The black travel ban laid down by China is inherently retaliatory on the part of an offended government and its citizenry. Philippines and its officialdom failed to win the hearts and minds of the Hongkong nationals or the people of China starting from how the hostage crisis has been bungled down killing eight of their citizens to the final result of the so-called Incident Investigation Review Committee (IIRC). After all, no right-thinking individual could give these two aspects good scores, or is there anyone?
The government is trying to bail or bribe her way out of the discomfort by offering to indemnify the casualties with a whooping $80,000 each and the injured $30,000 not to mention scholarships or other health insurance to their families. And to cover up for such a course of action, the government is quick to say that the funding is built on the concept of public-private partnership which means that local Chinese are shelling out some cash for them and government is counterparting from taxpayer’s money. Either way it works, government failure is luminous.
Viewed differently, what if some official option pushes for a no-China policy. What will the future be? Remember that the so-called ‘botcha’ (double-dead meat) sold in quantities to clueless consumers or markets did come from China? The toys that flood the market with toxic led contents injurious to babies or children did also come from again, China? And that China-made merchandise are largely counterfeit, low quality, sub-standard, mass-produced and cheap?
Couldn’t we be better off without China or the Chinese who operate most businesses in the country? Those Chinese who own most restaurants in the country might in fact be polluting our waterways, can’t they? They bribe the police, the city officials, the politicians so no one has to mess around with their business, don’t they? The Chinese bring out of the country much money from the profits they derive doing business in the Philippines, don’t they?
Perhaps, if there is a black travel ban of Chinese or Hongkong nationals going into the Philippines, the government might as well also issue a red travel ban of Filipinos coming into China. The diplomatic channels are not working, are they? The government has went into wasteful spending by going to China without deriving positive results. All because, the people close to the president have faction-mentality – they compete with another faction for some kind of supremacist vogue. Isn’t that a shame?
The Chinese have every reason to hate us. But they better just keep it to their hearts. The affairs of state are not well-managed. The people behind P-Noy are almost a bunch of ‘nincompoops’, if that can be seen as an emerging pattern. It began with Puno, a Robredo, then followed all too quickly with Miclang, Carandang and all that? Some are coming, many more rear their ugly heads.
The level of trust directly on P-Noy is still high. The polling circuits should have measured the surveys against the men and women who give P-Noy all the wrong advice and then we can have a real picture of the story.