Trudeau’s Jollibee diplomacy
“Five people walk into a bar: Justin Trudeau, a feminist, a human rights activist, an effective and charismatic leader, and a handsome yoga enthusiast -- and four others.”
-- A “joke” about the Canadian prime minister
THE writer who spun that bar tale said, seriously, how can anyone make fun of Justin Trudeau? “He’s the best thing that ever happened to Canada ever since Ryan Gosling.” You know, the “La La Land” Oscars Best Actor awardee.
Trudeau attended the just concluded Asean summit in Manila and left three stand-out moments: his visit to a Jollibee outlet in Tondo where he ordered some fried chicken “to go”; his press-con at International Media Center in Conrad Manila where fans who ogled him included government officials; and his one-on-one talk with President Duterte that didn’t go well, with the president convinced that the Canadian leader “officially” insulted him. Rock-star status The first two incidents boosted Trudeau’s rock-star status, which “Rolling Stone” magazine validated by putting him on its cover last July. The magazine article titled “Why can’t he be our president?” must have miffed President Trump who is not well loved back in the U.S. and whose presence at the Asean summit drew angry protesters, not screaming fans.
Duterte’s potshot, unpleasant as it was, was not unexpected. Trump reportedly didn’t mention the illegal drug war here and its casualties while Trudeau did. Unlike Trump, Trudeau took human rights activism seriously. His fans Trudeau didn’t have that awkward situation in November 2015 when Apec was held in Manila. Then president Noynoy Aquino told Trudeau the Canadian had many fans in the Philippines, including his sister TV-movie star Kris.
Duterte could’ve told Trudeau the same thing, especially that fans who went gaga over the visiting celebrity included his own people: PCOO chief Martin Andanar, chief blogger and Asst. Secretary Mocha Uson, and one other bureaucrat who must spend the next few days gabbing about the glass from which Trudeau drank during the press-con. Effect on women The president must understand Trudeau’s effect on women. Duterte obviously went through the same phase, though in a less grand scale, when he was young. He can’t blame his top communicators for admiring the head of state who “officially insulted” their boss.
Trust that Andanar and even presidential spokesman Harry Roque, who must also adore rock stars, could still lambast Trudeau for meddling if required by their job. Less starry-eyed But mainstream journalists raised to Trudeau the problem of 2,450 tons of garbage that a Canadian private company had shipped in 2013-2014 to our country, an issue Cebu can relate to because of similar trash dumped here by South Korea recently. Trudeau’s news wasn’t too good: the return of the trash was now just “theoretically possible.”
Still, the journalists were less starryeyed than PCOO officials and bloggers. The reporters managed to ask Trudeau the tough question on trash, as Trudeau did in bringing up to Duterte the hated subject of extrajudicial killings.
Could Trudeau have done better if he talked with Duterte about Jollibee’s Chickenjoy instead of those sordid EJKs?