Friday, July 23, 2004

The saga of Angelo de la Cruz was a classic case of international interests vs. domestic interests. I didn't agree with what the Philippines did but if you look at it in the light of the internal situation of the Philippines, one would probably understand why it happened. Arroyo just narrowly won the presidential election in the Philippines, but there were claims of fraud. Legislators allied with Poe can file a complaint with the Supreme Court for elections, but they have not stated if they will do that. So, due to these two forces, she has an even greater reason to win over everyone around her. But, even more importantly, the election results showed that the public was divided over the decision, therefore she would not want to do anything to upset the people. She was probably more concerned with her standing with the people than with politcians. I mean if the people can do what they did to Estrada and Marcos, who knows what will happen with her? Which leads to the second point--the people. Right now, there's upwards of 900,000 people working abroad as Overseas Foreign Workers. If Arroyo let dela Cruz die, those workers probably would not feel too much confidence. Those workers also send back about $8 bil in remittances, so if there were a significant decline in foreign workers, that would reflect on the economy of the islands. In the interest of world events, the Philippines definitely did the wrong thing, but there's probably a lot of happy people in Pampanga today.