GLOBAL leaders, we are told, will be meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week for a "Summit of the Future" aimed at addressing the most important challenges of the 21st century. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to reshape human history and enlarge man's ability to cope with the challenges of the future.
Close to 200 heads of state and government are expected to adopt a 30-page "Pact for the Future." It will contain 56 proposed courses of action, according to reports; these will include a strong commitment to multilateralism, peacekeeping, reform of the international financial system and the UN, notably the Security Council, a heightened effort to combat climate change, disarmament, a program for the sound development of artificial intelligence (AI), and many more.
Responding to Guterres' highly inspired call, many heads of state will be making an effort to contribute something to this historic summit. Yet Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will be uncharacteristically staying away from it. Several days ago, Malacañang announced he would not be attending without giving any reason for it. In his place, Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo will lead the Philippine delegation, the announcement said. Since he assumed the presidency on June 30, 2022, Marcos Jr. has made 24 international trips to 17 countries for various reasons, but none of these was comparable to this global summit, which appears to be a class by itself.
We need not speculate on what ideas Marcos could contribute to the plenary discussions if he were there. It need not be much. But being absent, he won't be able to contribute anything at all. Unless, of course, his government has already made some documentary contributions to the basic documents that would be adopted at the summit. Some are tempted to suggest that if the summit achieves anything grand or lasting for world peace and progress, the Philippines would have failed to contribute anything to it; we would have completely missed the boat at the UN. This need not happen at all, given what is at stake for the summiteers and the world organization that Carlos P. Romulo helped to launch in 1945.
Marcos sits in one of the most conflicted areas of the world. After the ongoing bloody wars in Ukraine, Gaza, the Sudan and Lebanon, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea pose some of the most serious threats to international stability and world peace. They threaten a possible war between China and the United States, with the Philippines acting as a proxy of the US. This issue would certainly come up in any discussion of the new possible flashpoints in the world, but without the president of the Philippines present at the conference table, no one would be able to speak for its interests with the necessary depth and conviction. The Philippine foreign secretary may be a fairly competent subaltern, but the commitments he will make can only be ad referendum; he cannot speak with the same finality and force as the President.
For this reason, I consider Marcos' absence at the UN a genuine loss. This could have been avoided if the government had more precise forward planning — if it was more sensitive to what was happening within its immediate environment and the rest of the world if everyone under the president's wing did their homework. It is certainly too late for Marcos Jr. to reconsider his non-appearance at the summit, but perhaps he could embark upon a meaningful foreign policy initiative that would put him back and high in the world's political consciousness and in the mainstream international news. It is a pity that he seems to be saddled with an overload of domestic problems, beginning with his mounting troubled ties with his vice president, Sara Duterte, and an international social media vlogger who has been trying to portray him through an offensive meme as an illegal user of "coke."
He needs a huge relief from all these, and perhaps only a major foreign policy initiative could help. Foreign policy is not always easy to navigate, but a mature and forward-looking government can always try to exploit it. Through its highly fascinating foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India has been able to gain the attention of the world, just as Russia, despite its invasion of Ukraine, has been able to do the same through its foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
For its part, Marcos 1, in whose Cabinet I was privileged to serve as information minister for 10 long years, was able to manage it; with some humility and willingness to learn, Marcos 2 should be able to replicate it. All Marcos Jr. needs to do is show a genuine hunger and thirst to solve the problems of the nation — and of the world — that need to be solved.
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