Philippine Vice President and Foreign Secretary Teofisto Guingona, Jr., as you must have read by now, was humiliated by his Mexican hosts last week at the UN development summit in Monterrey, Mexico, when he wasn’t allowed to attend a luncheon for heads of state.

Although admittedly not the head of state of the Philippines, Guingona was nevertheless representing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and should have been granted all the courtesies and privileges that are given to all heads of state.

Guingona and the Department of Foreign Affairs have now demanded an official apology from the Mexican government to himself and all the Philippine people. The Mexican ambassador in Manila has handed in a written apology, but the vice president wants more.

In a bizarre twist, Guingona found himself in the strange position of being equally offended as Cuba’s Fidel Castro was with his Mexican hosts. Cuban officials claimed Castro was snubbed at the summit and asked by his Mexican hosts to leave the room after delivering his speech for fear his presence might make US President George W. Bush uncomfortable! Of course, Castro left in a huff after giving his speech, slagging off the Mexicans.

On Tuesday, Cuba’s Communist Party’s newspaper Granma lashed out at Mexico’s mistreatment of Castro, claiming that Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda was to blame. As that paper pointed out, Castañeda was once a leftwing militant who received communist-sponsored military training to support guerrilla movements in Latin America. As many other former leftists have done, Castañeda has now swung far to the right, causing Granma and many other communists to call him a "turncoat".

I have a tendency to agree with Granma’s accusations. Castañeda is known to be a difficult man, a man with outspoken and hawkish opinions who does not tend to be diplomatic. He has created tiffs before with other countries and personalities, so it’s not surprising if he concocted this latest brouhaha with Cuba’s Castro. That the Philippines was caught up in this was probably just coincidental.

In the rush to genuflect to their Great Northern Neighbor, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Castañeda were more than happy to step on a few toes in the process, especially if they were Castro’s toes. Castañeda is just one of many leaders, both American and foreign, who have been swept up in this Bush triumphalism, a cult in which American actions and its leader can never be questioned or challenged in any way. To do so is considered disloyal in Bushie circles.

It is an unfortunate fact that after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon the Bush administration is not open to listening to dissenting views when it comes to US foreign policy. The most obvious example of this is the Bush administration’s intent on bombing Iraq, even though it doesn’t have the support of any other nation, not even of it’s closest ally Britain.

Mexico and the Philippines may have had three centuries of galleon trade between Acapulco and Manila, but the sad fact remains that today the Philippines does not mean much to Mexico. As Armando Doronila pointed out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer yesterday, 90 percent of Mexico’s trade is with the United States. Whether or not Guingona gets the apology he wants, relations between the two countries will survive this misunderstanding and continue on. The snub of Monterrey will be forgotten and Manila will return to being the hazy historical memory to most Mexicans that it has been for a long time.

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A Filipino nurse in the Eastern Province e-mailed me this week to complain about the bad service he’s been encountering with the Saudi Telephone Co.

The nurse, let’s call him Miguel, told me that he has a Family Jawal, meaning he can only call eight pre-selected numbers. He told me he mostly uses his mobile to text his family back in the Philippines. A subscriber for 10 months now, Miguel last week received a bill for SR236, which covered two months of service. He paid the bill only to receive a text-message warning a few days later from STC that he was reaching his credit limit of SR500 and should pay immediately to avoid being cut off. After repeated calls to the customer service "902" number didn’t yield any help, he approached an STC office. They were also of no help. As Miguel pointed out to me, he is not the only one to encounter such maddening lack of concern by STC.

Everyone it seems has an STC horror story to share nowadays. I myself found I had to wait a ridiculous three hours recently before I could speak to a customer service representative at an STC office in Jeddah recently. When I went to the office in Bagdadiah recently one morning, I received a number. Mine was "146" and they were only serving number 77 at the time. Instead of waiting forever, I left and went home for an hour-and-a-half. Upon returning, I faced another hour-and-half of waiting, luckily I had brought a book with me to read while I waited.

It is obvious that the explosion in mobile phone subscriptions is why STC offices are always mobbed and waits are long to speak to a customer service representative. This is all the more reason that STC should roll out its prepaid mobile SIM cards that it has been promising for years now to launch. The latest setback was this week when STC’s prepaid mobile SIM cards failed to materialize on the market on March 27 as promised by an Al-Yaum newspaper article. STC now says they are coming soon, but won’t say what "soon" exactly means.

If poorer countries such as the Philippines and India have had prepaid mobile phone services for years now, why can’t STC get its act together? You’d think that STC was a world-class telecommunications company if you just visited their slick website, but the truth is uglier. With some of the highest phone rates in the world, STC is providing bad service to most of its customers while reaping huge profit margins.

What Saudi Arabia needs for phone services to improve is real competition. The government should allow private companies to also offer phone services, that way customers would have a choice when phoning, rates would come down, and STC would be forced to improve its act or face losing customers.

The Kingdom claims to be a champion of the free market, but so many times both Saudi and expatriarte consumers get stuck with overpriced and shoddy services just because they have no other choice. No wonder they won’t let Saudi Arabia join the World Trade Organization!

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So Manila has made membership with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) mandatory for OFWs?

As reported by Arab News, members are entitled to a death benefit, a funeral grant, disability, medical reimbursement, coverage of the government’s supposed reintegration program and loan assistance. For those who need it, they get assistance with repatriation, legal, educational and "onsite services."

Fine. But what seems unfair, as some individuals complained about in the same Arab News report a few days ago, is the sneaky manner in which the OWWA and Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) implemented this collection scheme. The least that OWWA and POEA officials could have done was to announce through the media that membership — which entails a fee of $25 renewable every year for those whose contracts last for a year or less and every two years for those two years or more contracts — is now a requirement for getting an Overseas Employment Certificate or OEC. The absence of an OEC bars an OFW from leaving the country for work abroad.

What our Filipino colleague who wrote the article did not mention was that he had witnessed OFWs who questioned the sneaky implementation of the fee being insulted by OWWA and POEA personnel. What a way of welcoming the so-called "new heroes" of the Philippine economy?

And what’s this announcement that OFWs still have to file their income tax information returns (ITIR) for the years 1998 to 2000 if they have not done so yet?

For a backgrounder, the Philippine government enacted a law exempting OFWs from paying tax on revenue earned abroad, effective taxable year 1998. However, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) still required them to file their ITIRs, with penalties for late filing. Because of protests by OFWs, this filing requirement was lifted by the BIR last year on orders of President Gloria Arroyo. This act on the part of Ms. Arroyo was commendable but now the BIR is trying to take it back by insisting on the filing of ITIRs for the past years.

If the BIR could let those big time tax-evading crooks at home get away by granting them amnesty, why can’t it do the same to the "new heroes" who have been exempted by law from paying taxes anyway?

Aren’t these two acts by Manila a case of squeezing blood out of OFWs?

And why are the OFW advocacy groups, such as those campaigning vigorously for the passage of the absentee voting bill, not raising a hoot?

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Comments or questions? Email me at: [email protected]

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