I had to do a double-take yesterday. Since my articles take space Mondays and Wednesdays, I have five days to write my column for the following Monday. So sometimes I miss out on current events, and by the time I want to write about the issue, it has become stale.
As is my wont, I scribble notes in my laptop from the time I submit my Wednesday column (normally on Tuesday morning) till Saturday or Sunday, as reference for my Monday article the following week.
Imagine my surprise upon reading the Manila Standard editorial yesterday, which had exactly the same title I used for my Monday-banked article! “What’s wrong with strong?” the editorial title asked. And the succeeding article debunked Ian Bremmer’s cover story for TIME Magazine.
All I can now say is: I fully concur with yesterday’s editorial.
President Duterte did not have to deny he is a “strongman.” People elected him precisely because he was, and is, a “strong” leader. They are tired of weaklings.
Harking back to post-Edsa days, when the Filipino people were so heady that they were able to topple a “strongman” who had stayed too long, only to realize after a few years that “weak” leadership had been foisted upon them.
Imagine what could have happened to the country had there been a “strong” Duterte-like president after Marcos?
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As this space wrote Wednesday last, we were alerted to a big fire that razed a Taoyuan factory in Taiwan on Saturday night (April 28) by a Filipino contract worker who was so concerned that other fellow OFWs could have been inside the building.
Fortunately, there was none, and our Meco staff and labor officials in Taipei found out immediately after. But the tragedy took the lives of two Thai contract workers, plus five Taiwanese fire fighters.
On Monday, April 30, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan announced that Taoyuan’s Fire Department Chief Hu Ying-ta tendered his resignation over the disaster and he reluctantly accepted the resignation.
Fire chief Hu had been a fire fighter for 43 years, with a distinguished service record, and had conducted many reforms in the Taoyuan fire department, the mayor said. But the Taoyuan factory fire took the second greatest loss of life for firemen in Taiwan for the last eleven years.
Fire chief Hu took the bullet even as he grieved for the loss of his own men.
Such nobility is rare.
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Last May One, internationally celebrated as Labor Day, we were in a ceremony to inaugurate Taiwan’s Institute for National Strategic Research, a newly created agency. While waiting for Pres. Tsai Ing-wen to arrive, the resident representative from the United Kingdom broke the news in our conversation, that less than an hour before, the Dominican Republic had announced they were breaking off full diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
That event may have been the reason for the president to be late by six minutes or so for the scheduled ten o’clock ceremony. In Taiwan, everything is done with clock-work precision. The trains run exactly on time, as in Japan, or the head of the rail system resigns. So too with official functions.
But an unexpected announcement from a full diplomatic ally must have kept the president and the new foreign minister huddled for the official reaction, I surmised.
Suddenly I remembered a Dominican Republic scholar in Kaohsiung I had met months before, and upon whom I was able to practice my little knowledge of the Spanish language. She was studying in a Kaohsiung university as a full scholar of the government, and would be tapped as an interpreter and tour guide for visitors of the city officialdom who spoke either Spanish or English. The honoraria she received for such chores added to the stipend she got from Taiwan on top of the full scholarship.
Would her scholarship be revoked by her government’s affront upon Taiwan, I thought?
But on Tuesday May 2, the Ministry of Education stated that it is willing to help Dominican students so they could continue their studies if they wish, despite the severance of diplomatic ties between the Dominican Republic and Taiwan the day before.
There are 91 students from the Dominican Republic studying in Taiwan, 21 of whom are enrolled under the Taiwan Scholarship Program.
Another gesture of nobility.
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“What’s wrong with strong,” yesterday’s Standard editorial is the same question in my mind in response to all the flak DFA Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano is getting these days on account of the rescue of Filipino nationals maltreated by their Kuwaiti employers.
Kuwait expelled our ambassador to protest an “affront to their sovereignty.” Perhaps so.
But would we rather see our government doing nothing to protect the lives and well-being of our nationals toiling and suffering in some foreign climes?
Diplomatic faux pas our intellectual elite may label the incident, but despite lapses, our ambassador and his secretary did the right thing. Pinoy muna, and damn the torpedoes after.
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There are two Filipinos I have to congratulate for their excellence in their chosen fields: Kenneth Cobonpue of Cebu City, who recently won the prestigious International Interior Design Association award for his “peacock chair” at a hospitality design fair held in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Kenneth, who is likewise the chairman of the Regional Development Council for Region 7 by appointment of President Duterte, is truly a Filipino we can be proud of, making waves in furnitures and fixtures that have awed celebrities around the world for stunning creativity and flawless craftsmanship.
Likewise I commend Mayor John Rey Tiangco of Navotas, whom I met in 2015 courtesy of my Malabon friend Norman Fulgencio, now chairman of the Postal Corporation, for his imposition of a curfew for minors from 10 at night till five in the early morning. John Rey has labeled the curfew time as “disciplinary hours.”
That might seem draconian to some, especially since the Navotas fish port operates in the wee hours of brisk trading and minors are employed contractually by “consignitarios” to haul their purchased “banyeras” to their vehicles.
But minors are likewise employed by crime syndicates and gangs, and for Mayor John Rey, enough must be enough.