Today you arrive in Manila.

Unlike Sri Lanka, there will be no elephants dressed in fancy garb to welcome you on our streets.

But I hear the President himself is set to welcome you at the airport, refusing as you have to do a State Dinner at Malacañang Palace. While he might invoke his Catholic upbringing, there have been many instances when he seemed to lack compassion and kindness, when often that is what this struggling and exhausted nation needs.

You might also meet his more famous sister. She will invoke her Catholic upbringing as well. But she has also single-handedly created a celebrity culture in this country that is about all things superficial, and she has made a career out of a shameless display of her wealth.

You will meet, too, the every-politician. In this country, religion can be a matter of convenience – if it can win them elections they will wear their Catholicism on their sleeve. It is not a measure of how well they serve the people.

Today you arrive in Manila and all the streets you pass will have been cleared of dirt and debris. You will see a Manila and later a Leyte Province that have no semblance of the cities we live in dangerously every day. That can only be a measure of how well our leaders have been able to hide what ails this nation. It’s a measure of how well they have silenced the people. (more…)