Last stop: Honolulu

Even Davao City Mayor Rody Duterte, once believed to be the "sponsor" of the self-promoting counter-terrorism "expert" who had bragged to a newspaper that last August 14 he successfully smuggled bomb materials aboard a commercial flight bound from Davao to Manila, has condemned the fellow.

Speaking of this guy Samson Macariola who, Duterte admitted had previously been hired by him as a security consultant, he’s in deep shit.

The Davao Mayor fumed: Arrest him. Skin him alive! And when Rody says things like that he may do it himself.

Why it took the Mayor almost a week to speak up and denounce Macariola’s caper, we’ll leave to speculation. But Duterte – and before him, Executive Secretary Ed Ermita – are right. They must throw the book at the braggart for having illegally sneaked bomb materials aboard a passenger aircraft, and, worse, boasting about it, causing panic among would-be air commuters.

I can testify that it’s nonsense – as was being bruited about – that La Presidenta had planned to welcome Macariola to the Palace for a meeting so he could "debrief" her on what’s wrong with airport security. As already mentioned earlier, our Manila Overseas Press Club officers and this writer were having dinner with GMA in Malacañang Monday night when Presidential Chief of Staff Mike Defensor remarked: "This so-called ‘expert’ who sneaked a bomb aboard a plane wants to meet you. He claims he has certain confidential details to give you about the mistakes of airport inspection and our security checks."

All our heads swivelled to La Gloria. I asked her: "Well, Mrs. President, are you scheduled to meet this guy?" She snapped in annoyance: "Of course not!"

Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) President Karl Wilson, who’s Bureau Chief of Agence France Presse in Manila, said: "What this man did was irresponsible and his story was ridiculous. We didn’t even bother to run the story."

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True enough, there are ways and means by which security in any airport in the world can be bypassed or flummoxed.

Even at the height of the uproar over the plot to plant "liquid" bombs aboard US-bound airplanes by two dozen suspected Islamic terrorists (rounded up by the police and intelligence operatives of M-I5) last August 10, with London’s airports tightening security inspection to critical levels, a young boy without passport, tickets or other documents, wandered into Gatwick airport, got aboard and got a seat on an outbound aircraft, before a stewardess discovered to her horror that the kid had no gatepass or ticket at all!

But that grandstanding "bomb-smuggler" in Davao ought to be prosecuted for what he did, whether the bomb materials he claimed he had sneaked on board were real explosives or fake.

In this country, the impression is already widespread enough that you can get away with anything. Susmariosep. Talk about the Guimaras "oil spill." The irresponsibility of transporting millions of liters of oil, in a storm at that, on a small, single-hulled, creaky vessel, with a shipmaster not even carrying a current and valid license at the helm, is proof positive of this lack of fear of the law.

Did you know, for instance, that diesel oil is being smuggled in – in broad daylight – through a port in Batangas province, stored in oil tanks in full view of everyone, before being trucked out to different destinations?

How come the local police, the Coast Guard, the anti-smuggling task force, etc., never got wind of this insolent racket? Are they like the Three Wise Monkeys of Nikko: See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil?

"We’d better get back "control" of matters in this anarchic archipelago of ours, where there’s very little "rule of law," but instead the "rule of lawyers." What I’m trying to say is that the criminal syndicates, the kidnappers, the drug lords, and the killers, manage to twist, distort, or circumvent the law because they have the more clever and pricey lawyers – or a judge, or two, or three in their hip pocket.

Some judgements, for that matter, are mystifying. For example, what’s this nonsense about compelling the government to pay P3 billion (and more in the "future") to PIATCO? It’s good, at least for the moment, that the Court of Appeals has issued a temporary restraining order on the move.

I asked the President whether she didn’t think it outrageous that, as part of the projected settlement, the government could be paying for land it already owns, and she shrugged. "Let’s see what happens. We can only comply with what the courts finally say."

In moments of frustration, I confess, although while he lived I argued with him about it, I sometimes think Indonesia’s late strongman, President Soekarno (better known as Bung Karno) was right when he insisted on "Demokrasi Terpimpin" (Guided Democracy) – which is shorthand for dictatorship.

In our land, alas, what we have in spades is Misguided Democracy.

Even in the classroom, as in the malls and in the streets, our people seem to mistake "democracy" for the obligation to dress sloppily, or even go to the workplace or classroom in slippers. They point out, in this polluted metropolis, when challenged, that in the provinces the grade school pupils in public schools, walk to class in their bare feet.

This is a distorted view. Those poor kids tramp to school barefoot because they cannot afford to buy shoes. Our goal must be to provide them with shoes, and a better life – or, more pertinently, the opportunity to earn for themselves a better life. Not join them as a mark of equality and fraternity. The lack of a proper dress code is none of these. It is laziness, lack of self-respect, respect for others – and stupidity.

In our time, we, too, were poor (war is the great leveller, and we had lost everything, and I mean everything except perhaps the clothes on our back during the war). But we tried to be neat with the few items of clothing and the single pair of scruffed and holed shoes that we had. We worked our way, as full-time workers, through high school and college. But we darned the holes in our socks, and the tears in our pants and shirts, and tried to look our neatest.

As our mother widowed and brave – singlehandedly raising nine kids said: "Don’t ever feel poor, or look poor – because if you do, you’ll always be poor."

Ora et labora (pray and work) was her way, her stairway to success for all of us, her children: Through adversity to the stars.

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Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo is leaving today for Helsinki, Finland, to pave the way for the President’s departure tomorrow (Saturday) for the 6th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in the Finnish capital.

There, she will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who will soon be bowing out voluntarily, not posting for reelection when his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chooses its leader on September 20. ‘The frontrunner, and expected to be next Prime Minister is Shinzo Abe, his Chief Cabinet Secretary, who’s regarded as a "Hawk" and will probably seek revision of the Japanese MacArthur-dictated postwar Constitution, in order to enable Japan to rearm.

GMA will, of course, deliver a keynote speech on energy cooperation and security. She will also meet with the President of the host-country, Finland – and what else, but the president of NOKIA, perhaps to inquire whether NOKIA can develop a "Hello Garci-foolproof" mobile phone. She will go to Sunday Mass with the Filipino community there, too.

On September 11, she will fly on to Brussels for meetings with Belgium’s Prime Minister H.E. Guy Verhofstadt, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (who used to be Prime Minister of Portugal). She will also confer with Joseph Borrell, President of the European Parliament, then deliver an address as guest speaker of the Royal Institute for Foreign Relations. Mass, as always, will be shared with the Filipino community – since La Gloria always enlists (and claims) the aid of Divine Providence.

Next, the Presidential party will go off to London, where a more relaxed schedule includes a visit to St. Mary’s Hospital, then she will preside over the "soft opening" of the new Philippine Chancery on Suffolk Street (procured by Ambassador Ed Espiritu to replace the one at 9A Palace Green in Kensington where the lease has expired). She will meet once more with the Filipino community – a group swelled by the thousands of nurses and their families who have emigrated as a "package deal" to the United Kingdom.

La Presidenta will further meet with the Duke of Gloucester, who is slated to call on her, as well as with Shell Company executives. Executives of British American Tobacco will further call on GMA. (Smacks of some kind of lobby, but we wait to be enlightened).

The highlight of the visit will be the Chief Executive delivering the keynote address at the Asia House where the BPO conference will be held. You’ll soon be able to read about La Glorietta’s ideas and her virtues and defects, following a scheduled interview by the Financial Times of London, the influential daily which is published simultaneously on three continents.

After London, the group will move on to Havana, Cuba, for the Non-Aligned Nations conference, of which we’ve already written – to be hosted by Cuba’s ailing leader, Fidel Castro Ruz (or, if Fidel hasn’t recovered from surgery, by his heir-designate, his brother Raul Castro).

And here’s the final destination.

The President, indeed, invited this writer to fly straight to Honolulu, Hawaii, where she’ll be going – from Cuba – to celebrate the Centennial of the first Filipino workers to arrive in that island state of the United States to work in the plantations there. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I won’t be able to join owing to conflicting schedules – but you know why La Presidenta perhaps wants a Saluyot like myself to attend the celebration. The first Filipino workers who arrived there, it seems, came from Candon, Ilocos Sur!

Oh, well. Aloha – and good luck! And may the Trade Winds blow in our favor across the blue Pacific.

The Presidential odyssey promises to be a long one. May it – despite her troubles at home – be fruitful, too!

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THE ROVING EYE… And the fighting goes on. The military have "assessed" that fugitives Khadaffy Janjalani, chief of the Abu Sayyaf, and the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists Umar Patek and Dulmatin never left for Basilan but remain holed out in the neighborhood of Patikul, long a stronghold of Muslim insurgency in Sulu. They are allegedly in the vicinity of Mt. Sinumaan. They are said to be moving from one ASG camp to another in the Mt. Bagsak area, to evade armed forces units searching for them. They have, of course, the advantage of familiarity with the terrain. The Abu Sayyaf Sub-Commander Albader Parad has been spotted near Mt. Tukay, while JI "associate" Mu’awiyah and other insurgents continue to attempt to re-supply the leaders with intermittent supply runs. In sum, the leading ASGs and their JI comrades have been unable to reach, the AFP says, any hidden watercraft landing zones to escape from the island. Another chieftain, Abu Solaiman, is surmised to have remained in the vicinity of Jolo… On September 6, the 3rd Light Reaction Company (3LRC) raided an ASG camp at Barangay Buli, Parang, inserted into the area on two UH-1H (Huey) helicopters, and in the 45-minute firefight, two soldiers were killed, three wounded, with ASG fatalities and casualties "undetermined." The ASG is out in force – that’s the lesson we’re learning.