Fattening the calf before it is slaughtered!

No doubt, football fever has finally caught up here in Cebu when last night the famous Philippine Azkals fought the Singapore Lions at the Cebu City Sports Center, which was prepared very well by the organizers. Thanks to Engr. Pericles “Ricky” Dakay’s leadership at the Cebu Football Association, Cebu’s dream of having a major football match here became a reality. Unfortunately due to our deadlines, we cannot put in the results of the match and I can only hope that the match would end before the deadline of this newspaper, so you will know who won this historic match.

As for me… this is going to be my first time to watch a football game, although, I am more of an American Football fan. However, because I always meet up with Ricky Dakay, he always points me to soccer. I do watch soccer during the World Cup games because it is there that we cheer for the countries and their respective teams.

While I’m not yet as football crazy as Engr. Ricky Dakay or my son JV, I still prefer soccer to basketball. In my book, the Filipino’s penchant for basketball hasn’t helped our national teams in the international arena. When I learned that many of our basketball teams even hired foreigners to play our local games, I found this to be downright wrong. If our professional basketball teams need to hire tall foreigners to play the game… then we might as well stop this nonsense.

Soccer is world famous, even in the Pavelas (shanties) of Brazil and perhaps we are the only 3rd world nation that isn’t football crazy, thanks to our being basketball crazy. I hope that someday, soccer will be the game for Filipinos for the simple reason that we can produce world-class players because height is not a requirement to become a great football player.

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We were the first to write on that Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) directive that my good friend, Honorary Consul of Latvia Mr. Robert “Bobby” Joseph first reported some months ago during the 888 Forum held in Marco Polo Plaza Hotel. We wrote about this in our Star column and here in our  Freeman column, but we never got any reaction from anyone from the DFA. However, most travel agencies were happy that we pursued this article. But they were just too busy for the pilgrimage to Rome for the canonization of San Pedro Calungsod to give this their full attention.

Call it timely that I met Bobby Joseph once more at the 888 Forum last Tuesday and he gave me a copy of a letter that he sent to Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III reiterating his call to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to lift the deadline wherein travel agencies are allowed to provide passport services to their clients, stressing that this move is not only discriminatory, but it is also against the law, specifically the Passport Act of 1996. Hmmm, I thought having a Daang Matuwid meant that from henceforth, things will be better and everyone will follow the law?

The crux of the issue is that, this DFA directive orders all accredited travel agencies only up to Dec. 31,2012 to offer passport assistance services to the public. After this year is over, all Filipinos who need a passport have to go to the DFA offices. Doesn’t the DFA know that people are already lining up in the J-Center Mall as early as 2:00AM just to be ahead of the line when the DFA offices open in the morning? This is inefficiency!

There is no doubt at all that this DFA directive is highly anti-small business because most travel agencies fall under the category of small and medium scale businesses. Sure, most of the travel agencies I know made a killing this year thanks to San Pedro Calungsod, but with the DFA directive looming over their heads, it is akin to fattening the calf before it is slaughtered! Like it or not, using the services of travel agencies to include passport services has always been the practice since time immemorial and no one was complaining about this. So how come the DFA issued this stupid directive?

What in effect will happen here is that, DFA officials will most certainly “profit” from this directive… because corruption has never been eradicated in many government offices no matter how much PNoy chants his “Kung Walang Korrupt, Walang Mahirap!” campaign slogan. Doesn’t the President even know that when he allows the DFA to pursue this directive, many small travel agencies will be forced to shut down and corruption will become widespread in the DFA?

For us travelers, it is better to pay for the service of travel agencies (who hire people for this kind of work) than pay grease money to the DFA official to speed up the processing of passports. Clearly these DFA officials haven’t learned anything about that old American saying, which goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” But what the DFA directive does is make getting passports a hassle and for people like me, it’s going to be hell!

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