One voice, not noise

There is something fishy, if not suspicious, behind the renewed noise of Hong Kong officials over an incident that happened in Manila more than three years ago. Out of the blue, officials of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) suddenly revived the case of the botched police rescue operations. In that unfortunate incident, eight Hong Kong citizens were killed and several others seriously injured by a suspended cop who held them hostage in a tourist bus in Luneta in August 2010.

Despite the personal condolences and certain amounts of compensation sent by President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III to each of the victims’ families, the HKSAR officials demanded a formal apology.

Until that apology is made, the HKSAR government decided to suspend the visa-free visits by Philippine officials.

Starting last Wednesday, holders of official Philippine government passports will no longer be allowed to visit Hong Kong for up to 14 days without visas.

However, concerns were raised that this latest Hong Kong sanction might be expanded later to include regular travelers from the Philippines. And the worse scenario is HKSAR authorities might decide to apply the same sanction on our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

From latest estimates, there are 160,000 OFWs in Hong Kong. Methinks though, HKSAR would dare not touch our OFWs. For one, Hong Kong could not afford to lose the services of our OFWs because it would also impact Hong Kong’s booming economy. The bulk of our OFWs working there are domestic helpers. They keep the homes of Hong Kong couples and watch over their children and families so that they can go to their offices and workplaces.

The fears of expanded sanction from Hong Kong arose after the Beijing government came out with official pronouncements in support of the HKSAR position on this case. This is because Hong Kong is one of the autonomous provinces of China.

Fearing that more serious sanctions might be imposed on OFWs, former President and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada earlier offered to do the official apology in behalf of the city government. Mayor Estrada conceded it was clearly a bungled job of his immediate predecessor, former mayor Alfredo Lim.  

When HKSAR renewed their demand last year for P-Noy to issue the official apology, Mayor Estrada volunteered to assume full responsibility for the unfortunate incident and offer compensation package he solicited from local businessmen to help pay for the victims. Mayor Estrada was about to fly to Hong Kong last year but was prevailed upon by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to delay it because they were still conducting talks with the HKSAR for a full closure of this case.

Mayor Estrada obliged the DFA’s request as he waited for the outcome of the official discussions with HKSAR. Late last month, it turned out P-Noy quietly sent his official emissary, Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras last December to conduct the talks. Apparently, however, Almendras failed to come to an acceptable conclusion of this sad episode.

This is why Mayor Estrada announced he would no longer be held back from flying personally to Hong Kong to do his own bid of appeasement with HKSAR authorities. The erstwhile president sincerely believes P-Noy should not be the one to apologize for this sorry incident.

Actually, it was the Hong Kong media that virtually reopened the Luneta bus hostage case when they ganged up on President Aquino at a hotel lobby in Bali, Indonesia in October last year. At the time President Aquino was scheduled to meet with HKSAR chief Leung Chun-ying on the sidelines of the annual leaders’ summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) hosted by Indonesia.

Breaching the security cordon, the Hong Kong media pressed for official apology from President Aquino as reportedly demanded by the families and relatives of the victims. Indonesian security authorities later threw them out of the APEC summit venue for violation of protocol.

By the way, China is the next host country for the APEC Leaders’ summit to be held in Beijing in November this year. And in 2015, it will be the turn of the Philippines to host again the APEC summit.

While the Hong Kong apology remains hanging, our Philippine officials themselves do not even have one voice on this issue. Instead of a national consensus, our leaders are divided for and against giving apology.

Albay Rep. Al Francis Bichara, chairman of the House committee on foreign relations, urged Malacañang to apologize at the soonest possible time to avert harsher sanctions from HKSAR. Bichara, former Philippine ambassador to Lebanon and Syria, expressed deep concern on the many irritants in our bilateral relations with China that has become aggressive in asserting its claim over the West Philippine Sea.

While Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez shared the same concern, he, however, believes Mayor Estrada’s offer of apology to HKSAR would suffice. The former Immigration chief during Estrada’s administration, Rodriguez suspects the visa sanction was due to the pressure exerted by China on the HKSAR related to our overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea.

Even senators are divided on this issue of apology. Palace allies at the Senate, of course, support the view that P-Noy has already done his job on this case. Naturally, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada backs his father’s move to do the apology, being the mayor of the city of Manila, and not P-Noy.

At this stage, President Aquino must now decide and act as the father of the nation, a role he should have been playing from day one in office. Our bachelor President, who incidentally turns 54 years old tomorrow, must try to bring together the nation as one family.

Instead of getting noises from here and there involving sensitive foreign policy issues, the best way for the President to forge a national consensus among our country’s leaders is to convene the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC).

P-Noy reportedly agreed to finally convene LEDAC but the Palace did not give any specific date when to hold it. Hopefully, one voice — not noise — would emerge from this talk shop on pressing matters of state so as not to aggravate the situation as it is now.