Please listen to your sister

Before I go into the main topic of today’s column, June 19 is the birthday of Jose Rizal, our national hero.

Many young Filipinos probably do not even know this, because all along, we have commemorated Rizal on the day he was executed by the Spanish colonizers on December 30.

I really wonder why we commemorate deaths and defeats, instead of birth dates and victories.

We hardly honor Lapu-Lapu, the Mactan chieftain who repelled and killed Ferdinand Magellan, until Rodrigo Duterte gave him due prominence.

Still, the heroism is only properly commemorated in Cebu.

Our veteran columnist, Atty. Emil Jurado, wonders why we do not commemorate the battle of Bessang Pass, where we scored a victory over the Japanese invaders, yet April 9, the Fall of Bataan, is a national holiday.

Maybe PFRM Jr. can direct the National Historical Institute to do something about this. The Roman Catholic Church commemorates martyrdom, but then it is a religious entity which propagates the idea of sainthood.

This is not to withdraw from my previously written sentiments about our having too many holidays, but in furtherance of propagating a sense of national pride, our historians and our leaders should start correcting the many inconsistencies in our commemorative events.

***

Mr. President, please listen to your sister, Sen. Imee Marcos, on many issues where she takes an independent stand, and now, particularly on the proposal of the American government to send Afghan refugees to the Philippines for “processing.”

When Presidents Quezon and Quirino welcomed separately Jewish refugees to the country, we had plenty of land to spare as our population in those times were not as large as now when we are bursting at the seams with 114 million and more.

So this is not about being less humanitarian than our predecessors; it is about the coping mechanisms of our economy. It is about national security and threats of terrorism.

Even Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte has objected vehemently to the plan to host Afghan refugees, concerned about the possibility that students would be caught in a crossfire should local terrorists supporting the Taliban launch attacks against the Afghans brought into the country.

The NBI has warned that “sleeper cells” among Taliban-sympathetic terrorists may use the presence of the Afghan refugees to create mayhem.

The situation is quite different with how PFEM Sr. established refugee centers for Vietnamese “boat people” fleeing possible persecution from the government that took over when the Americans left them in the wake of humiliating defeat.

Vietnam is just across the South China Sea, and is now part of the Asean community which we once spearheaded.

The American CIA financed the emergence of the Pashtuns who became the Taliban to defeat the Russian invaders only to realize that they had created a “monster” which would eventually topple the puppet “republics” they sponsored.

Now that America has grown tired of a war it could not win, they decided to leave the Afghans to their own fate, including those who worked for them in the long war of attrition.

Unwilling to bring the new refugees directly to their homeland, the Americans now scout for a “friendly” country to house their abandoned loyalists. And by force of habit, they look at our country, an easy and gullible ally.

Bring them to Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas where there is so much land and so few people, the native red Indians who inhabited these parts having been decimated by the white settlers a century ago when they pushed into the wild, wild West.

Process them if you must in Hawaii instead of Clark Green City.

And what happens if an insane Republican trumps a senile Democrat in the 2024 elections, and the victor decides not to accept the Afghan refugees “temporarily” housed in our hospitable shores?

Senadora Imee is right to call for a Senate inquiry, considering how the Presidential Management Staff has been organizing TWGs to establish ways and means to operationalize what seems to be a “done deal” between our ambassador to the US and the host government in apparent stealth.

Let’s stop being the doormat of our former colonial masters who have been exploiting us far too long because we content ourselves with being “little brown Americans.”

***

Senadora Imee is also right when she demands to know our Filipino community evacuation plans in case war erupts between China and Taiwan.

It is no easy task, and we cannot just rely on the assurances given by our defense officials and the Department of Migrant Workers who tell us they are on top of the potential situation.

If China does invade Taiwan, something I hope will not happen between blood relatives but could be accidentally triggered, it is commonsensical to assume that the PLA will immediately target the airports and seaports of the island across the narrow strait.

The southern rump of Taiwan (Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Kenting) which are just about 300 kilometers from Batanes will be a theater of war, and the Bashi Channel and our own Luzon Straits will be awash with Chinese and American naval vessels shooting at each other if the latter wades into the conflict.

Our hosting of bases in Cagayan province for the Americans under the new terms of EDCA has made our country inextricably linked to the potential conflict, the probability of the PLA air and naval forces attacking our territory quite likely.

How now are we to evacuate our 180,000 strong Filipino community in Taiwan? By air when missiles are flying, or by slow boats?

Maybe use the yachts of our mega-rich headed by El Chavit, ala Dunkirk?

The best we could do is, one, to hope the hostilities will end quickly; and two, that the Taiwanese underground shelters can accommodate more than 700,000 foreigners, whether Filipino, Indonesian, Vietnamese and others, on top of their own 23.4 million citizens.

While at MECO, together with our Asean resident diplomats, we asked the Taiwanese government about sheltering foreign contract workers in the event of an “invasion” but up to the time I resigned in mid-2021, there were no definitive answers on the matter of housing foreigners in their bomb shelters.

Even assuming we can transport 130,000 OFWs from the north and central parts of the island to Kaoshiung by land where they could theoretically board vessels for Batanes and Cagayan is a huge logistical nightmare.

That is the reason why MECO saved more than 400 million dollars from retained earnings because relying on national government funding (MECO is off budget and sustains itself without the GAA) in an emergency is not easy.

Just feeding our displaced OFW’s while the armed conflict boils is hugely expensive and difficult to operationalize.

With almost zero income for more than two years when we had lockdowns, and MECO could not earn from Taiwanese visitor visas, we retrenched, cut costs, closed an office in Taichung, just to ensure that those reserves will not be touched.

I have no knowledge whether those funds are still intact after I left office, or whether my successors touched the fund to sustain operations.

Whichever, it will be a tremendously difficult situation, which is why war should be prevented by diplomatic means and calm should prevail over actions labeled as “deterrent” while the other side should forebear with its legendary patience.