The Russians are coming!

Malacañang Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye may have rejected the proposal of Senator Manuel Villar (earlier made, as well, in this column) that the Philippines close down our embassies and consulates in Canada and Australia in protest, but I still think we ought to have done so immediately. Those two countries were insensate in announcing to the world that they had suddenly closed down their embassies in Metro Manila owing to what they claimed was a "credible" and "specific" Islamic terrorist threat (which they didn’t bother to specify to us). I don’t care a fiddle or a fig how many tourists we lost, since there were hundreds of cancellations. Never mind about trade.What bothers me is that we were unjustly insulted.

Sure, there’s no doubt that Filipinos and Australians like each other. This is a fact. However, Aussie officialdom has usually looked down their long noses at us — although it was our longtime friend, Gough Whitlam, when he assumed the prime ministership (from which he was later bounced and finally landed with the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris) who personally rang me up decades ago to announce: "Max, the ‘White Australia’ policy is dead, and we’re burying it!"

What wasn’t buried, sad to say, was official disdain. In Canberra – which I won’t say is regarded as the regional capital of pornography ( (check it out) – they still seem to believe that Filipinos are sleazy, corrupt, and can’t be trusted. (Perhaps they should specify that it’s our government and certain politicians who are sleazy, corrupt and can’t be trusted.) I say again: The abrupt closure of the Australian and Canadian embassies was a slap in our face.

When the Aussies lost more than 120 of their innocent tourists in the terrible October Bali bombings, they didn’t close down their embassy in Jakarta, did they? For that matter, when our former Ambassador to Jakarta Leonides Caday (who retired and came home, by the way, only four months ago) was blown out of his Mercedes Benz by a terrorist’s bomb in his own embassy driveway, did we shut down our embassy in Indonesia? Caday, swathed in bandages and minus one totalled Benz, operated out of his hospital bed. That old-timer, his career dating back to the Marcos years, hails from our hometown of Sto. Domingo, Ilocos Sur.

So why did the Aussie embassy close down? Whatever is said now, the damage has been done. When I cancelled my visit to Australia a week ago as a guest of their government, one of their ranking diplomats tried to explain why their diplomatic establishment had been padlocked. The Makati building in which it was located, he explained, was unsafe and vulnerable, and, besides, their intelligence was specific about the threat. He asked: "Would you rather have ten diplomats dead?"

Sus, I hadn’t known until then that the Islamic terrorists had planned to kill ten diplomats – just like that boastful tailor in the fairytale who bragged about killing "seven at a blow", but it turned out he meant he had swatted seven flies. Gee whiz, are there ten diplomats between the Australians and the Canadians? Oh, well, hopefully we’ll never know.

The Aussies seem to be getting most of the flak – thanks to Prime Minister John Howard who simply can’t seem to pipe down or even try to appear repentant about his intemperate "pre-emptive strike" remarks. (I bought a book two weeks ago in my favorite bookshop in Paris, the Galignani on the Rue de Rivoli, about Bushisms" – the US President’s equivalent of our ex-President’s Eraptions. If there’s one about Dubya, I’m confident the irreverent Aussies will soon have a volume about Howardisms, if they don’t already have one in print.)

The Canadians must know we haven’t forgotten what they did either. They’re smart, on the other hand, to have kept their heads down – and, even more craftily, throwing official announcements of "more aid" at us. Our government really ought to bridle at the very thought that we can be bought off or mollified by the brandishing of additional aid projects, but I guess our shell-shocked officials are much too exhausted by the current, ongoing, domestic political wars and GMA’s sagging performance in a recent poll survey, to seek more quarrels with foreigners. And it’s increasingly clear that the Canadians may disdain us, but they hate their next-door neighbors, the Americans, more. Why’s that? Silly question. What happened to the Good Neighbor policy?

But, I repeat, Toting Bunye and Malacañang are being too soft. That’s why foreign governments don’t hesitate to humiliate us at every opportunity. They even find enough Filipinos to join them in their sneers.

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As an honorary Sydneysider – a "Westie" really, although in my younger days my preferred address was King’s Cross (which is now passé) – I sympathize with Sydney’s plight. I hope the valiant efforts of that 4,500 mostly-volunteer firefighters who’re battling the 70 bushfires blazing across New South Wales and threatening his great metropolis itself, will result in victory. Those guys are heroes.

I wish we could offer to send some of our firemen to help them fight the blaze, but you know what they say here of our bomberos, sad to relate. The remark is that a fire reducing your home to cinders is a worse disaster than a dozen robberies, but before everything is burned to a crisp the firemen arrive to finish the job. I admire and envy the plucky people of New York where their firemen are heroes (why, even their policemen!) and to belong to a Ladder Company is a badge of honor.

My wife and I used to drive out to the Blue Mountain area, now devastated by flames, a place so verdant and cool – an escape from the fumes and cares of the city. I was supposed to have addressed a sizeable group of Australian-Filipinos last week in Sydney, in a meeting arranged by our very active Philippine Consul General Zenaida Angara Collinson, but the gathering had to be called off. I apologize to Zen and our Aussie-Pinoys through this column.

If it’s of interest, there are 52,241 Philippine-born migrants in New South Wales (where Sydney is the queen city) out of a total state population of 6.4 million. The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 census even categorizes them by sex, as broken down into 20,307 male and 31,934 female. I supposed quite a number of the ladies who’ve settled Down Under are brides.

Filipinos account for 0.87 percent; i.e. 7th in ranking, of the overseas-born groups in New South Wales. The largest ethnic group is British (4.4 percent); next New Zealanders (1.7 percent); then Chinese (1.4), Vietnamese (1 percent), Italians (0.95), Lebanese (0.85), Indians (0.59) and Greeks (0.58). Most of our migrants in NSW reside in Sydney, namely 47,090 while the rest are in the Hunter Region (1,352) and the Illawara Region (1,202).

According to Zen Collinson, there are about fifty Filipino community organizations in New South Wales, many of them under the umbrella of the Philippine Community Council of New South Wales. In fact, many well-known Filipinos have made NSW their second homes, including our Asia’s Queen of Songs Pilita Corrales, Pete Cruzado, Ernie Mercado (of the New Minstrels) and, of course, our old friend and colleague Ding Roces.

There are several personalities of Filipino ancestry who are carving a name for themselves in the NSW mainstream, such as singer Kate Ceberano (Filipino father); Rugby player Craig Wing (Filipino mother); television performer Kathleen de Leon; novelist Arlene Chai; literary writer Merlinda Bobis, and cartoonist Edd Aragon.

Indeed, some years ago we heard Kate Ceberano – who has since released several Platinum and Gold Albums – sing the role of Mary Magdalene ("I don’t know how to love Him!") in a jazz-up version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar in Melbourne, and her performance knocked the audience’s socks off. Did we stand up and cheer!

Wing plays for the Sydney Roosters. Chai authored the Australian best-seller, The Last Time I Saw Mother. De Leon is one of the mainstays of a popular children’s TV show, High Five. Bobis has won several literary awards for her works. Aragon sketches for the editorial section of what’s still one of my favorite newspapers (when I can get it), the Sydney Morning Herald.

Admittedly, our Filipinos and Tisoys and Tisays in the Land of Oz are quite well-integrated. Why, the Philippine Consulate General even held a highly successful Paskong Pilipino – A Taste of Philippine Christmas in Parramatta City in Western Sydney (the homeland, I might add, of the Westies) last November 29 and 30. Thousands of people attended the two-day event. You can be sure they wolfed down the usual fare of lechon and puto bumbong (Zeny reported), as well as enjoying our tropical drinks of sago, coconut and mango. The affair, it was said, was so successful that the local Lord Mayor Paul Garrard sought assurance from our Consul General that the Paskong Pilipino should be held again next year. "No worries," she replied.

Good on yer, Zen! But we still don’t like up here what the Australian government did to us. Aussies may be nice, even when they’re soused, but their government policy is yuck.

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The Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, is arriving in Manila next Monday (December 16) on a 20-hour visit. It’s not been disclosed yet whether he will meet with our President, or just with our Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople.

Mr. Ivanov will be coming from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, from Manila, will proceed to Tokyo where he will hold meetings, December 17 and 18, preparatory to next month’s summit in Moscow between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. I don’t suppose the Russians and the Japanese will finally sign a "peace treaty" at that conference, although they’ll probably resolve to cooperate in the field of politics, foreign policy and, naturally, economics and trade.

Moscow and Tokyo, really, still haven’t kissed and made up, since the Soviet Red Army seized what they call the Kuriles, including Sakhalin, i.e. four disputed islands which the Japanese refer to as their "Northern Territories". The Japanese want those islands back. The Russians insist they won’t hand them over.

As for us, we have no pending disputes with Moscow — although we used to be wary of the former Soviet Union, which is kaput. The visit of Minister Ivanov, short as it is, will be an opportunity for us to get to know him better, although from many previous meetings at international fora, he is no stranger to our diplomats. He’ll be bringing along with him, I’m informed, a group of journalists, many of whom will be visiting the Philippines for the first time.

It would be instructive, of course, to understand what Mr. Ivanov is made of. He’s the combative sort. Last December 6, for instance, Ivanov scolded the 55-nation pan-European coalition, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, for, in his view, failing to back up their words about fighting terrorism with deeds. His ire was particularly directed at Denmark and Britain for their "having failed" to detain an alleged Chechen terrorist named Ahmed Zakhayev.

Ivanov, had railed against the fact that Zakhayev had arrived in London declaring that Chechen fighters could carry out attacks even more murderous than the hostage-taking incident in a Moscow theater last October in which (mostly from the gas used to knock out the terrorists, regrettably) 129 people died. Ivanov was angered that the British police had simply interrogated the Chechen radical at a police station, then let him go. He asked: "What would happen if another terrorist, Osama bin Laden, had arrived in London like Zakhayev with an international warrant of arrest against him, and if bin laden had announced new terrorist attacks were being prepared against civilian sites and targets in the United States?"

He’s got a point there. Indeed, Moscow issued an international arrest warrant against the 43-year old Chechen activist last October, alleging that Zakhayev had been involved in various terrorist acts dating back to the late 1990s. And yet, Ivanov complained, Danish authorities had released him from 34 days of detention in Copenhagen saying they had found "no evidence" to substantiate Russia’s terrorism accusations.

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Ivanov has been Russia’s Foreign Minister since 1998, when he replaced ex-President Boris Yeltsin’s earlier Foreign Minister, Yevgeny Primakov.

TIME magazine three years ago described him in the following words: Ivanov "may wear Milanese suits and have spent nearly 15 years in Madrid – first as a trade representative and then ambassador – but his thinking is thoroughly, proudly, defiantly, Russian."

In truth, few officials in Moscows had assailed as vociferously as Ivanov, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s intervention in Yugoslavia. He had furiously warned that NATO’s move into Kosovo was an alarming sign of that alliance’s hostile intentions. As the NATO and American-led air strikes went on, Ivanov kept up his anti-NATO rhetoric, but was nonplussed when his own military bypassed him to dispatch Russian paratroopers and tanks to the Pristina Airport to join the international peacekeeping force. In fact, the Russians rushed over from their garrisons in Bosnia-Hercegovina almost by stealth, with the Serbs, their fellow Slavs, cheering them on – to get to Pristina and secure the airport ahead of the Americans, Brits, and other NATO allies. Ivanov, it appears, was just as surprised as the NATO forces – who, promptly enough, welcomed the cooperation of the Russians.

He kept on saying that it had been "a mistake" and that the troops would soon be withdrawn, but they weren’t. They were there to stay. Anyway, while it was embarrassing to Mr. Ivanov, it established back home his patriotic and nationalist credentials. He has since become an articulate and charming "bargaining partner" with the West.

Yet, let’s not forget. He remains a hardliner, and a determined protector of Russian interests. I wish, sometimes, our diplomats were the same way.