the neighbouring municipality of Pasay, its vice-mayor was cutting the ribbon to the new Firehouse - which used to be the most popular bar in Ermita. Only in the Philippines.
