photo from coloria
After the Hong Kong columnist Chip Tsao's anti-racial remarks published on HK Magazine Online last March 27, publishers and editors asked for an apology from the Philippine government while the said article could not anymore be viewed.
Tsao's strong assertion that the disputed Spratly Islands belong to China and that the Red Republic has total sovereignty on it boiled down to his stupid line of argumentation which is totally moronic and unbecoming for a respected columnist.
He went to say that he summoned his Filipina maid Louisa who has a degree in international politics from the University of Manila and told her that if she wants a salary increase, she needs to tell her follow maids that Spratlys belongs to none but China.
He continued that "As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter". And there sparked the uproar from Filipinos who fight for the welfare and good of domestic helpers, NGOs, politicians who want to look good in front of the camera and politicians who aspire for re-electtions and the presidency.
There is no doubt that the remarks of this unrepentant columnist from Hong Kong hits the Filipino ego and identity. His flawed argumentation and justification that Spratlys is China's domain is nothing but a show of sheer arrogance and bullying to a small and silent nation south of their vast country.
However, his remarks also send a clear message of indeed, what identity the Filipino nation has built in the past decades.
The exodus of millions of Filipinos since the American occupation to look for greener pastures is nothing but a stark indication of our domestic affairs and directions. Governments since then, especially of the present administration has done nothing to stop our fellow Pinoys from creating more broken homes but has since then even pushed many of us to leave by thousands and maybe even millions and be given a big joke as New-day Heroes.
I cannot blame Filipinos who are leaving to give their families better lives, however, if you ask them if they only have a chance not to leave and only be given good job opportunities in the country, their answer is a clear yes. Leaving our families for some bigger pay on foreign lands is totally outside the spectre of our identity as Filipinos who value family life more than anything else. Being an OFW almost always simply means disenchantment and desperation in our own country plagued by corruption and poverty; the thriving few rich men and millions of poor men, women and children.
This incident mirrors the chronic illness that our country is presently suffering. It mirrors the failure of our governments to provide us the very basic things that we need and their failure to perform their jobs as elected leaders, that we are looking for it on some lands and governments.
It may be a knee-jerk reaction but at the end of the day, politicians will just point on who is to blame and maybe even use jargons to hide the ugly reality of poverty and corruption in our nation. At the end of the day, they will only blame everyone else except themselves who have ransacked the wealth of our country and preserved the long been enslavement of the average Pinoy.
Looking a the issue at face value, Tsao has no right to call us a nation of slaves but on a deeper examination, the truth is a saddening affirmation that we are indeed a nation living under a constant enslavement of our own making. We have left our nation, through the apathy of many of us the direction and future of our nation solely on the hands of our incompetent and corrupt leaders. We conspired with our perpetrators to enslaved us and maybe even the generations that would come after us, by our silence.
We are enslaved by poverty, illiteracy and corruption. And now, we are very angry at someone calling us a nation of slaves. Sad to say, this is typical of us; we are angry at our neighbor saying some nasty things about our families but we have condoned our own family members to do the very things our neighbors are telling us.
Sad to say, at the end of the day, maybe the unrepentant Tsao is just but right.
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