Not so fast!

Nobel Peace Prize? Not so fast! Many Nobel laureates didn’t deserve the supposedly prestigious award.

Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was given the award in 1994.

The award was for Arafat’s supposed efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review Online described him as the “father of modern terrorism.”

“About him, while there is much to say, there is little to glean. He was a thug. One of the most cunning of all time for sure, but quite simply a ruthless, thoroughly corrupt, will-to-power thug,” said McCarthy of Arafat.

Arafat was not a native Palestinian. He was an Egyptian whose real name was Muhammad Abdel Rahman Rauf al-Qudwa al Husseini.

McCarthy implied that Arafat was a coward, saying, “He tended to sit out warfare with Israel whenever conventional warfare was involved.”

So, giving an award to Arafat was like honoring Osama Bin Laden, who engineered the suicide attack on the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed almost 3,000 innocent people.

Nobel Peace Prize, my eye!

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, once considered a non-violent advocate, is not as peaceful as she was portrayed by western media in the past.

Suu Kyi, who held the position equivalent to that of a prime minister, has not stopped the mass killings, rapes and burning of villages in Rakhine State.

The pillage and mayhem in Rakhine State forced 421,000 Rohingya Muslims into neighboring Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi was a Nobel laureate in 1991 for her “non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.”

Giving an award to Suu Kyi was like giving an award to Germany’s Adolf Hitler, who ordered the annihilation of millions of Jews during the Second World War.

Nobel Peace Prize, my foot!

Another Nobel laureate was Israel’s Menachem Begin who ordered the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, four years after receiving the international accolade along with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat for the two countries’ peace accord. Sadat was later assassinated in 1981 by Egyptian soldiers during a parade.
Nobel Peace Prize, my goodness!

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shared the prize in 1973 with North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho for their peace efforts to end the Vietnam War.

Kissinger was the architect of the “Christmas Bombing of Hanoi” where US planes dropped 20,000 tons of explosives. More than 1,000 civilians died in the bombing.

In fairness to Kissinger, he tried to return the award, but the Nobel Committee rejected the offer.

Nobel Peace Prize, my heavens!

In 1992, the “prestigious” award was given to Rigoberta Menchu, a feminist, activist and politician in Guatemala.

The reason for the award was her book, “I, Rigoberta Menchu,” where she told of her struggle for social justice.

She was found lying in her book. She changed details of her life to fit her narrative.

Menchu was a leader of the URNG, a Marxist guerrilla movement that is active in Guatemala and Venezuela.

Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Menchu is like giving an award to Maria Ressa, a Filipino-American who heads Rappler, one of the country’s news websites.

Ressa received the award recently for supposedly being persecuted by the Duterte administration.

What the Nobel Committee didn’t know was that she was convicted of libel by a Manila court because of charges brought against her by a wealthy Filipino-Chinese businessman, Wilfredo Keng.

The Duterte government didn’t have anything to do with the libel complaint and her conviction for it.

Nobel Peace Prize to Ressa, the nerve!

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The Office of the Ombudsman’s decision to drop the graft complaint against my siblings Wanda T. Teo and Ben Tulfo was a heavy load off our shoulders – mine, Erwin’s and Raffy’s.

Now it can be told: The Tulfo siblings agonized over the criminal case that led to my sister’s resignation as secretary of tourism.

We were crucified in public as if we were thieves.

Even Erwin, Raffy and I, who had nothing to do with the case, were not spared by bashers on social media.

The case stemmed from the signing of a P160-million contract between the Department of Tourism (DOT) and People’s Television (PTV) Channel 4.

The contract was for the airing of DOT commercials on PTV-4, where my brother Ben had a show.

What went wrong was that most of the commercials were aired on Ben’s “Pronto” public service show, viewed by many as “conflict of interest.”

Wanda did not know that most of the commercials would go to Ben’s show when she signed the contract. She didn’t even know Ben had a show on that channel.

It was Wanda’s undoing that she hired incompetent staff that would have told her something was amiss in the contract.

Another mistake Wanda made was consulting with an ambulance chaser who announced publicly that she and Ben would return the money. They never said that.

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Don’t look now but Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go may yet come from behind and emerge victorious in the vice presidential race because of the Malasakit Centers nationwide.

“Malasakit” is a Tagalog word which means sympathy and empathy.

Millions of poor patients have benefited from the centers.

There are 142 Malasakit Centers in government hospitals nationwide, 77 of which are in Luzon, 29 in the Visayas and 36 in Mindanao.

Malasakit Centers, meant to address gaps in health care, give assistance to poor patients by having them apply for free medicines and hospitalization from government charity agencies such as the Department of Health (DOH), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilhHealth) and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).

All the above-named government agencies have booths in public hospitals with Malasakit Centers.

The Malasakit Center is Bong Go’s brainchild.