What we read in the newspapers is that the Philippine embassy in that very progressive and modern city-state has hired Singaporean lawyers to defend the Filipino woman and another lawyer, also a Singaporean, to monitor the progress of the case the woman is facing. While we believe this is a normal course of action for the Philippine government to take, we are extremely worried about it. We are worried because back in 1995, when another Filipino woman, a maid, stood on trial for the killing of her very young Singaporean ward, there was actually a call from within certain misguided sectors of the Philippine population to go to war with Singapore over the matter. In fact, in Mindanao, there were already several public burnings of the Singaporean flag.
Naturally, the calls for war soured Philippine relations with Singapore. Thank God Singapore was not as belligerent as the Philippines. Had our roles been reversed over that incident, it would not be hard to imagine the Philippines, belligerent beyond its actual means, not responding to the challenge and perhaps actually going to war.
And that brings us to the point. What is it really with us Filipinos that our passions are so easily aroused by the wrong things. The 1995 incident ( I will not bring up the name of the woman to give her soul rest, after she was eventually found guilty and executed ) was about a Filipino woman who broke the law in her host country and was tried and punished in accordance with the laws of that country.
We cannot ask no more and no less under such situations anywhere we or our compatriots may be. In fact, the same applies to any foreigner who happens to run afoul of the law in our country. We have laws just as other countries have laws. Any violation of those laws, here or abroad, ought to spare no one.
In that 1995 lapse of collective Filipino judgment, most of the people in the Philippines clamored for the Filipino maid to be freed and wanted to go to war when she was executed instead. Until now I cannot understand why and how we ever got to that frame of mind that we would actually do what we so embarrassingly did.
I have a theory, though, on what whipped up emotions so high. It was the giant networks' tendency to dramatize everything as if snippets of ordinary life among Filipinos ought to be viewed as one huge diaspora of Philippine life worthy of being converted into one humongous television drama production.
The television coverage of that 1995 international controversy was so pathetically unobjective and biased that news anchors even went to the extent of dressing up in the national costume to whip up nationalism and newscasts read out with dramatic music in the background to tug at the fragile Filipino emotion.
The bottomline is that we were making a hero out of a murderer. Yes, it was the biggest slap on the face of all right-thinking Filipinos not just at the time but even up to now when we think about it. The only qualification, it seems, for us to go to war is that a Filipino is involved. We do not look at the circumstances of the case.
Consider this: The Filipino maid, or any maid for that matter, is someone we repose so much trust in. We let in maids into our homes, share our food with them, offer them security and rest within the four walls of our abodes. Then we leave our children in their care and our possessions and valuable under their watch.
When a maid, such as that Filipino maid in Singapore in 1995, kills the young child in her care, she is supposed to be punished in accordance with all applicable laws in the land where she committed her crime. She is not supposed to be made into a hero. But alas and alack, the Philippines and Filipinos actually did. Worse, they were even agitating for war over the execution. What national madness that was.
And that is why I am again worried about this case because this other Filipino woman in Singapore will definitely be tried in that country under its own laws. And given the kind of response we gave as a nation in 1995, there is no telling some of our misguided countrymen will again give the same kind of response we gave then.
I am disturbed because the Philippine government is again taking the lead in providing legal assistance to the accused. Again, while there is nothing wrong in that, such action is not actually compulsory on the part of the Philippine government. It is not something that requires something that has the semblance of official action.
I am scared that once the case is resolved and the Filipino woman finds herself guilty and meted just punishment, Filipinos will once again try to intervene in the sovereign processes of another country, on the misguided and mistaken passion that anything that happens to a Filipino deserves a swift Filipino response, without making distinctions whether the response is deserved or not.