China’s driving away of two Philippine boats last week is another indication that our territorial dispute with Asia’s emerging superpower will dog us not just for decades, but even, I would think, in the lifetimes of the next generation.
“legal liability…” googled it and, yes, it would seem that apologizing would / could mean admission of guilt, which could be used against the apologizer should the hostaged hongkong survivors and victims’ families take the ph government to court for redress.
hmm. kaya pala ayaw mag-apologize ng presidente. in a court of law, baka maobligang magbayad ng just compensation at maparusahan ang mga nagkasala. but in the court of public opinion, lusot na lusot, especially now, given filipino disgust at china’s aggressive moves on philippine terrritory. in comment threads on mainstream news and social media sites, parang mas maraming aprub kaysa di-aprub sa pagmamatigas ni aquino, kesyo, tama, wag magpa-bully sa hong kong/china, kesyo it’s a matter of national pride, apologizing would be a sign of weakness.
but, really, it doesn’t mean that we, who believe the president should apologize, are wrong. what’s wrong is to think that the two occasions in beijing when filipino tourists were killed are comparable to the almost 10 hours hostaging and eventual killing of 8 and wounding of 7 hong kong tourists in luneta. alex magno is right:
The first incident involved an accidental death caused by a wayward vehicle. The second incident involved the killing of two Filipinos by a seriously deranged man (subsequently executed for the crimes).
Neither involved acts of official neglect or incompetence. They cannot be compared to the official failings during the Luneta incident, which our own fact-finding committee established. That committee’s recommendation for charges to be filed against former Manila mayor Alfredo Lim and others have been blissfully ignored by Malacanang.
as far as the aquino admin is concerned, it has already done daw its utmost best to address the issue. this was the official reaction of the DFA sec to news that govt officials will now have to obtain visas to travel to hong kong:
“The sanction is unfortunate because a substantive closure on the Quirino Grandstand incident has been arrived at three years ago with the previous Hong Kong SAR government and the victims as well as their families,” DFA spokesperson and Assistant Secretary Raul Hernandez said in a statement he read to reporters.
Hernandez said that a renewed appeal for compassion was made to the government in October 2013 and it responded by offering “additional tokens of solidarity” that were pledged by Filipinos “at the behest of the Philippine government.”
“These amounts that are being offered are substantially more than those that have been previously accepted by the victims and their families. We have been made to understand that the victims and their families have agreed to this offer,” he said.
But Hernandez said the Hong Kong SAR government responded by opening a “total renegotiation’ to seek a demand for an apology over the deaths of its citizens. He said the Philippines, as a sovereign nation, “is not prepared to consider” this demand.
“Our nation has already expressed its deepest regret and condolences over the incident and we are preparing to reiterate this,” Hernandez said.
He said the government “remains committed to manifest compassion for the victims and their families and is ready to turn over the additional tokens of solidarity from the Filipino people … as soon as possible.”
“We would like to assure the Filipino people that the Philippine government has done its utmost best to address the Quirino Grandstand issue,” Hernandez said.
what intrigues me is that i can’t find any source specifying exactly how much the hong kong victims are asking for and exactly how much the philippine government and/or its supporters have paid or offer to pay. the only figure i get from googling is the 120M that erap was offering to raise, and i have no idea if that’s anywhere close to what is just compensation.
surely we can find the money for this. if we can find the money to keep the patronage system alive by awarding senators and congressmen millions (billions?) in pork barrel funds and in generous salaries and allowances and bonuses every year, surely we can find the money to do right by the victims. it is the honorable thing to do.
or is it that the bigger problem is that the prez cannot abide the idea of disgracing his incompetent subordinates because kabarkada, or political ally since cory times? or basta, hindi lang sanay mag-sorry pag nagkamali? o hindi lang sanay umamin pag nagkamali?
whatever, i can’t help wondering, what if the president had apologized right away? would china be a little less offensive over in the west philippine sea? maybe not. china seems to be preparing to just take it over, “china sea” or bust, and seems to be testing limits all around.
interestingly, aquino’s hitler jibe could not have come at a better time, almost synchronous with america finally speaking out and criticizing china’s maritime claims, while talks on “temporary” facilities promise to continue, and u.s. warships arrive in manila and cebu ports, and who knows where else, soon after.
parang coordinated. and i suppose it makes sense. the hitler analogy may be flawed, but like peter beinart of the atlantic says, it at least recognizes the magnitude of the stakes.
Was that Beijing blogger who labeled the Philippines “a hoodlum country” serious when he urged his government to “use force” to settle the territorial dispute in the South China Sea? And wasn’t Manila entertainer Jim Paredes being facetious in saying that Filipinos should claim Hong Kong’s Statue Square?
Do the overheated exchanges between the two countries’ bloggers border on the infantile? Are Chinoy media commentators and Pinoy columnists overdoing the threats and pontification? Why did I think of a Marx Brothers scenario when the Philippines yanked out the Chinese flag that had been planted on the Spratly Islands some months ago? Isn’t the wrangling over a bunch of shoals (defined in the dictionary as sandbars) a fatuous tit-for-tat game? Isn’t it reminiscent of that kid’s game where one person slaps a hand over the back of his opponent’s hand while the other slaps his over it, with the hand-over-hand slapping continuing until one party tires?
Did announcer He Jia of state-run CCTV in Beijing, who declared early this month that “We all know that the Philippines is China’s inherent territory,” misspeak on purpose, or was she parroting the claim by Chinese officials that the islands in question are “an indisputable part of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”? Did her muted apology evaporate into space?
Did Beijing’s pronouncement that China is “prepared to respond to any escalation if Manila engages in more provocations” confirm suspicions among Pinay helpers in Hong Kong that they’re gradually being eased out because more Indonesian women are now being hired as servants in the territory?
Will Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese fulminate forever over President Aquino’s refusal to apologize for the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists during the 2010 bus hijacking at Rizal Park? Was that a reverberating raspberry response across the sea to his admission that “things could have been handled better”? Are there really “bacteria problems” in Philippine fruit, as Beijing’s quarantine department claims, which is why they’ve stopped banana imports?
Isn’t this territorial imbroglio somewhat reminiscent of the war Britain waged against Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent her country’s mighty fleet to crush the Latinos? Was Thatcher in the wrong because the Falkland Islands are right next door to Argentina, with Britain half a continent away? Or was that formidable prime minister right in that all of the Falklands’ inhabitants said they preferred to remain British? Wasn’t there a joke then about that war being like a squabble between two bald men fighting over a comb?
Now that Manila commentators are using “West Philippine Sea” instead of South China Sea, can China be stopped from altering its maps? While it’s obvious that the Scarborough Shoal lies just to the left of Luzon and the Spratly Islands are right next door to Palawan (and closer to Vietnam than to China), where is the United Nations’ Law of the Sea now that it’s needed? Does the wrangling just boil down to the possibility of finding oil in the disputed areas?
Is anyone concerned that the Philippine Navy is puny compared to China’s? Aren’t most of our ships and military hardware second-hand stuff, courtesy of the US government? Is the Pinoy dream of being a plucky David to China’s greedy giant realistic?
Wasn’t it another Chinese blogger who said that if every Chinese person spat, the Philippines would drown? Didn’t that remind me of finding, when I first came to Hong Kong in the early 1980s, the locals spitting everywhere? Didn’t the British colony then seem like one big spittoon? Wasn’t it the late writer Anthony Burgess who described hawking and spitting as “the national sound” made by overseas Chinese?
Didn’t my late mother tell us stories about her Chinoy lolo who washed up in Tayabas from impoverished Amoy, cut off his queue, changed his name to Samson and learned to speak Spanish? Didn’t he do well by marrying a savvy Pinay, setting up a business and producing 10 children—one of them my grandmother who spoke and sang beautiful Spanish?
Will the verbal assaults keep ricocheting across the ocean while politicians on both sides ignore more pressing problems on land? Is the issue more about human perversity than nationalist pride? Who knows?
Isabel Escoda is a freelance journalist based in Hong Kong.