THE POLICE have been cleaning up Manila for the Asia Pacific summit this weekend, tearing down cardboard shacks and moving the homeless away from the routes used by the delegates from 18 countries, who have been assigned hotels on Roxas Boulevard along the seafront.
Even so, outside the Sofitel where I am staying, the park fills up in the evening with destitute people, some with children, who spread cardboard on concrete seats to make improvised beds. In the darkness men approach passers by to offer the services of young women, even at the doors of a baroque Catholic Church.
A plaque on the church wall commemorates the Columban fathers Patrick Reilly, John Henaghan, John Lawlor, Peter Fallon and Joseph Monaghan who died from "Japanese atrocities and American shelling" in the 1945 battle for Manila. Eight Irish Columban fathers still minister today to the poor in Olongapo, the town on Subic Bay where the Asia Pacific Economic Co operation (APEC) leaders meet this morning.
It is a three hour drive to Olongapo. Much of the time is taken up getting out of Manila where summit measures have created traffic chaos. Special "Friends of APEC" lanes have been marked out on the main thoroughfares to keep delegates moving. The result has been almost empty "friendship" lanes and traffic gridlock right beside in what angry drivers call "Enemies of APEC" lanes. "Friendship is the last thing they have fostered," said the Daily Inquirer yesterday, concluding critically that the lanes were "as necessary as hiding the shanties along the path of the APEC guests".
Particularly furious are the drivers of the "jeepneys", the 40,000 "discos on wheels" which provide unique public transport and atmosphere on Manila's streets with their bright colours, steel bonnets, holy pictures, and names such as "Gift of God" and "Jesus is King".
On Saturday, on the way to Olongapo, a dangerous two lane road with many signs warning "Accident Prone", our car was stopped several times by heavily armed police and soldiers, backed by V150 armoured vehicles, there to protect the world leaders and to keep anti APEC protesters away Many Philippines people oppose free trade, arguing that it will reduce the value of local labour and mean less attention to humane rights. Cardinal Sin of the Philip pines cautioned APEC leaders against ignoring the poor and "reducing all local cultures to a culture of hamburgers and Coke".
Olongapo has been trying to shed the ugliest aspects of its American culture since the departure of the last sailors when the US Navy left its base in 1992. Christmas lanterns and fairy lights now decorate Magsaysay Drive where the girlie bars have mostly been shuttered and left derelict.
"The centre of Olongapo was a night club", said Father Shay Cullen, who ran a weekend anti APEC conference in Olongapo on the social cost of globalisation, and led a protest march of 200 people yesterday. "They have moved the sex business about six kilometres down the road where it is patronised by semi permanent tourists from all over Europe and Asia," he said.
To counter the economic consequences of losing American dollars, Mayor Richard Gordon has turned the town into a version of Singapore. It is now a free port, with clean streets and stiff fines imposed on anyone throwing away a cigarette. His official slogans appear above local supermarkets and offices: "Aim high!" and "Lazy people prohibited". It is a remarkable transformation for a town whose environment was devastated by the eruption of Mount Pinatuba in the Zambales mountains to the north in June 1991, which left 250,000 people homeless.
Part of the Manila Olongapo road passes across a surreal landscape of volcanic mud above which the crosses and towers of half buried churches can be seen. Beyond Olongapo, dust roads off the highway now peter out at a massive 60 foot high dam holding back a white coagulated sea of inert dried ash and sand, known as lahar, stretching endlessly in each direction.
After a couple of hours bouncing along on a mountain track, through palm forests and past villages of thatched bamboo huts built by negrito people, we came to the eerily beautiful Pinatuba lake formed when the lahar blocked the Marbela river. The bell tower and the school roof of the little town of Buhawen can be seen above the water.
In keeping with its strategy of turning adversity to advantage, Olongapo now offers Mount Pinatuba tours, bringing sightseers by light plane to view the magnificent landscape crisscrossed with bizarre ravines which is now one of the wonders of the world.
There were few tourists yesterday however. The road from Manila to Olongapo was blocked just outside the Philippines capital when police stopped a people's caravan of cars and "jeepneys" organised by leftist and prolabour groups and heading to the Subic Bay area to protest against APEC.
The Philippines government is making sure President Clinton and the other world leaders get to Subic Bay from Manila today for the APEC summit at specially prepared villas overlooking the waters. They are flying them in to Subic Bay International Airport. The media are taking their chances - with high speed boats along the coast.