Señeres blames Noy for not saving OFW from death in Saudi

MANILA, Philippines - Rep. Roy Señeres Sr. of OFW party-list blamed President Aquino for not lifting a finger to save overseas Filipino worker Joselito Zapanta from death in Saudi Arabia.

In a statement yesterday, Señeres said Aquino could have appealed to the Saudi king to grant Zapata clemency.

“I sympathize with the family of overseas Filipino worker Joselito Zapanta… As president of a country that has outlawed the death penalty and considers OFWs as the new heroes of the republic, he could have called the King of Saudi Arabia to request him to grant Zapanta reprieve,” he said.

Señeres said Aquino could have also invited the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Malacañang and requested him to convey to the Saudi king his request for Zapanta’s reprieve.

“By this simple gesture alone, it was very likely that King Sheikh Salman would have readily said yes, paid the blood money himself to the Sudanese family and ordered the release of Zapanta. Didn’t Aquino know that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a monarchy and the word of the ruler is law? This is no big deal for King Salman if Aquino only tried,” he said.

“The problem with our President is he doesn’t have compassion for OFWs. He did not even mention OFWs in his sixth State of the Nation Address. Instead of siding with OFWs victimized by the bullet scam at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, he said it was not true and the issue was just sensationalized by the media,” he said in Filipino.

“Instead of replacing Jose Angel Aquino Honrado as general manager of NAIA, he just kept quiet. Eventually, the National Bureau of Investigation confirmed that there is really a bullet scam in NAIA,” he added.

Zapanta, 35, was convicted on April 13, 2010 of murdering and robbing his Sudanese landlord in Saudi Arabia in 2009. He went to Saudi Arabia in 2007 to work as a tile setter.

 Meanwhile, OFW advocate Susan Ople urged the government to give a certain percentage of the blood money to Zapanta’s two children and ailing mother.

“I appeal to our government to provide much needed assistance to the family, especially now that Joselito is gone,” Ople said in a statement.

She also urged the government to review existing policy on blood money, considering that there are 90 Filipinos on death row all over the world and some of them also need blood money.

“In Joselito’s case, the government was able to raise P23 million which is now in a bank account opened by the Philippine embassy for the aggrieved Sudanese family. Since that amount had been rejected by the Sudanese widow thus leading to Joselito’s execution, would the government be amenable to donating some amount to the grieving Filipino family?” she added.

Ople also recommended the formation of a special unit to handle death penalty and blood money cases involving OFWs.

She said a more cohesive and transparent mechanism and policy are needed because there are still several pending and urgent blood money cases involving OFWs in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

The party-list group Anakpawis also debunked yesterday the claim of the government that it exhausted all efforts to save Zapanta from execution, and lamented Aquino’s failure to fund the OFW Legal Assistance Fund (LAF).

“The Aquino government did not do enough to stop the execution of Joselito Zapanta,” Anakpawis said in a statement.

“What is worse is that the government, through the Philippine embassy in Saudi Arabia, also failed to monitor the exact serving of the sentence. It was a reflection that embassy officials in KSA are nothing but a bunch of incompetent and lazy free loaders,” Anakpawis Rep. Fernando Hicap added.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines expressed sadness over the death of Zapanta.

Bataan Bishop Ruperto Santos, chairman of the CBCP’s Episcopal Commission on Migrants and Itinerant People, said Zapanta’s death is a reminder of the precarious situation faced by Filipinos when they work abroad.

“His death shows to us once again the travails and perils faced by our OFWs. This has always been a great pastoral challenge for us: to help our OFWs be better prepared and equipped to deal with new cultures and way of life in a foreign land,” he added. – Rudy Santos, Evelyn Macairan, Mayen Jaymalin, Ding Cervantes