ShareThisMANILA – Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile appealed on Thursday, specially to the media, not to expound on television and newspapers the travel advisories issued against the Philippines by some countries, including the United States, with regards to the worldwide threats of terrorism.
Senator Enrile
”What do you get by publicizing those type of stories except to get mileage for your company? You cannot counter those kinds of advisories, they are world-wide,” Enrile said during the weekly Kapihan sa Senado media forum.
”We blame ourselves for scaring our people unnecessarily. Of course those countries are advising their people not to travel to countries like the Philippines because they think that the Philippines is a soft country that does not have the capacity to enforce its security laws. But we, for one reason or another, we immediately expound on those advisories on television, on radio, on print that there is danger in the Philippines. So we scare people in coming here. We are chastising ourselves, at the worst, punishing ourselves,” he added.
Enrile said the best thing that the country could do to counter the travel advisories issued by the U.S., the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada is to be cautious and not duly alarm the people.
”The best thing is for us to be circumspect and not unduly alarm our people, and other nations. Afterwards, nothing will happen but we have done the damage to the country,” Enrile said.
A former defense secretary, Enrile believed that, in the first place, the terrorists have no reason to come to the Philippines to do their terroristic acts.
”Who suicide bombers will come here to destroy us? For what reason? They do not need to threaten us, we are already threatened. From the MILF alone, we were already threatened. We should think, are we for our country or are we really against it?,” Enrile said.
However, Enrile advised the Filipino people to assume all the time that there is a threat and that the government leaders will always be ready to anticipate problems and provide the mechanisms to solve the problems.
”We cannot take a very complacent position in this world. Even you, you must always assume that there is a lurking danger when you get out of your house. Even inside the house, the possibility of death is there. You cannot just assume that it will not happen,” Enrile said.
The five countries issued the travel advisories against the Philippines following the aborted terror attacks in the United States.
But the police and military officials in the country downplayed the alerts although they intensified police visibility specially in the airports, shopping malls and places of worship.