The miraculous ‘escape’ of Alikabok in Beijing

BEIJING, China – President GMA hied herself off to Busan, South Korea, for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit — but when she meets with US President George "Dubya" Bush there, what will she tell him? Indeed, what will she tell her fellow APEC summiteers, from the host, South Korean President Roh Moo-yun, to Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, to China’s President Hu Jintao (the latter fresh from his Britain-France-Spain jaunt) about the Philippine record in combatting terrorism?

Remember, at the last APEC summit in Santiago, Chile, our own former Defense Secretary, retired AFP Chief, Gen. Benjamin Defensor, was chosen APEC Counter-terrorism Chairman, and La Glorietta even presided over the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York at which the fight against terrorism was unanimously endorsed by the United Nations security body. Yet, to our country’s embarrassment, our Congress still has not passed an anti-terrorism law!

In fact, to piss off GMA and make certain she goes off empty-handed to the APEC summit, Senate President Franklin Drilon Jr. even publicly declared that there’s no chance an anti-terrorism bill will be passed by the Senate this year. Sanamagan, Frank. The heck with your feud with GMA and the patent Senate "drive" to oust La Presidenta somehow: What about the nation’s welfare, safety and our "face" before the entire world? I was about to write "the watching world," but the awful truth is that nobody’s watching us anymore. Foreign nations can’t be bothered to waste their time observing us Filipinos playing our silly domestic power games, while the entire planet grapples with terrorist threats, the cost of oil and energy, the economic downturn, Sus, the bird flu danger and fears of a possible pandemic.

GMA, in her departure statement, I hear, pledged the P37 million "savings" realized by the government to cope with any threat, or possible outbreak, of bird flu. We just have to be on the alert. Bird flu can pop up anywhere – but, at the moment, it’s political flu that endangers our people most of all.

We cannot go on the Hinky-Dinky (did I say Soliman?) way of persecuting our own government, whether GMA is innocent or guilty, in the same relentless fashion, while national concerns like combatting terrorism, uplifting the economy, providing jobs, and cracking down on violent crime, go unaddressed.

I am annoyed, not gratified, if you’ll allow me to sound selfish, by the declaration of our Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Gen. Gene Senga and acting Philippine National Police Chief Gen. Oscar Calderon (PNP Director General Art C. Lomibao is abroad at a conference) that nothing untoward will happen against President GMA while she’s abroad at the APEC. In effect: No mutiny, or coup. Why is such an assurance necessary? The military and police would be better concerned about protecting the people from rebellion, thuggery and criminal elements, not sounding like GMA’s personal Praetorian Guard.

(But I guess such ululations of loyalty are to be expected in our Unipersonalista type of leadership. It’s the Pinoy way of somos o no somos. (That’s Chavacano).

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I could write something profound about Beijing and the People’s Republic of China, but I’ll bore you with such details when I get home tonight and have more leisure to digest my impressions – shallow though they may be – and attempt to analyze developments here with more profundity.

However, here’s a tale of a miraculous "escape" from death which won’t wait since I might forget to relate it once I get embroiled in the hurly-burly at home. Last April, I heard briefly on the radio that Ilocos Norte Congressman Roquito Ablan Jr. – whose nickname, of course, is "Alikabok" – hence he gets confused with my primary insider source, Alikabok J. Alikabok – had been involved in a serious vehicular accident in Beijing. The radio report merely said Ablan had been rushed to the hospital. Yet, a week later, everybody saw Roquito back in Manila, without a scratch on him.

Since our Minister in the Embassy (now Charge d’ affaires since Ambassador Willy Gaa has gone to the US, and newly-confirmed Ambassador Sonia Brady still hasn’t arrived here) has been the gentleman helpfully taking this writer around, I asked him about the strange incident. It turns out that it was precisely Minister Jaime Victor "Jet" Ledda who had been escorting Congressman Ablan and his wife, Vicky, to the Beijing Airport that day – and I finally got the lowdown from him.

Jet and the Protocol Officer, Attaché Abraham "Abet" Castillo were in the Embassy van driving Roquito to the airport when a car swerved into their path, and a taxicab, its driver unnerved by this maneuver smashed into the Embassy vehicle. The van was smashed into the "island" separating the outgoing and incoming lanes of the airport expressway. Wham! When everybody recovered from the shock of impact, Roquito was missing! His wife Vicky was crying out: "Where is my husband? Where is Roquito?"

They looked under the smashed van, in front of it, and behind it – but no Ablan. At last they spotted him, blissfully unconscious, on top of one of the man-high hedges or bushes in the dividing gap between the incoming and outgoing lanes. Ablan had been thrown through the window at the rear of the van. Instead of shattering, the window had broken off and he had sailed through the air and landed on top of the bush! It not only broke his fall, but cradled him from harm – since it prevented him from rolling into the incoming lane where he might have been crushed by the vehicles speeding from the airport into town (towards the sixth ring road). Speak of being lucky.

Roquito recovered consciousness after five or ten minutes, but they brought him back to the hospital for a check-up anyway – just to be sure. By golly, there wasn’t even a scratch on him. I won’t say "mala yerba" or masamang damo, but somehow the Angels were watching over Alikabok.

However, since our embassy friends are taking me to the airport, I asked them not to use the same van.