Tuesday, November 28, 2006 Cabaero: Secretary Gonzalez and the sharks By Nini B. Cabaero Beyond 30
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has never been known as one to temper his words, especially when he wants to stress a point or to scare people away.
This was the same justice secretary who issued sexist statements last year against critics of President Arroyo. He once called Susan Roces as a “griping widow (who was) too beautiful to be sent to jail,” and once told former president Cory Aquino to fix her daughter’s love affairs and not the affairs of the state.
It was not uncharacteristic of him then to warn that the government would ban the entry of foreign “troublemakers” into the country and throw protesters to the Mactan Channel where they could be food for the sharks.
Gonzalez said the Philippine Government will do a Singapore and prevent the holding of protest actions during the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to be held in Cebu this December.
A report by the Philippine Daily Inquirer yesterday quoted Gonzalez as saying he will not allow a repetition here of protests held in Hong Kong in December 2005 when delegates to a World Trade Organization meeting were forced to stay inside their hotel rooms. “We will not allow a situation where the international delegates, the chiefs of state, will be cordoned off inside the Shangri-La as what happened in Hong Kong recently. We will not allow that here. We will throw them into the Mactan Straits and let the sharks eat them there,” the report quoted Gonzalez as saying.
Other reports also quoted Gonzalez as saying foreigners with visas to the Philippines are not automatically assured entry into the country. He ordered immigration offices last week to verify identities, conduct profiling and monitor the activities of arriving foreigners, especially those with Pakistani, Afghan and Indian names or roots. His basis is a new intelligence report saying foreigners who may have links with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden have entered the country.
The Philippines is a signatory to all the important anti-terrorism pacts and, by agreement, is to act accordingly as a member of a community of nations when a terror situation arises. As to protest actions, the government has rules on the conduct of rallies and the police have had a lot of practice on their implementation.
These agreement provisions and local laws need only be implemented for the government to ensure a wrinkle-free hosting of the Asean summit here next month.
Open communication lines with militant groups and calls for cooperation to the rest of the public would ease the burden on summit organizers. No need for Secretary Gonzalez to invoke the help of sharks.
