Thanks to the Abu Sayyaf terrorists, the RP passport is a liability

It’s good that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has undergone a change of heart. Earlier in her term she had asserted, to our dismay, that she would not order any executions during her presidency. Now, in an abrupt but timely turn-around, she has pledged to order the immediate execution of 95 convicted kidnappers as soon as their appeals have been rejected and their death penalties affirmed by the Supreme Court.

Appalled by the wave of kidnappings that has plagued and embarrassed her Administration, the Chief Executive has finally realized that fear of punishment is the greatest – in fact, the only – deterrent to crime. If the law has no teeth, the gangsters and hoodlums will defy it, confident it has no bite. Nobody has been executed for kidnapping, alas, since the death penalty was reinstated.

There are, to be sure, the usual goody-goodies and wimps who insist that capital punishment is no deterrent to crime – and bleat that, at times, an innocent person might be executed. Nonsense. As soon as something happens to a member of their families, they sing a different tune.

I also applaud the idea of GMA offering a P100-million reward or bounty for the exposé of kidnap gangs. There’s nothing like a reward to arouse civic-mindedness in citizens. That’s how the original World Trade Center "bomber", the Kuwait-born agent of Osama bin Laden who also trained the Abu Sayyaf and set up terrorist cells in Metro Manila – Ramzi Youssuf – was tracked down and arrested in Pakistan. A "friend" turned him for the $1 million reward offered by the United States.

Judas Iscariot may have been the bad guy in the Bible, but he set a trend. The informer is now one of the good guys in the fight against crime and terrorism.

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With Todos los Santos approaching, sad to say, the extortion activities of corrupt officials in the Land Transportation Office (LTO) have stepped up. Last week we exposed this racket in this corner, but nothing happened. From what I hear, Transportation and Communications Secretary Pantaleon "Bebot" Alvarez officially wrote his LTO chairman, former RAM General Edgardo Abenina, about the persistent reports, but Abenina keeps on defending his men and snubbing his boss, DOTC Secretary Alvarez’s queries.

C’mon, Bebot. This situation is where they separate the men from the boys. He must put his foot down.

The truth is that certain military men in the LTO have been demanding a weekly payola of P10,000 to P20,000 per bus company, depending on the bus company’s fleet size. Some LTO agents have been apprehending and impounding passenger buses on the flimsiest of excuses, such as broken tail-lights. I agree that bus operators should pay a fine for broken or defective tail-lights, but to impound a bus for days for such a minor infraction, thus putting it out of commission, is not a law enforcement. If this keeps up, there will be a serious shortage of provincial buses to transport those who will rush to go home to their provinces during the All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day weekend.

Around five years ago, LTO, Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and Traffic Management Group (TMG) operatives went on a rampage, apprehending and impounding buses on October 30 and 31, a day or two before the All Saints Day "rush." With November 1 approaching, the bus operators naturally had to accede to the P5,000 per bus "ransom" the traffic enforcers demanded. Mind you, when a bus that has a 60-passenger-seating capacity is impounded, particularly at a period when the volume of commuter traffic is heavy, it is the frenzied and frustrated commuters who suffer for lack of transportation.

As happens every year, the volume of commuters will be unusually heavy. If the rascals at LTO are not stopped, the President – already afflicted by many woes – will be presented with another headache. Isn’t Gloria Labandera for the toiling masa?

There go those Abu Sayyaf rascals again, this time threatening to "behead" hostaged American missionaries, Martin and Gracia Burnham, if the search and rescue operations by the military were not stopped. What could the President and Commander-in-Chief say in reply? Whatever she said would be the "wrong" answer for the Abus.

Instead of waffling again, like the previous Erap Administration did in the case of the Sipadan Island hostages, GMA and her troops must press on. There’s no appeasing the Abus, who style themselves "holy warriors" but engage in unholy practices. The poor Burnhams and the Filipino captives survive at their whim and caprice, anyway.

The Abu Sayyaf’s continuing rampage and the knowledge that Metro Manila and Mindanao are an integral part of bin Laden’s international terrorist network have cast worldwide suspicion on our Philippine Passport. To other countries, particularly in the West, the bearer of an RP Passport or travel document could be an Islamic terrorist.

In fact, when Indonesia’s new President Megawati Sukarnoputri visited Manila the other month, her most earnest request to GMA was for her to prevent Moro and "Arab Afghan" troublemakers from smuggling weapons and ammunition to the Indonesian radicals and Islamic fundamentalists in her country.

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In April last year, for example, my secretary Tess, coming from Paris, accompanied by her San Francisco-based brother, spent a week in Israel touring the holy places. When she was leaving, Israeli immigration, customs and intelligence officials took her and other Filipinos aside for more intense interrogation than usual. She was told to render a day-by-day accounting of her activities, including a recital of names of any persons she talked to during her week-long stay. Indeed, the "security" at Ben Gurion Airport was so tight and so strict that she vowed never to go to Israel again.

On the other hand, how can you blame the Israelis? They are a nation under siege from all sides, the choice target of terrorists and suicide bombers outside of the United States.

The queue leading up to the El-Al counter at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport was attacked a few years ago by automatic-weapons-wielding terrorists, who killed several would-be passengers and others in the vicinity. However, El-Al, the Israeli air carrier, has turned out to be the "safest" airline in a world of fear. Tough, hawk-eyed air marshals are always on board, and I have no doubt the pilots and stewardesses have Uzis and Galil automatic rifles concealed within easy reach.

As a matter of fact, Israel was the only country where I saw pretty girls (off-duty probably from their own military units) going on dates with an Uzi tucked under their arms, along with their handbags. Who knows, there might even have been a grenade carried for good measure in the same compartment as lipstick and compact?

On the other hand, despite "the weight of the dead souls" (to borrow a favorite phrase from Gogol), Israel and the Palestinian "authority" must find a way to make peace with each other. This is no easy thing. Egypt’s heroic President and former General Anwar Sadat was assassinated for having signed a "peace" agreement with Israel’s Menachim Begin, who had himself once led Irgun, the Jewish terrorist gang which blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.

Israel’s brave statesman, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by an Israel zealot in Tel Aviv (some believe the killer managed to get close because he belonged to Shin Bet or the security services).

Appearing on worldwide television in London last Monday, along with Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, former terrorist Yasser Arafat, in a bold and unprecedented statement, denounced bin Laden’s brand of terrorism, the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, declared that he believed bin Laden’s support of a "Palestinian State" was spurious and that he could not endorse bin Laden’s call for an Islamic jihad on America and the West.

Asked to define what was evil in terrorism, Arafat replied that it is the reprehensible act of attacking and killing "innocent people". Those were heartening words coming from the militant who had founded Fatah and carried on a long and vicious armed struggle against Israel and its Western "allies". In the past decade, Arafat has "re-invented" himself as a peace-monger. If he has been reluctant to crack down more resolutely on Hamas and other violent groups, this is, no doubt, owing to the fact that he could not restrain his angry constituents from joining the second Intifada in their fury against Israel. With reason, he fears being overthrown himself if he goes too fast and too far.

But now, apparently, Arafat realizes that this is the moment to wave the olive branch, hoping to get firm US and British support for the creation, at last, of an independent Palestinian State. He even paid tribute to his "comrade in peace", the murdered Yitzhak Rabin.

That old Yasser knows when the time is ripe. All depends, though, on whether the equally embittered Israelis, and their hawkish Prime Minister, the stubborn ex-General Ariel Sharon, agree with him. Even under pressure from America and its other Western "friends", this doesn’t seem bloody likely. However, miracles can happen.

Wasn’t it the founding father, the late Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, the man who set up the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and led the fight for survival which turned back the assault of seven Arab armies in 1948, who said it? He had asserted that "to believe in Israel, you have to believe in miracles." Will Yahweh grant them one now?