Two

ONE, HAS government bungled the evacuation of OFWs in Libya?

That’s what some TV news reports have suggested, and that’s what Juan Miguel Zubiri suggests. “Too little, too late,” Zubiri said.

Not really.

The visit to Libya of newly appointed Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario to personally supervise things should dispel that notion. It should suggest at least the kind of priority government is giving the task. There are limits of course to what he can do, but his presence at least should be a reassurance to the beleaguered Filipino nationals there that they are not being neglected. Moral support is nothing to belittle in times like these. It is a veritable life raft.

What’s “too little” about the efforts to pluck the affected OFWs out of harm’s way? The complaint is that it has been haphazard and messy compared with the way other countries have done it for their nationals. But that’s not universal. Some have said that, others have thanked government for the swiftness with which it came to their aid.

I don’t know that other governments have been able to evacuate their nationals better—that claim remains unproven. I do know other countries have not sent their foreign secretaries to Libya. And I do know that other countries do not have to deal with a horde of nationals needing succor.

Not quite incidentally, not all OFWs in Libya (or Egypt, or Tunisia) want to leave for the simple reason that not all of them have been displaced, ravaged or “traumatized” (a word some newscasts keep invoking) by the war. The way some reports have it, you’d think the entire tribe of Filipinos in Libya are rattling the iron gates of the embassy like the Americans and their South Vietnamese friends at the end of the Vietnam War begging to get out. In fact, most of them just want to weather the thing through and get on with their lives. That was what they went there for to begin with, to escape a more harrowing war at home, which is the war with want.

If the crisis in Libya (and Tunisia and Egypt) in fact highlights anything, it is the extent of the Filipino Diaspora, the millions upon millions of Filipinos working abroad. Government is duty-bound to do everything it can for the least of them, but the sheer numbers living under often risky conditions guarantees that you cannot always pluck all of them from harm’s way in record time. You cannot always dig them out of the rubble (New Zealand), you cannot always lift the noose from their heads (China), you cannot always remove them from the line of fire (Libya, Egypt, Tunisia).

While at this, what’s too late about government action in Libya? So far, no Filipino has been reported killed, only groups experiencing harrowing ordeals in the course of their trek to places of safety. How can government possibly prevent Filipinos from being relieved of their possessions, or threatened thereof, by roving bands of pro-Gadhafi loyalists?

At least today we do not have a policy of pissing off our Arab hosts by taking a leading, and quite uto-uto, role in the “coalition of the willing,” which openly expose our compatriots to harm—and did in fact lead to the kidnapping of a Filipino driver in Iraq—in that part of the world. At least today we do not have a policy of openly robbing the OFWs, which GMA did in 2004 using a good portion of their money to advertise her campaign via PhilHealth cards.

Too little, too late? Thank God for not very small blessings.

Two, is P-noy right to pass on to his Vice President the task of deciding whether or not to bury Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani?

Not really.

The rationale that the President can’t be objective about the issue doesn’t quite cut it.

At the very least, that is so because it is not a matter of delicadeza. If the case were, for example, about whether or not to change Marcos Avenue to Cory Avenue, then I agree that the decision may be best left to others. It involves propriety. You can always say that we do need to change all the streets named Marcos to new ones, the naming of streets conferring honor to the person they are named after, but not necessarily after Cory or another Aquino.

Burying Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani is another matter entirely. It is to call Marcos a hero. I grant the Libingan is home to scoundrels apart from real heroes, but that is no reason to add another one, or indeed the biggest scoundrel of them all. That is jailing history, that is torturing truth.

At the very most, that is so because this is not just a matter of personal interest to the President, this is a matter of vital interest to the people. The injury—and insult—martial law inflicted wasn’t just upon the Aquinos, it was upon the nation. That was the spirit of the utterance, “Hindi ka nag-iisa.” That was the meaning of the exhortation, “Justice for Aquino, justice for all.” We do not particularly mind that the President is biased in this respect. In fact, we demand it. We want him to be biased-in our favor.

P-Noy in fact should be saying: “I will decide on it. It is my duty as the president. It is my obligation as the highest citizen of the land. It wasn’t just my family that suffered at the hands of Marcos, it was the people. It wasn’t just my family that breathed the air of freedom with People Power, it was the people. A hero is someone like Jose Rizal who gave up his life to free his country. He is not someone like Marcos who murdered others to free himself from restraint. What we should do is make Marcos pay for his sins, the way the torture victims and the kin of the ‘salvaged’ and disappeared have made him pay for his sins. What we may not do is turn him into a hero.

“By all means let his kin bury him. But in the resting place of heroes?

“Never.”