Why should North Korea nuke us, when we’re self-destructing already?

I don’t know what our Presidenta GMA meant when she declared that the Philippines is within "striking distance" of North Korea’s missiles and vowed that our country would take an active role in stopping the nuclear program of that rogue state?

How do we propose to accomplish that? By invading North Korea and capturing Pyongyang? Perish the thought. Our Navy couldn’t even risk going far beyond the horizon in its leaky tubs, our Air Force is almost non-existent in the jet department, and the average age of our troops is 44. I can just imagine our middle-aged Army huffing and puffing up the Nokor regime’s beaches on the Yellow Sea, under a rain of missiles, rockets, and biological shells of which that nation’s "Dear Leader", mad Kim Jong Il, has stocks aplenty.

As for the "nuclear device" North Korea claims – to the anger of its neighbors China, South Korea, and their newly-restored "friend," Japan – to have detonated only the other day in its northeastern township of Kilju, it may be pooh-poohed by a skeptical world as only a small (even counterfeit) nuke – but it would still be dangerous for us, especially if it hit Garbage or Smokey Mountain and splattered those odorous contents all over Metro.

I’m tempted to say, "Relax – why should North Korea waste a nuke and the expensive missile carrying it on us?" Then, I realize that Mr. Kim might be aiming at Tokyo, but the nuclear-warhead-carrying missile might go off tangent and strike our Senate building in the GSIS by accident. (If it did so, the last laugh would belong to Joke-Joke Bolante).

It turns out that when she addressed the Cabinet meeting yesterday in Malacañang, our Chief Executive only planned to join the chorus of condemnation by the rest of the world, and not much else. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales added, however, that since the Philippines is currently the Chair of ASEAN – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – and all its members are within range of Pyongyang’s missiles, something more ought to be done. But he didn’t elaborate.

Therefore, I return to my first argument. How can we do anything more muscular than spit saliva at Dear Leader Kim when our Senate cannot even manage to pass an Anti-Terrorism Bill?

The tragedy is that the urgent measure can’t be approved by our Senators since a number of them hate its sponsors and vice-versa. How sad it is when personal animosities and resentments override the national interest. And to think our Senators are called "solons." More like solo-players, actually.

The importance of an Anti-Terrorism law was once again underscored to me by Police Deputy Director General Avelino "Sonny" Razon Jr., the Deputy Chief PNP, when I met with him yesterday. Razon who has been leading Task Force USIG, to investigate and arrest suspected killers of activists, journalists and other citizens in extra-judicial murders, pointed out that under our outmoded Revised Penal Code, the police can hold a killer-suspect or a suspected terrorist for only 36 hours, while in Britain, for instance, a terrorist suspect can be detained for 16 days without charges still being filed against the suspect. In short, our cops and soldiers are fighting the bad guys and terrorists with one arm tied behind them.

Why? Because our politicians are quarreling like little kids. It’s time for some grown-ups to take over.

Everybody’s saying that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is insane. What we need is a little sanity in our political class as well.

Senate President Manny Villar yesterday expressed concern over the need to improve the "image of the Senate." The only way that image can be improved is through performance.

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I also bumped into Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro Mendoza yesterday morning and asked him when the NAIA Terminal-3, still stalled in a thicket of legalities and under repair (its ceiling cracking) would become operational.

The DOTC chief shrugged helplessly and said, "sometime in March next year." Sanamagan.

Even before it opens, to be frank, that badly-built, gravely overpriced PIATCO and Fraport-constructed terminal building is obsolescent. Moreover, when you compare it to Bangkok’s snazzy, just-opened Suvarnabhumi international airport, it is small, ugly and on the wrong side of the runway.

Our disgrace is complete. When Typhoon Milenyo (better known as Xangsane abroad) hit Metro Manila with maximum fury last September 28, electricity in most of the metropolis conked out – especially in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport area. By golly, when cancelled flights were renewed the following day, NAIA-1 was completely without electric power. No generators to substitute for the power outage? The terminal was a sauna, as I described in an earlier column. Passengers sweating it out and waiting for their aircraft to board, literally by candlelight, sweltered in sullen discomfiture. One or two fainted from the heat.

When our Thai international Airway plane, bound for Bangkok, finally took off, a passenger (whether he was Indian or Arab, I’m not sure) exclaimed loudly to his companion: " You were right! I’ll never pass by Manila again!"

Indeed, why would any self-respecting foreigner, whether investor or tourist, want to go to an area of blight in a backward land where the premier international airport can’t afford to get a good generator to keep itself running when the power grid is knocked out?

When I first went to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah (formerly British North Borneo, leased from our Sultan of Jolo), I thought Kota Kinabalu was backward and its airport primitive. Four years ago, I passed through Kota Kinabalu on transit to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur, and found that its airport – even then – was better than ours!

It’s a mystery why a people like the Filipino nation, with so much talent that our compatriots win kudos for achievement and praise for hard work when abroad, are so content with "mediocrity" here in the homeland? We preen ourselves as a first-class people, but our rhetoric gets mocked by our fourth-world airport.

The airport is the gateway to Manila – so, from the moment the first-time arrival exits the terminal into a squatter jungle, dingy streets, broken pavements and smelly environs, he gets an idea of what to expect in our archipelago. I’m surprised that not everybody makes a u-turn and a beeline for check-in counter for the next flight out – usually the aircraft he or she arrived on.

For years, this writer advocated constructing a skyway from the NAIA to downtown Makati, and another to the better section of Roxas boulevard, so the new arrival would not be shocked by the unsightly aspect and the stench of the airport’s surroundings – thus, be deceived, Potemkin-style into believing we are a progressive nation. Alas, everyone procrastinated or hemmed and hawed over the idea. (They’re still talking about building a skyway – and this promises to be debated till judgment day).

I suggested to Larry Mendoza (a former PNP Chief of Police and a general by the way – GMA’s government may have as many generals as the new military-led government of Thailand) that we think in terms of soon abandoning the Manila International Airport (NAIA) and transferring ASAP to Angeles, where the former US Air force-built Clark Field has been blessed with the name, Diosdado Macapagal International Airport.

NAIA has become too small, it’s runways constricted by being surrounded by intruding subdivisions and squatters.

All we have to do to get the international airport in Angeles, which already serves chartered and cargo flights, into efficient operation is to improve its infrastructure, plus, build a fast railway line from the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport to midtown Metro Manila, e.g. Makati, Bonifacio Global City, or Quezon City. (Tutuban in Divisoria, of pre-war nostalgia, has alas long been discarded, and converted into a crowded B-class shopping mall).

Building a quick train connection, of course, is easier said than done in a country where a pro-squatter law accurately called by one columnist "the lousy Lina Law" protects squatters from being dislodged from the right of way – but political will and political muscle must be employed. If a railway train can speed tourists and arrivals into Metro Manila within 45 minutes to an hour, that would be wonderful. And we would have at last, enough runways to handle jet traffic credibly.

A week and a half ago, arriving in Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi International Airport, this writer complained it had taken us almost three hours to recover our luggage. Yet, to be fair, our Thai airways plane had arrived on the airport’s second day of operation when systems were still either shaky or all-fouled up. I’ll bet the luggage-retrieval times has, by now, been pared down to 30 minutes or less. The automated transfer system is expected, when refined to its fullest, to handle up to 9,600 pieces of luggage per hour.

The airport’s two runways have a capacity for 76 flights per hour, accommodating simultaneous landings since the runways are 2,200 meters apart. It is designed to handle 45 million passengers a year initially, but will ultimately increase its capacity to 100 million. There are 22 baggage carousels and a total of 120 immigration desks, so queuing up is reduced to a minimum.

The 25-kilometer journey into Bangkok (normally clocked at 45 minutes in duration of land travel) is accomplished by a six-lane expressway. I noticed that there were large advertising billboards only within a couple of miles from the city and they were many meters from the highway, so passing vehicles would not be endangered by falling billboards. (Sadly, those giant billboards here in Metro Manila collapsed inflicting havoc and death – so, I’m glad most of them are being uprooted).

The Thais, moreover, are rushing the completion of an airport train – scheduled to start running in 2008 – which will enable arriving passengers to be whisked from airport to city center in only 13 minutes! And the same for the journey the other way to the airport. When you’re catching a plane, speed and efficiency are essential.

What about us? I’m afraid to answer that question.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . I had a long lunch with our envoy to the United States, Ambassador Willy C. Gaa, who came home to go through the confirmation process in the Commission on Appointments. Having been handily confirmed by Congress a week ago, he’ll be returning to his post in Washington DC next Sunday. I asked Willy what were the problems he encountered when he took over the Philippine Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue N.W. (near the Dupont Circle) a few months ago. He grinned and said that, for one thing, he found the roof was leaking. With Winter coming, a leaky roof presents a serious problem. It snows in Washington DC – boy, does it – and heavy snow on the roof might collapse it. I know this because when I was much younger, I went to school in Washington DC, working for a doctorate on a scholarship in the School of International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University – not the Baltimore campus. I think that, with our government so parsimonious when it comes to repair and improvement funding, our private business sector, particularly those firms which do business in the US and in its capital, ought to rally to help Ambassador Gaa improve our Embassy there. It is our "outpost" in the capital of the world’s superpower, where it proudly keeps our flag flying . . . Incidentally, there’s a testimonial dinner and forum tonight sponsored by the Manila Oversea Press Club and the Romblomanons in honor of Ambassador Gaa, who hails from Looc, Romblon. It will be held at 7 p.m. in the Bahia Rooftop of the Inter-Continental Hotel in Makati. We tried to book the usual venue of our MOPC dinners, the Ballroom, but it had been taken already. The co-sponsors of the grand affair are Forward Romblon (FOROM), the Romblon Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Congressman Eduardo C. Firmalo of Romblon. (Governor Perpetuo B. Ylagan may also attend). Naturally, the people of Romblon are proud of their native son. Foreign Affairs Secretary Bert Romulo will attend the dinner, and a dozen foreign Ambassadors including envoys from the US Embassy will be there. We have a distinguished Panel of "Interrogators" to discuss Gaa’s speech, including Karl Wilson, President of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) as well as MOPC member himself. Karl is Bureau Chief of Agence France Presse. Also in the panel is Sarah Toms of the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC). Her husband, by the way, is John O’Callaghan (also an MOPC member), Bureau Chief of Reuters. Both of them will soon be moving to a new posting in Washington DC. Theirs is a classic example, I think, of Conjugal Excellence in journalism . . . It’s been confirmed that former NCR Region PNP Director Gen. Vid Querol will be nominated our next Ambassador to Indonesia. The assignment was first offered to former Armed Forces Chief of Staff Efren Abu – a classmate of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Ft. Leavenworth – but General Abu prefers to be some sort of Roving Ambassador for the President. Querol also trained in Ft. Leavenworth – and is probably being rewarded for his yeoman work during the rallies and demonstrations that threatened to make Metro Manila a battleground when he was chief of the National Capital Region Command. Good luck Vid, in your new diplomatic career.