Saudi trip gains are but a pipe dream

Whoever it was who said the recent official visit of President Arroyo to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a major coup must have been daydreaming of sand castles in the vast Rub al Khali desert.

Rather than a major coup, it was a monumental and costly waste of time, effort and money.

She not only had nothing concrete and beneficial to show for her time and effort, it was not even her money that was wasted but ours.

Okay, she supposedly got a commitment from Saudi officials that the oil-rich kingdom will not abandon the Philippines should oil supplies become scarce. But so would any siopao vendor. As everybody very well knows, the operative principle of any businessman is never to say no.

Making supplies available is not the crucial issue. What is, is the availability of money to make the purchase. In case of a crunch, the law of supply and demand dictates that prices have to go up. It will be a big run for the money, but can we keep pace.

Arroyo should not have fallen for the yes without asking for the details. A plain verbal yes without details is just as good as a whistle against the wind. Our president did not strike a deal on paper. It was like no deal at all.

She did bring something tangible home - a planeload of Filipino convicts jailed in the kingdom for various offenses and freed only because of the Saudi king's pardon. If there was a major coup, it was the Saudi king who earned the points, not our president.

That they are our compatriots makes us unconditionally welcome them home. We should not be so cold-hearted as to deny a Filipino, no matter what sins he may have committed elsewhere, the dignity of coming home.

But Arroyo has no right to exploit them for whatever gain she expected to derive from her cheap publicity stunt. Even if she really negotiated for their pardon, her personally bringing them home wittingly or unwittingly afforded them a veneer of misplaced heroism.

Not that we should abandon our compatriots who run into trouble abroad. But it has increasingly become a bad habit for our country to try and make direct negotiations with the governments of countries where Filipinos run afoul of the law.

Taking care of every citizen is the dutiful thing to do by every government. But taking such care does not necessarily entail trying to make intercessions on behalf of those who have clearly and fairly been found guilty of a given country's laws.

To do so is to be like a fixer in an official capacity. And if you know how a fixer runs shortcuts through the bureaucratic maze in almost every Philippine government office, consider your president doing it on an international scale.

If she has to go to Saudi Arabia, let it be for its oil, even if she gets no firm commitment on paper for the effort. At least the subject of oil is always a legitimate endeavor.

Or she can go there just to hobnob with the far bigger number of Filipino expatriates outside jail who have succeeded in leading orderly and law-abiding lives in their host countries to the betterment of their families back home and the gainful satisfaction of their employers.

One of the biggest exports of the Philippines is its vast manpower. These Filipinos are taken in by foreign employers with wide open arms on the strength of our reputation as skilled, hard working, honest and law abiding people.

If Arroyo has to make intercessions for anyone, it should be for these workers, that they be given even more benefits than they bargained for, not for convicts to be freed only on the strength of diplomatic or official courtesy, not absence or lack of guilt.