Just when you thought that the 2010 Hong Kong hostage debacle was already behind us, and any news reports about that incident are mere ripples that continue to echo, then comes Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying who apparently has set a deadline for the Philippines to resolve this problem or face further sanctions. From the way things are going, these are continued aftershocks of that bloody incident that refuse to die until somehow it gets resolved to the satisfaction of both.
As if the huge drop of Hong Kong residents taking their vacation to the Philippines wasn’t punishing enough for our tourism industry, now we are faced with this new round of problems because until now, the Philippines under Pres. Benigno “P-Noy†Aquino III still refuses to say I’m sorry.
I was listening to Anthony Taberna’s editorial yesterday morning in Umaga Kay Ganda and he used the line of that old 80’s song by Chicago, “It’s Hard to Say I’m Sorry.†And made a very sharp and concise reason why the President should make this apology… and I fully concur with him that it was the way the Philippine National Police (PNP) bungled the rescue operations, which the entire world saw live over satellite TV on CNN and BBC.
If you looked again into the video footages of that hostage situation, the SWAT snipers had a clear shot when Col. Rolando Mendoza appeared in the main door of the bus, but perhaps since he was a PNP officer, no one pulled the trigger that could have saved the eight Hong Kong tourists from their untimely deaths. But that’s water under the proverbial bridge and we “The Boss†must insist that President Aquino formally apologize to the people of Hong Kong.
One sanction being proposed by the Hong Kong Administrative Government is to impose visas for Philippine passport holders. For those Filipinos who continue to make Hong Kong their holiday/shopping destination that is one bureaucracy that they don’t want imposed. Actually Hong Kong is doing us a huge favor by allowing Filipinos to enter without a visa. But if someday this would happen, please remember, it was only because your President is so hard nosed… he would never apologize for the untimely deaths of those Hong Kong tourists, who didn’t have to die under his watch.
Incidentally, one of the issues that I missed when I was out of the country was when Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying literally called President Aquino a “barefaced liar!†because P-Noy claimed that the Hong Kong hostage taking issue was not raised when he met Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang during their meeting at the East Asia Leaders in Brunei last Oct.9.
I did not realize that last Oct.23, P-Noy spoke before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) where he insisted that the bus hostage issue was not raised when he met the Chinese Prime Minister. But the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman insisted that this was “untrue†and he quoted Prime Minister Li as to saying “The Hong Kong hostage incident has dragged on long enough and has affected the feelings of the Chinese people, Hong Kong compatriots in particular.†Pres. Aquino then pledged to carry on with the investigation and properly handle the incident. I fully agree with the Chinese Premier that this incident has dragged on for too long and it should be resolved as soon as possible.
Frankly speaking, I don’t like to hear leaders of foreign countries calling my President a liar. I know for a fact that diplomats talk in a kind of language that doesn’t offend anyone. I’ve attended too many diplomatic functions and understand this very well. But on the other hand, we have a President who apparently abhors diplomacy and therefore, if he lied to the Chinese Prime Minister, what kind of remarks can we expect from their Foreign Ministry? They call P-Noy a barefaced liar! Call it tit-for-tat!
We know well enough that the art of lying is a politician’s tool. We can name a few American Presidents who openly lied in public… Pres. Richard Nixon who said, “I’m not a crook†in the face of criticism during the Watergate Scandal that cost him his Presidency. US Pres. Bill Clinton openly declared “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky†but the whole world merely laugh away this big lie because the story was all over the press that Pres. Clinton did have a sexual liaison with Monica Lewinski who was then a White House Intern.
So now where and when did P-Noy lie to the Filipino people? A week or two before the 2013 mid-term elections, P-Noy was in Cebu for a political rally and when he was asked what happened to our Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), why it wasn’t approved? P-Noy merely retorted that this was being experimented in Manila. We already went to Curritiba in Brazil to see how that system works. You don’t need to experiment on projects of this magnitude. That in my book was a barefaced lie!
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