Reconsider accepting Afghan refugees

Since President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte has accepted the PDP-Laban party’s nomination as vice presidential candidate in the 2022 election, Sen. Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go may soon be nominated as his runningmate.

Bong Go, Digong’s loyal friend and former personal assistant, can never refuse his erstwhile benefactor.

The Duterte-Duterte tandem will never happen, as Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio indicated she would not run for either president or vice president.

In a statement aired Wednesday on social media, Ms. Duterte-Carpio said her father and Go should “own up publicly their decision to run as a tandem.”

“If they can confirm it privately, then I do not see the reason why they cannot be candid about it to the public. They should simply present to the people what they can offer to our country and how they can help our fellow Filipinos. I respectfully advise them to stop talking about me and make me the reason for them running or not running,” said the presidential daughter.

Sara’s acerbic statement confirms reports (that I have said in this column) of the bad blood between Sara, on the one hand, and her father and Bong Go on the other.

Sara’s defiance of her father was evident during the time she was mayor of Davao City and Digong her vice mayor. She dismissed all of her father’s subordinates and appointed her own.

The belligerence between daughter and father has spilled over even after Digong became president. Sara could not go straight to her father without passing through Bong Go.

Go, however, shows deference to the presidential daughter, saying that he loves people close to his boss.

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The reported possible tandem of Bongbong Marcos and Inday Sara has been shelved.

Unimpeachable sources said Marcos and Duterte-Carpio were holding dialogues over their possible tandem.

The reports said the two of them could not decide who would run for president and for vice president.

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I admire Digong for putting up with his truculent daughter.

Perhaps Inday Sara should be reminded that without her father, she would be a nobody, just a mayor from a provincial city in Mindanao.

I understand how she feels about her father’s separation from her mother. Offspring are deeply hurt by their parents’ estrangement.

But she should not make public displays of disrespect towards her father.

She gives the impression that she’s a spoiled brat.

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Before the Duterte administration starts backing presidential spokesman Harry Roque’s pronouncement that the country was prepared to accept refugees from Afghanistan, it should be reminded of the saying, “Charity begins at home.”

The situation in the Philippines is so dire, we can’t afford to have Afghan refugees fleeing from the Taliban on our shores.

The refugees might bring in more COVID-19 carriers and variants, adding to our present woes in containing the highly contagious and deadly virus.

We can’t even afford to feed millions of our own people who are scrounging for food, so why should we take in more mouths to feed?

And how do we know if some Taliban operatives or members of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) have been planted among the refugees?

Muslim rebels from Sulu who swear allegiance to ISIS held the fort in Marawi City during the government troops’ siege on the city in 2017.

Some Filipino Muslims from Sulu fought in Afghanistan in support of the Taliban against Soviet troops in that country. The Filipino mujahidin in Afghanistan were composed of the core of the early Abu Sayyaf.

There is no telling if the Taliban might return the favor by fighting with Muslim rebels in Mindanao.

During the siege of Camp Abubakar in the Mindanao conflict in the year 2000, two Caucasian men wandered into a Philippine Marine outpost and asked the whereabouts of the rebel camp.

The Caucasians thought the Marine outpost was part of Camp Abubakar.

“Where are our comrades?” the two foreigners asked the marines.

Detained and interrogated, the two turned out to be Afghans who wanted to join the rebel forces.

The two Afghans were executed and buried, according to two marines who were there.

The information I got was firsthand, as the two marines were later assigned to my personal security detail.

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The Philippines has played host to foreign refugees who fled their countries to escape persecution.

The first refugees to come ashore were 1,200 European Jews fleeing from the Nazis during the time of President Manuel L. Quezon.

(That’s the reason why Filipinos visiting Israel are not required to have visas, as a token of gratitude for the country accepting the Jewish refugees from 1934 until 1940, when other countries turned them away).

The second batch of foreign refugees was composed of 6,000 White Russians from Shanghai in 1949, during the administration of President Elpidio Quirino. The Russian refugees escaped persecution by communists after Mao Tse Tung took over China.

The Vietnamese “boat people” (and other Indo-Chinese refugees) – numbering 400,000 – composed the third and biggest group of refugees to come ashore from 1975 to 1994 after the fall of South Vietnam to the communists, and events after it.

Yes, our government should be applauded for taking in refugees escaping persecution in their homelands, but we should take exception in the case of Afghan refugees.

During the Quezon and Quirino administrations, the country was awash with cash, and Filipinos had money flowing out of their ears.

During the South Vietnamese diaspora in 1975-1994, the country was supported by the United Nations through its high commissioner for refugees and the US government.

But the Duterte administration should reconsider accepting Afghan refugees for reasons I stated above.