Gordon: I don’t care about the doomsayers, pessimists

WASHINGTON — Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon has lashed out at critics who deride him for proclaiming the Philippines as one of the safest countries in the world, saying he does not much care for doomsayers and pessimists.

"I don’t care about them. The figures show I am correct because more people are visiting the Philippines now. As tourism secretary, my job is to boost tourism to generate jobs for our people. What do they want me to say? Don’t visit the Philippines because we’re dangerous?" Gordon told The STAR on Wednesday when asked what he thought of his critics back home.

Gordon heads a delegation on a tour of North America to promote "Visit Philippines 2003."

He signed an agreement on Wednesday with the travel firm Military Historical Tours (MHT) to tap vast numbers of military veterans and their families in the United States and encourage them to take a sentimental journey back to former US bases in the Philippines where they may have served.

At a press conference after the signing ceremony, Gordon said his efforts to attract foreigners to visit the Philippines was in a way related to the government’s overall campaign to crush terrorism.

The key to fighting terrorism is to help the poor and provide employment opportunities for people, especially those living below the poverty line, and tourism creates jobs and plays a key role in promoting the local economy, he said.

He said if people were easily influenced by what they read in the newspapers about crime and violence be it in the Philippines, the United States or Japan, then nobody would travel overseas.

He mentioned the Sept. 11 terrorist plane attacks in New York and Washington and the sarin nerve gas attack in Japan in 1995 that killed 11 and injured more than 5,500 people, and said despite such tragedies life goes on in these countries.

‘A very safe country’

"The Philippines is a very safe country, safer than most countries in the world," he assured his audience.

The problem is that Filipinos are quick to blame but slow to fix things that are wrong, Gordon said. "It is an obsession of the Filipino sometimes to be so hard on our own country when something happens."

"We have become a blame-throwing society instead of a problem-solving society," he said, adding he took the job as tourism secretary "because one has to be optimistic, one has to believe in his fellowman, one has to believe in his country."

The North American market is the premier source of tourists for the Philippines, representing 25 percent of its total visitor arrivals in 2001.

In addition to attracting former US servicemen back to the Philippines, the Gordon delegation hopes to reach out to an estimated three million Filipino-Americans who can influence potential visitors to the country in 2003 and beyond.

Gordon said he expects at least 1.9 million tourists to visit the country this year. "After four years of decline, the figures are going up," he said.

MHT, founded in 1987 by former servicemen, specializes in military and historical tours of countries where US forces fought to enable veterans, their families and friends, students, history buffs and educators to revisit battlefields of past conflicts to give them a better understanding of events that shaped the history of the US and the world.

It is organizing a four-day reunion of veterans in Subic and Olongapo in October 2003 which it hopes will be the first of many to come.

MHT’s pool is the estimated 26 million military veterans in the United States.

"With the signing of this agreement, I feel very confident many Americans will come back," Gordon said.

"Tourism can provide an all hands’ support not a handout support for our people. It can help with the burden of providing jobs for them," he added.