IN MY last column I presented a snapshot of a small part of an overall Covid-19 Planned Economic Recovery (C19PER) focusing on the improvement and expansion of Senator Bong Go’s seminal “Balik Probinsya” concept.
I described the national organization of a massive back-to-the province migration of millions of our teeming metropolitan population being brought back to the provinces of their choice but in “regimented” battalions accompanied by units of the AFP Engineering Corps to lay the foundations of an organized community with basic shelter structures, school and most importantly, water sources and irrigation.
Without such military-like organizing of this effort on a mass scale, the execution of a national economic recovery plan during and post-pandemic condition is unimaginable, as I think we see in the faltering of the “Balik Probinsya” program.
Another massive project we must be seriously considering to accept, subject to serious discussion and planning, is the launching of major economic development projects such as the momentarily shelved Fuga Island development proposed by a Chinese company that would realize an old dream – Hong Kong and Hawaii in Fuga Islands and northern Luzon.
Of course we have been seeing and hearing the usual suspects in the anti-China coteries of scaremongers and economic obstructionists like the Inquirer, Rappler, Philippine Star, and surprisingly from nonagenarian JPE and octogenarian Bono Adaza, all saying it would be a Chinese takeover that would pose a national security threat to the Philippines.
National Security threat “my eye” (expression of disbelief), the Chinese are monitoring the American submarines with underwater sensors and sonar, drifting buoy sonars, satellite sensors, drone submarines, etcetera, they don’t need any island to do that in that narrowest of Luzon Straits area.
Their part of the South China Sea islands has installations of missile and planes needed to pre-empt any U.S. attack; “monitoring islands are therefore not needed.
It is really shamefully amateurish for JPE and Bono to believe so, with the latter saying in his FB post supporting the former, “Allowing China direct or indirect control of Fuga Island group is… prejudicial to those who are using the sea lands in the area like the United States of America. It is a wake-up call…”
This confirms what I had believed long since that the two are Amboys and worse, collaborators of the U.S. and traitors to the Marcos vision for economic development.
It is the same with those attempting to scuttle the entire POGO operations in the country that provide jobs to 31,000 of our Kababayans as support staff to the Mandarin-speaking Chinese workers serving as Internet agents to Chinese clients in the Mainland.
I don’t support gambling but I do support every Filipino job that we can generate, especially if a good tax take can be negotiated to boot.
The naysayers and fake anti-China patriots will say it is a threat to national security, a threat to the national interest – but what is the national interest to our country particularly in COVID 19 times like today where 250,000 OFWs are coming home to a country that just lost 7.5-million jobs and many of which will not be replaced even after the pandemic is over?
Let’s quit the bullshit, stop the “zombie ideas” that should have long died with the busted myth of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) award that has proven to be Fools Gold faked by the Americans with Noynoy Aquino, Justice Antonio Carpio, et al.
It’s over, let’s be truthful and realistic.
China is now the hope for Philippine economic recovery as well as the world; the U.S. may want to push the Philippines in the frontline of its war with China but we are no longer fool enough to swallow the hoaxes any longer of this sunset global power.