Summit security

I was seated beside DAILY STAR's Third Tejida at the Main Briefing Room of the Cebu International Convention Center during the ASEAN Summit when he received a text message from his friends from Bacolod who planned to stage a rally in Cebu City. They were stopped by policemen in Naga City, some 20 kilometers away from Cebu City, and they were prevented from proceeding to Cebu.

That news didn't really surprise me. Police were flagging down almost every vehicle that passed by. When I was driving to Cebu from Dumaguete two Sundays ago, I was flagged down twice and police suspiciously looked at me and looked at the vehicle I was driving. Even the red sticker on the plate (which meant that I was driving a government vehicle) was not enough to guarantee me a smooth and uninterrupted trip to Cebu City before the ASEAN Summit. I had a chance of meeting Russ, a European living in Cebu for the last 19 or so years. He said that in his 19 years of driving in Cebu, he was flagged down by policemen only twice. During the ASEAN Summit, he was flagged down 18 times!

Russ told me that at one particular checkpoint, when the policemen noted that he was not a Filipino, they had a discussion among themselves as to who spoke enough English to talk to him. Finally, one cop came over and asked Russ where he was going. "I'm going to see some friends," he replied.

"Do you have guns in your backpack?" the policeman asked.

"No, I have them strapped on my leg. Come on, do you really think I'm that foolish?" he said with a laugh.

But oh, most policemen on these roadblocks are not really known to have a sense of humor. They just let him go.

I again had another experience with the Summit security last Monday. After lunchtime, I noticed that my reading glasses were missing. I was sure they fell at the Via Mare dining room at the lower ground floor. I went down, traced my steps and, to my horror, found my reading glasses on an empty table in three separate parts! Someone had stepped on them and rendered them useless.

Well, my only consolation was that I only bought that pair for P60. Surely, as SM was nearby, I could just go on a quick trip to SM and buy me a new pair. So off to SM I went. The glasses cost me P64. Coming back to the CICC, I had to take a taxi. Ordinarily, the short ride from SM to CICC would cost about P30. But with each security post we had to pass, we were diverted to another route. Soon, we had passed all the perimeter security posts leading to the CICC with no chance of getting through. And at that time, I even had my ASEAN Summit ID!

I regretted not having driven my vehicle that day, as it had a car pass and, combined with my ID, we could probably have gone through any of the checkpoints without difficulty. But I was pampered by the very efficient transportation services that we had for the entire duration of our stay. There were shuttle buses that took us from the hotel to the CICC and back. The buses would make the trip every two hours--with or without passengers, saving me from having to do a lot of driving.

Eventually, the taxi ride cost me P170 -- nearly three times more than my glasses.

But I'm not complaining. The tight security provided by the police really did a lot to make the ASEAN Summit a success. *

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