Undiplomatic

What were they thinking?

The Philippine ambassador to Kuwait led what were basically raids on private homes to extract Filipina domestic workers who reported they were abused. They forgot that foreign missions in any country do not have police powers. Their extraterritoriality extends only to the physical boundaries of their respective embassies.

The raids, conducted independently of the Kuwaiti police, constituted trespassing and kidnapping. No self-respecting sovereign nation will take that sitting down. Four Filipinos who participated in the raids are now jailed in Kuwait.

These were really bright boys, those involved in these raids. They diligently took videos of their activities. Then they downloaded those videos on social media.

They really made sure the evidence against them was bulletproof.

Now they reap the whirlwind.

Diffident

We might be sympathetic with our diplomats in Kuwait.

True, they probably thought they were performing a humanitarian act. But even the best-intentioned acts must be performed within the scaffolding of law and protocol. Diplomats should know this more than the uninitiated.

To be sure, the Philippine embassy in Kuwait was aching to redeem itself. For months, our migrant workers in this country have complained about the diffidence of the embassy staff. Several workers were cruelly abused and found little help from the embassy.

One worker was recently found stuffed in a freezer. Her body was found only after two years.

The Labor secretary had to travel to Kuwait to hector our diplomats assigned there. Kuwait is one of those countries were the work of the diplomatic staff is almost entirely about looking after the welfare of our workers deployed there.

Kuwait is one of those places where foreign workers receive the least protection. Something should have been done about this long ago.

But only lately is a memorandum of agreement being discussed between our two countries. This happened only after President Duterte imposed a deployment ban on workers seeking employment in Kuwait. Now that agreement is in jeopardy because our diplomats in Kuwait were apparently overcompensating for past negligence.

Expelled

By a unanimous vote, the Kuwaiti parliament declared Philippine ambassador to Kuwait Renato Villa persona non grata. He was ordered expelled from the country.

This is a serious gesture. Veteran diplomat Apolinario Lozada, in an interview, says he does not recall anyone holding ambassadorial rank expelled from a country on short notice. The last incident he could recall was when the Japanese ambassador to Washington was expelled after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

This is, I suppose, unprecedented. I recall of no Filipino ambassador having been expelled from the country he was assigned to.

Only after our ambassador was expelled did we realize Kuwait had already recalled its ambassador to Manila. Someone at the DFA was not paying enough attention to this rapidly unfolding crisis.

Without a Philippine ambassador in Kuwait and without a Kuwaiti ambassador in Manila, any effective diplomatic response to this deteriorating situation is seriously impaired. Let us hope the DFA has assembled a more competent crisis management team to deal with this before things spiral out of control.

Regional

Foreign Secretary Alan Cayetano did not sound too perturbed when he held a press briefing last Thursday. On the contrary, he tried to sound hopeful about Philippine-Kuwaiti relations going forward.

We hope he realizes the severity of the problem at hand. The raids constitute more than a slight on the Kuwaitis. It is a slap on the face.

The problem extends beyond our bilateral relations. The Arab states are closely knit. Their rulers have close kinship relationship with each other. The relationship between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are closest.

Should our relationship with Kuwait deteriorate because of this stupid incident, our relationships with the other neighboring countries will be imperiled. This will have grave consequences for our economy.

Needless to say, with our weak capacity to export anything, we need the repatriated incomes of our heroic army of migrant workers to offset our imports. Failing to do that, our peso will simply fall through the floor.

Stymied

Our foreign policy is stymied in the Middle East. Our main problem is beggars cannot be choosers.

The rapidly growing economies of the oil-rich region are, no doubt, dependent on hosting a large migrant labor force. In turn, we are dependent on the remittances of our exported workers.

But this is a region where labor protection is relatively underdeveloped. Everyday our government receives thousands of complaints about abusive employers, unpaid wages and unsafe working conditions.

Our domestic workers are the most vulnerable. They have no fixed hours. The live with their employers and eat only what they are fed. In the more isolated towns, our workers do not have any support system. In the desert, the distances between towns are long.   

The governments in this region have not been too enthusiastic about improving the working conditions of guest workers or legislating labor protection. Whatever gains we have achieved in reducing the vulnerability of our workers have been due to diplomatic work.

We were on the brink of signing a comprehensive memorandum of understanding with Kuwait that would dramatically improve conditions for our workers. There were reports that President Duterte no less was preparing to go to Kuwait to sign this agreement.

The agreement would have set a benchmark for the treatment of migrant workers. We could have used that to negotiate with the other Arab host countries, particularly conservative Saudi Arabia.

Now, that agreement appears to be in serious jeopardy.