Home sweet home

I am receiving a lot of e-mail from Filipinos living abroad, and they are apparently as concerned as we are, over the happenings in their land of birth. Their day-by-day monitoring, through Internet, is most welcome because it is an indication that, despite their being thousands of miles away from home, they still care about their motherland.

In my book, Walking Through the Pathways of Life, co-pies of which are now being sold at all National Book Store branches in Metro Manila, and at Binan in Laguna, Imus and Bacoor in Cavite, Subic Freeport, and the three NBS branches at Ayala Center, SM and Mango Avenue in Cebu City, I included an essay about some of our country's unsung heroes -- the Overseas Contract Workers -- who, as their plane approached the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, cheered and then wept as they sang the Philippine National Anthem.

Here is that essay entitled Home Sweet Home, which I wrote more than a decade ago:

A mushy but true story happened in a recent London-Manila flight of the Philippine Airlines. Some 100 Filipino overseas workers boarded the Manila-bound PAL flight in Bahrain.

From the way they talked in whispers and acted with timidity, it was obvious that it was the first time they had travelled outside their country. They had been recruited two years ago to build roads and dig ditches in the land of the petrodollar. They had labored hard for that mighty dollar, and they were coming home at last.

When the pilot announced that they were flying over Philippine territory, the workers pressed their faces against the windows and strained to see the land they had left two years ago. Soon, they broke into a cheer, stomped their feet, even as some cursed the foreign land where they had toiled like slaves day and night.

They could not stop shouting with joy. Some started to cry. Even the PAL flight attendants could not help shedding a tear or two with the laborers. Then, someone started to sing the Philippine National Anthem. Soon, all the 100 Filipino laborers were singing along.

When they alighted from the plane at the Manila International Airport, some of the workers knelt and kissed the ground. They were home at last -- and it was only then that they realized that there is no place like home. Two years ago, they had left their country in quest of greener pastures. They were soon to find out that no amount of riches in the world can buy the happiness that is in one's own country.

In every airline flight that leaves Manila are hundreds of immigrants lured by the mighty dollar. They flee their country with dreams of driving a Rolls Royce or gallivanting in Disneyland or hitting the jackpot in Las Vegas.

Do they ever reach halfway through their dreams? Their gnarled hands and numbed hearts are mute testimony to the rugged road and rutted life that almost every member of the minority in America has to go through.

Some Filipinos are doing well in America. The vast majority though are nameless, faceless people who are drifting along with the tide of uncertainty and insecurity. But they won't come back to the Philippines. They are too proud to admit that their venture to fantasyland has turned into a nightmare. Perhaps, they will come back only when they become too old to suffer the wretched life of senior citizens in America.

Chess player Rogelio Antonio and his cohorts wasted a lot of saliva, and spewed out so much venom, in their effort to vilify the Philippine Chess Federation. They charged the PCF of ignorance of revenue laws, threatened to file a still-unnamed suit against the PCF, demanded the revamp of the PCF, called PCF officials bozos. All this they did because the Bureau of Internal Revenue had told the PCF to act as the BIR withholding agent.

Antonio et al. went to town, using sports media to ventilate what has turned out to be baseless charges. Now that the BIR has officially interpreted the tax law on prize winnings, adverse to the instant legal opinion of Antonio et al., articulated in their hastily-called press conference, and who suddenly surfaced as tax experts, what happens next? Will the term bozo be eliminated from their vocabulary? Or will they look at the mirror, and see that word plastered on that mirror?

Personally, I had wanted the chess players to get tax-free prizes, if the law allows it. And when the brouhaha over the withheld tax on Antonio's P1 million prize surfaced in the sports pages, I immediately called up BIR Commissioner Dakila Fonacier to get the real score. I was told that there is, indeed, a tax, and the tax is not ten percent, as originally withheld by PCF Secretary-General De Castro, but 20 percent.

Antonio et al., with their advisers, must have done a lot of research, not only to get the full amount of P1 million, but also to stain the image of PCF. Which must have been why, during their presscon, they demanded the PCF's revamp and charged it of ignorance of tax laws. Unfortunately for Antonio and his cohorts, the table has been turned against them.

I am worried over the continuing war in sports, with the sports pages as witting or unwitting arena of war. These turf wars are not going to do anything good at all for sports. These will foment division and ill will. Worse, it will discourage well-meaning individuals and entities from lending a helping hand to sports development.

Look at what Far East Bank and Trust Company tried to do, to help boost Philippine chess, at the grassroots level. For more than half a decade, FEBTC budgeted millions of pesos, to implement the Far East Bank regional chess championships and, eventually, the Far East Bank National and International Open. The socially-oriented project went on and on -- until FEBTC officials saw politics creeping into the local chess landscape. Slowly but surely, FEBTC wiggled out of the nationwide grassroots projects, mainly because of the politics that eventually stymied the growth of Philippine chess. Sayang.

PULSEBEAT: Sanyo Denki, a Japanese global company, is putting up a subsidiary at the Subic Freeport, with an investment of US$21 million. The subsidiary will manufacture and export precision motors for computer cooling systems... The Ateneo Graduate School of Business has set up an extension campus at the Subic Freeport. The Ateneo offers training programs and modules for company employees and graduate students... Jose Fernando of San Fernando, Pampanga, seems to have a valid complaint against bus company Viva-Aladdin. When he and other passengers were on their way to Manila aboard Viva-Aladdin, they found out that the air-conditioning unit was not functioning. Their request for a refund of their fare, which is for aircon buses, was refused by the driver and conductor. "Viva-Alladin is fast in implementing fare hikes, but cannot grant the logical and reasonable demands of passengers," the complainant said... This guy who calls himself Mang Waldo must be really mad. He asked me for the address of the New People's Army. He said he wants to ask the NPA to go after some arrogant and inconsiderate security guards at UST, who gave him a lot of hassle when he brought his son to the UST High School.

Art A. Borjal's e-mail address: <[email protected]>