Even Nani Perez’s mini-war on China’s envoy resounds here

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – It was an experience to tour the sprawling King Abdul Aziz Medical City, which truly is a city. The complex has everything in a single ground floor. There are no upper floors, so there’s no hassle about wheeling patients to and from any upper story.

In this huge medical "metropolis", every type of equipment is state-of-the-art, from Angiography, to Bone Densitometry, CT Scan, Nuclear Medicine, Ultra Sound, Special Imaging to the usual Haemodialysis et cetera. There’s an emergency and Burn Center, as well as a humming IVR (in- vitro center) where test-tube babies are discreetly delivered to enable childless couples to be blessed with children.

Although 52 nationalities work in this streamlined hospital complex, it’s the City’s boast that all the major doctors and surgeons are Saudis – complemented by a host of foreign doctors and specialists. This includes a battalion of Filipino nurses, midwives, medical technicians, computer and IT experts, and janitors.

Proof positive that there’s a formidable Filipino presence are signs on doors admonishing: "PAKISARA ANG PINTUAN LAGI!" with the English warning translated underneath: "Please Keep This Door Closed!" Having been cautioned in unmistakable Tagalog, Filipino staffers – I suppose – have to beware of being careless about not properly shutting doors.

This is, by the way, a National Guard hospital, run and protected by the red-capped National Guardsmen of the Vice Regent of the Kingdom, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud. Most of them are reputedly tough Bedouin, so, apart from being efficient and lavishly-funded, the "City" is well-guarded.

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Right now the hospital is in the news since last Tuesday, in a surgical marathon that took 23 hours and five different medical teams, Siamese twins from Malaysia, namely Muhammad and Ahmad (who were born joined at the stomach) were successfully separated.

We went to the special ward that housed them, and saw the twins sleeping peacefully, despite the needles and other tubes and monitors stuck into them – in separate beds – attended by two Filipino nurses.

Crown Prince Abdullah’s son, who had visited the tiny patients and met their parents, Rosli Abdul Rahim and Aisah Kanda, had just left. The two have many times expressed their thanks to the Crown Prince (who sponsored bringing the kids to Riyadh via London, and underwrote all the expenses of their difficult operation and all their expenses).

It was an achievement, indeed. Four teams had worked on "separating" the boys from each other – pediatric, plastic surgery, urological, orthopedic (for bone separation) – and now the time for healing – and praying – was at hand. (Muhammed, for instance, ended up with two kidneys, while Ahmed has only one – but that’s enough for him, God willing, to grow up to as normal a life as possible.) I won’t even attempt to go into the details of this feat, since by no stretch of the imagination can I pose as a medical writer. This wasn’t even the first such challenge successfully surmounted by the surgeons of the King Abdul Aziz Medical City, since two other "conjoined" twins – Saudi children Hassan and Hussein were separated in November 1998 and another two, Najia and Naseebah from Sudan, were separated in the earlier part of this year 2002.

But I spoke to the nurse manager of the ward, Mr. Salman Lowe from Melbourne (Australia). He said that out of his staff of 32 nurses 16 are Filipinas and are great people to work with.

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The Riyadh newspapers are quite current with news and even gossip from Manila, particularly the English-language press. Thus we were brought up to speed last weekend on the tiff between Justice Secretary Hernando "Nani" Perez and the Chinese Ambassador Wang Chunggui. The newspapers here played up the Agence France- Presse story on the clash. The Arab News, for instance, ran a three-column headline in its "Philippines" news section: "DOJ Chief Wants China Envoy Expelled."

The article reported that Perez had "said yesterday (Friday) that he wants China’s ambassador expelled for trying to intimidate him into releasing 122 Chinese illegal fishermen without being penalized."

Perez had fumed that "the Chinese Ambassador had demanded the poachers be released unconditionally.He was insisting that I order the release of the poachers without the payment of the fine and without pleading guilty," Perez said, recounting his exchange with Wang.

The Riyadh Daily ran the same story under the headline: "Something Fishy". The subhead read: "Perez Wants China Envoy Expelled Over Fishing Dispute".

Both articles ran photographs of Nani Perez, looking very Saudi, indeed, moustache and all. That was sure to catch attention here.

I can’t, from this remove of thousands of miles, really comment knowledgeably on the matter. It seems a bit out of character for Ambassador Wang, who impressed me, in the few times we met, as a mild-mannered fellow. But you never can tell, can you? In any event, if Perez was correctly quoted and he did demand the Chinese Ambassador’s expulsion, this puts both President GMA and Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople on the spot. If the Justice Secretary accuses an envoy of insulting behavior, and demands he be declared persona non grata, can we ignore this senior Cabinet minister’s declaration without appearing to grovel before Beijing – and literally "disowning" our own Justice Secretary?

If the President and Ople disown Perez, the DOJ Secretary will have no alternative but to resign. Why, Speaker Joe de Venecia, who only recently got China’s Number Two man, Li Peng, to pledge to help us build our railroad from Manila to San Fernando (La Union) must be appalled. Now, the Chinese won’t "finance" our railway. Yet — so what? We must make clear to them that we uphold our sovereignty without compromise.

All the histrionics aside, however, the poaching activities of those 122 Chinese fishermen caught not merely stealing fish from our waters and attacking our reefs are not a minor matter. Chinese poachers constantly intrude into our waters and destroy marine life.

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I don’t know what our Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Bahnarim A. Guinomla, will tell former armed forces Chief of Staff, Gen. Roy Cimatu, when he comes to the Middle East to inquire about "evacuating" the 900,000 Filipinos who live and work in Saudi Arabia. I guess Bahn Guinomla, who only recently returned to his second posting here, this time as Chief of Mission, will have to inform Cimatu and his "Crisis Management Committee" that there’s no crisis to manage here.

None of the Filipinos we’ve met – hundreds of them by now – showed any nervousness about any impending American attack on "next door" Saddam Insane. One reason is that "next door" means, really, in such a vast country as this, a distance of a thousand miles or more.

It can be said that Guinomla knows Saudi Arabia very well. He used to be Consul General in Jeddah years ago. So does his deputy chief of mission, Minister Mariano A. Dumia, who served in Jeddah for three years, then was reassigned back to Saudi, this time to the capital of Riyadh, four years ago. Dumia comes from Ifugao – and, if I may be allowed to say it, ought to be an ambassador by now, since his foreign service batch has many full-fledged chiefs of mission by this time, including Ambassador Jorge Reyes who’s now our envoy to Buenos Aires.

Ambassador Guinomla, without having received official notice from DFA, had been kind enough to meet our group of Filipino editors and publishers at the King Khaled International Airport, which gleams with marble like a palace. (Guinomla comes from Datu Piang, Maguindanao and used to write for the Mindanao Times.)

Last Friday, he hosted a very nice dinner for our delegation in his beautiful residence in the palm-lined diplomatic enclave. The house, called Tahanang Rizal and designed by Bobby Mañosa, is both elegant and tastefully appointed – and even has a Mount Mayon decorating the backyard. Bahn smilingly assured us: "No, it won’t erupt." I guess he wasn’t referring to the Middle East.

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THE ROVING EYE: President Arroyo says "No" to martial law? Why on earth was it ever considered by any-body? Vice President Tito Guingona should stop rabble-rousing on this issue . . . The Saudi Gazette published last Friday an interesting dispatch: "FPJ has no plans to run in any elections, says Dolphy." If Dolphy says so, GMA need not fear a challenge from FPJ. However, our friend and colleague Danny Bernardo, who’s Senior Vice President for News and Executive Vice President for Operations of ABS-CBN (which is very popular here since every Filipino watches its TFC here, namely "The Filipino Channel") polled five of the Filipino waiters when we had lunch at the "Peninsula Seafood Restaurant" on King Fahad Highway, across from the towering Al-Faisalah building. All five polled said they would vote for FPJ. What if FPJ didn’t run but the candidates were GMA, Raul Roco, Loren Legarda, and Ping Lacson? Bernardo inquired further. All five replied they would vote for Ping Lacson. Oh, well. That’s the waiters’ vote out here. Don’t despair, GMA. It’s a long way yet to 2004.