URING the heated
public hearings on the controver-sial economic and trade treaty with Japan, Sen.
Mar Roxas clearly indicated his grave doubts about its feasibility and
beneficial effects on the Philippines. But he now favors its ratification even
though it would bring only "token benefits" to Filipinos. As he put it, they
will only "draw or lose" in the event of its implementation.
Why this strange turnaround by Roxas? Why is he singing a
different tune this time? And why is he even trying to convince his fellow
senators to ratify a patently defective pact?
He claims that the Philippines would be "left behind" by our
Asian neighbors that have entered into trade pacts with Japan. This was the same
refrain of the government’s negotiators that was already debunked by those
strongly against the agreement.
Has Roxas so soon forgotten the wise advice of former Senator
Wigberto Tañada, his own party mate in the Liberal Party of which he (Roxas) is
the president? Tañada, one of the constitutionalists who testified that the
JPEPA contained numerous provisions in clear violation of the Philippine
Constitution, had urged Roxas to offer a "win-win" formula, and not just a "draw
or lose" option.
And also, Roxas has forgotten or ignored the concerns of
various trade and commerce sectors as well as environmentalists about the
dangers in the entry of Japanese products, the death of some local industries,
and the dumping of Japan’s hazardous and toxic wastes in this country.
How strange indeed that Roxas did not mind all these after
just a month of vacation from Congress last December. Before the congressional
recess he even warned his fellow senators that if they vote for the JPEPA, the
pact will surely fail.
That is why concerned businessmen and traders and
environmentalists are wondering why he has so suddenly turned around from his
original stand. This, many say, is the mark of a weak leader.
Well, in the coming 2010 presidential elections, Filipinos
will have another chance to choose the kind of leader that they have longed for,
one who will lead the country to victory, and certainly not a presidential
wannabe who can only offer a "draw or lose" in a crucial issue like the
controversial JPEPA, and not a "win-win" formula that is a mark of a true and
strong national leader.
***
When the greatest of all chess champions, Bobby Fischer, died
last week, he was 64 years old. Remarkably, that’s the number of squares on a
chess board.
I shook the hand of the world chess champion a few months
before he became the World Chess Champion when he first visited Manila in the
early ‘70s.
No, we didn’t play a chess game at all after I was introduced
to him by chess master Florencio Campomanes, who later became president of FIDE,
the world chess federation. If we did, I’m sure I would have lost in probably in
12 moves. Not like Andy Soltis, a grandmaster, who said "I almost beat the
greatest there is." And that was even after he won Fischer’s queen for a rook,
but Soltis still lost the game to Fischer who became the world champion in 1971.
In 1973, I met Bobby Fischer at the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel
along Roxas Boulevard and then, to his delight, I showed him my copy of "Bobby
Fischer’s Chess Games." Quickly, with his long and graceful fingers, he
inscribed the book, "To Nestor Mata…Bobby Fischer, Manila Oct. 16 1973." It is
now among my collection of other Fischer books and those of past chess champions
from Capablanca, Botvinik, Spassky, who lost the chess crown to Fischer; Tal,
Keres, and many others.
I have been playing chess ever since I learned the game from my father, and
in later years I have won championship trophies in executive chess tournaments
and the Manila Overseas Press Club shortly before martial law.
