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I agree with our fellow columnist Julius Fortuna that some of our
senators need a crash course on diplomatic practices so that they
would not be putting their foot in their mouth every time they take
umbrage against foreign diplomats Manila.
Julius and I, along with Malaya’s Ellen
Tordesillas, used to cover the diplomatic beat during the late
eighties and early nineties, I for the Manila Standard and Julius
for the defunct Daily Globe.
It was during that time when an Arab diplomat,
the representative of the then putative Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) in Manila, was accused of raping his Filipino
maid at his residence at Dasmarinas Village, Makati City.
The rape became a celebrated case. Julius and I
knew the diplomat very well. He was tall, handsome, urbane and
articulate and he could have easily courted and won the heart of a
Filipina damsel. But he raped his maid, and the maid filed charges
against him first at the police headquarters and later at the
Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
The Arab diplomat refused to submit to any
police investigation, claiming diplomatic immunity. So, the DFA had
to take the cudgels for the rape victim. Ambassador George Reyes,
who was at that time the head of the DFA’s Middle East Desk,
recommended to then Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus that the
diplomat be declared persona non grata. President Cory Aquino
approved the recommendation and the Arab diplomat was expelled. He
slipped out of the country quietly and had never been heard again.
Why am I narrating all these?
Because a few weeks ago, I was appalled when
opposition Sen. Jamby Madrigal, at the height of her passionate
attack against First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, urged the Senate
to summon some officials of the Chinese embassy in Manila.
With much fanfare, Madrigal waved during the
Senate probe on the NBN-ZTE deal, a photocopy of an official
communication with a handwritten note that reads “Copy for FG.”
Making sure that the camera would zoom in on the
initials, Madrigal triumphantly announced that indeed, because of
the initials, the First Gentleman or FG was involved in the
anomalous transaction and that there was “collusion” between
embassy officials and the Arroyo government.
Madrigal then urged the Senate to issue
subpoenas to Chinese embassy officials and to declare them persona
non grata if they refuse to appear in the hearings.
The communication turned out to be a letter from
former National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director
general Romulo Neri to then Chinese Ambassador Li Jinjun regarding
the national broadband network and cyber education projects.
Neri’s letter, dated March 29, 2007, was
addressed to Li Jinjun through Liang Wentao, embassy commercial and
economic counselor, and was received by a certain Chang Lian Yuan,
who noted on the right portion of the letter “copy for FG 1/F,”
the initials of a NEDA official in charge of public investment
sector.
Ignorance in action
Goethe once said that “there is nothing more
frightful than ignorance in action.”
What Senator Madrigal did was a clear example of
“ignorance in action.” It is bad enough that some senators have
made grandstanding, as their main preoccupation these days, what is
worse is that they flaunt their ignorance in the “august” halls
of the Senate.
What appalled me more was that nobody among the
senators present during the hearing, some of them brilliant lawyers,
reminded the senator that to summon Chinese embassy officials to
testify would be a breach of diplomatic protocol. Somebody should
have told her that we are now living in modern times and not in the
medieval age when barbarians, not civilized people, ruled the earth.
First, members of the diplomatic community
cannot be arrested or summoned by any agency of the host country.
This privilege is guaranteed under the 1961 Vienna Convention on
Diplomatic Practices.
Second, only the President, through the
recommendation of the DFA, and not the Senate, could declare any
diplomat persona non grata.
Diplomatic immunity
According to the Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia,
diplomatic immunity is a form of legal immunity held among
governments to ensure that diplomats are given safe passage and are
not subject to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country’s
laws.
Under the Vienna accord, diplomats stationed in
the host country cannot be arrested, subpoenaed or, in many cases,
taxed. Their embassies cannot be entered or searched. Even in case
of fire, firefighters cannot enter the embassy premises without the
permission of embassy officials.
The host government can, however, expel a
foreign diplomat. This is done by declaring a diplomat persona non
grata, which was what happened to that PLO representative in Manila
who raped his maid.
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