And how Czech Ambassador Jana Šedivá’s courtesy call to Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno Domagoso can make us smarter, more human
Manila City Mayor Isko Domagoso during the courtesy call
When Czech Ambassador Jana Šedivá paid Manila City Mayor Isko Moreno Domagoso a courtesy call on Valentine week, they talked about reverse-engineering the future—greening a city after decades of neglect, as well as rehabilitating the Pasig River, a European Union (EU) initiative.
With great enthusiasm, the Czech ambassador, accompanied by her deputy head of mission Jana Peterková, expressed her embassy’s willingness to support the mayor’s campaign to restore Manila to its old glory, also as part of the EU’s program designed to help the Philippines build a green, resilient, and plastic-free economy. Among the embassy’s current projects, implemented through World Vision Philippines, is one aimed at providing education and vocational training and, as a result, employment opportunities for the youth in the slums of Baseco.
The relationship between the Czech Republic and the Philippines can be likened to that between our national hero Jose Rizal and Ferdinand Blumentritt. The two only met in person once, in 1887, when Rizal, accompanied by writer and revolutionary Maximo Viola, visited the Prague-born scholar and schoolmaster and his family in Litoměřice, about 60 kilometers northwest of Prague. But their friendship ran deep, with close and constant correspondence between them, including a last letter Rizal wrote to Blumentritt in prison just one day before his execution at Luneta. Blumentritt translated a chapter of Noli Me Tangere and had since become a close confidante and mentor of Rizal’s. He wrote the preface to the sequel El Filibusterismo, although he consistently cautioned Rizal against it. Blumentritt wrote extensively about the Philippines. As written on a historical marking in front of the university he used to head in Litoměřice, where a park, the Parkany Jose Rizala, is dedicated to Rizal’s memory, he was a Philippinist.
Dr. Jose Rizal and Ferdinand Blumentritt
Ambassador Šedivá, as did Ambassador Jaroslav Olsa Jr. before her, is continuing this friendship that may prove as enriching and emboldening for both the Czech and the Filipino today as it was between Rizal and Blumentritt in the late 1800s.
“It was my distinct pleasure to meet Mayor Isko Moreno Domagoso and to share with him the efforts both of the Czech Embassy in Manila and the European Union in building bilateral and multilateral relations and cooperation with the Philippines, particularly with Manila City. We are also eager to share that the Czech Embassy is ready to work closely with Manila City in its aspirations to create a green and smart city,” said the ambassador during her official visit to the city mayor, whom she presented with a gift made of crystals representing the regard of the Czech people and government.
In exchanging good practices in building a smart city, I hope the Czech envoy would also share with the mayor of Manila that in the Czech Republic, there is a library for every 1,971 Czech citizens, “four times as many, relative to population, as the average European country, and 10 times as many as the United States, which has one for every 19,583 people,” according to the New York Times. A law enacted in 1919 ensured there was a library everywhere in what was then Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia), whether in the biggest of urban centers or the smallest of villages. As a result, the Czechs have developed not only a strong reading habit, but also a burning love for it. At a Conference of Directors of National Libraries of Asia and Oceania (CDNLAO) in Tokyo in 2008, a report claimed there were only “1,157 affiliated public libraries situated in the different provinces, cities, municipalities, and barangays” across the Philippines. That’s one library for every 95,073 Filipinos, assuming each of those 1,157 libraries is even worth a visit!
With the dramatic shift to digital caused by the recent pandemic—and in the way the shift is being handled at the moment with hardly any consideration of future and long-term repercussions—there is cause to worry that reading, essential as it is in every way to human development, is becoming a rare indulgence, if not a true luxury, for those with access to and understanding of its treasures. Without reading, what will become of us as a people, as humans, as inhabitants of the uncertain future?
We have lessons to learn from the Czech Republic about reading and how it can help bring about not only smart cities but also—more important—smart humans.