Vacate, pronto!

Batas Mauricio . 

ARE you one of those who believe in the fabled “Yamashita gold”–allegedly a cache of fabulous treasures rumored to have been buried in the Philippines by then Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita at the close of World War II?

If so, you must be running after what appears to be a bigger reserve of gold here in this country, much, much more than this Yamashita gold!

Current research works indicate that the Philippines is actually the Biblical “Ophir”, a group of islands “in front of China towards the sea, where Moluccans, Chinese and Lequios met to trade”, which, the Bible said, was the source of the gold that King Solomon used to build the temple of God in his time.

I hope this piece of information can be seriously looked into, for several practical reasons. If proved to be true, then Filipinos must be allowed to enjoy the benefit of this fabulous wealth. If proved to be false, then no one should be duped into believing it again and again.

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Is there anyone who’s willing to believe the clarification which purports to have come from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and which claimed that it did not, after all, give away the personal data of Filipinos to the foreign contractor which was tasked formerly to produce passports for our countrymen?

To me, there is something creepy about the silence of the current DFA head over that clarification. First, DFA officials whose ranks are much lower than him were the ones who allegedly talked that Filipinos have absolutely nothing to worry about the personal information that they submitted to the DFA (which personal information the DFA in turn handed over to the foreign contractor) when they applied for their Philippine passports.

Second, if the truth in this passport data mess is as the lower-echelon DFA officials claimed, that is, that the foreign contractor, contrary to the earlier claims trumpeted about in a frenzied manner by the DFA head, was not really given the personal information of millions of Filipinos, and if it is also true that our countrymen have nothing to worry about this scandal, why did not the DFA head himself make the clarification?

This could only mean, from my point of view, that it was not the current DFA head that made the clarifications as espoused by his subordinates, perhaps because he is not convinced that there really is no problem with the foreign contractor. Or, perhaps, it could also be that he had been ordered by his boss, President Duterte, to stop talking about this DFA mess.

Is it not a fact that when this scandal first broke out, the DFA chief already emphatically claimed that the foreign contractor ran off with the sensitive personal information of the Filipinos who have been issued the passports that the contractor produced? That, according to the DFA head likewise, the contractor ran away with the data that was entrusted to it because it got pissed off with the termination of its contract?

In all probability, that pronouncement by the DFA head (that the foreign contractor took away the sensitive personal information of those who were issued passports by the DFA) appears to be grievously wrong, especially if we take into account the contrary assertions of the officials who are ranked lower than him. I suspect that the head was told not to talk about the DFA mess anymore, because he is only causing fear and confusion. Well, would he not be asked by President Duterte to step down from his post?

Whatever be the truth in this scandal involving the personal data of our countrymen who have been given DFA passports, one thing clearly stands out–that the current DFA head committed a big, big, blunder with his claim that the foreign contractor ran off with these personal data.

The clarification made by loweranked DFA officials–that it is not true that the foreign contractor took away sensitive personal information submitted by Filipinos who applied for their passports–can only be considered a stinging rebuke against the DFA leader. Consider this: the repudiation of what the DFA head claimed was made by his supposed subalterns in a very public manner yet.

Although his subordinates did not categorically accuse the DFA head of lying with his first pronouncements about this problem, their very act of correcting what he said could not be simply considered as a simple clarification. It was to stress the fact that what their chief claimed was a total and brazen misrepresentation of facts, to say the least, that shamed not only the DFA but the entire Duterte government, and endangered many Philippine passport holders.

There is only one honorable thing that the DFA could do under this circumstances–he should vacate his post, pronto!