Monday, February 16, 2009

Congress Just Sold our Kalayaan


While we worry about the next meal and bow our heads in shame over so many scandals involving government, now comes Congress with another sellout. The Bicameral Conference committee has just approved a version of the Baselines Bill that effectively excluded the Kalayaan Islands and Scarborough isles from Philippine territory.

This version, which Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile termed as the “best” that these legislators can come up so far, is slated to be approved by both Houses and submitted for signature to the President. Former Philippine Representative to the United Nations Lauro Baja was shocked to learn that this 14th Congress has just sold out the claim of the Philippines in a nonchalant fashion. This bill effectively erased decades of debates and studies undertaken by our country’s diplomats just to defend our claims to these oil-rich islands. And what was the reason of these “distinguished” traitors, err, legislators?

” The Chinese and the Vietnamese will go to war against us if we continue our claims, ” says Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile. Enrile must have probably thought that we’re in the 19th century where gunboat diplomacy was the norm rather than the exception in international diplomacy. Or, probably he thinks that all Filipinos are octogenarians, weak and unable to defend their own lands against foreign intrusions. Enrile must have been asleep. For, ever octogenarians among us, who fought those global wars and survived, will fight on for their country, unlike this prodigal son from the North who shake with fear just by the very prospect of hearing a whimper of protest by these wealthy Chinese Communists.

This bogey, it seems, was created just to justify the obvious sellout of these islands. And for what cost, you ask? China reportedly offered US$ 8 billion in loans just for the Philippines to drop its claim in the Kalayaan islands.

Why are we so obsessed with selling our islands, our mountains, our lands, our rivers and streams? Have we no love for our beloved country? Have we forgotten that our heroes and forebears fought with their lives and their blood just to create this Nation of 82 million souls living in 7,100 islands? Maybe, it’s our perverse understanding of the concepts of a borderless world? Or maybe, just maybe, some of us, particularly those who we elected as leaders, are so obsessed and hungry to get hold of that US$ 8 billion bonanza that they don’t think about the disastrous effects of such a sellout to future generations?

We are so unfortunate to have a Senate President that thinks he owes his post to the Chinese and the Vietnamese Communists. We are so unlucky to have a Speaker who wants to sell every parcel of prime property to foreigners by lifting Constitutional provisions. These former bar top-notchers are the country’s foremost real estate agents who think they owe their lives to their patron, under the ignominious name of Gloria Arroyo.

Such a waste of talent, these two men of traitorous natures. It is a shame that we now live in a generation where graduates of AIM, in the likes of Celso delos Angeles Jr. use their talents to scam people out of their lifesavings. It is a shame that brilliant legal minds, such as these two men from the North and the South, conspiring to offer the Philippines as a tribute to their Chinese masters in Beijing. Shame that these so-called “brave men” who fought the dictatorship, are now the ones carving these beautiful country into little fiefdoms and selling those islands to the Chinese, an obvious admission of the frailities of our crooked souls.

” RP is for sale.” We have sold our morals already. We gave up our brothers and sisters to Middle Eastern masters due to poverty. We sold our organs, our bodies, to the highest bidder from Europe and the United States. Now, we are selling the very land, the very soil, we tread and we owe our very lives.

What’s so sad is that we don’t mind giving these islands to foreigners. When we were presented with the prospect of peace with our fellow Muslim kin last year, with the MOA-AD, we screamed and threatened to unleash the dogs of war against our blood brothers. Yet, when we now see the prospect of losing our claims to these islands and also face the prospect of losing yet another, this time, Sabah, silence.

We deserve our slavery.

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