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For the past 17 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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Arroyo to attend Security Council; preside over summit
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NEW YORK --- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will have a tight schedule on her three-day trip to New York where she will preside over the meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
The President is scheduled to leave on September 11 and arrive in New York on the 13th. She is expected to attend to the ASEAN-UN Summit and the meeting of leaders on the inter-faith and intercultural agenda.
The following day, Mrs. Arroyo will preside over the UN Security Council summit and then attend the interactive roundtable.
On September 15 the President will be at the high-level world summit, during which the heads of state will review the progress of the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Sonia Brady said the attending 170 leaders will be divided into four groups, with the Philippines joining Southeast Asian and Asian countries.
In between these meetings, Brady said the President will meet with the Filipino community, investors and chief executive officers of big companies like Philip Morris, Convergys and Dell. She will also attend discussions with the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Among President Arroyo’s schedule with the Filipino community are the opening of an art exhibit at the Philippine Center and the inauguration of the church for Filipinos in New York.
The President will open the “Working President” Photo Exhibit on September 12 (Monday), at 6:30 pm at the Philippine Center Lobby at 556 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
She will also attend the blessing and enshrinement of San Lorenzo Ruiz on September 15 (Thursday), at 8:30 am in the chapel of San Lorenzo Ruiz at 378 Broome Street (between Mulberry and Mott Sts), in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
The President will have bilateral talks with the heads of China and Malaysia.
Brady said the President will also chair the interfaith dialogue, which will discuss “approaches” to the problem of global terrorism.
The schedule of the President, Brady said, was so tight that a meeting with the President’s husband, Mike Arroyo, was not even squeezed in her itinerary.
The President is expected to return on September 17.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Vice President Noli de Castro will be designated caretaker President.
Ermita appealed to the opposition for a moratorium while the President is in New York so as not to put her in a bad light.
On the local front, Mrs. Arroyo, attending a convention of religious leaders in Cebu, said she is again holding out the olive branch to her detractors for a principled partnership.
The President appealed for the help of religious leaders in reconciling the country and devoting the energy to fight poverty and not one another.
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Washington, D.C. --- While there were no Filipino-Americans who died when Hurricane “Katrina” struck the US Gulf Coast last week, floods forced them to flee to evacuation centers-a typical occurrence in typhoon-prone Philippines.
In a televised discussion over government-run NBN 4 in Manila, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was informed by Philippine Ambassador to the United States Albert del Rosario that based on embassy reports, there were no Filipino casualties in the hurricane-battered states of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo, who joined the President on the TV program, said 30 Filipino teachers who recently arrived in New Orleans were “safe and sound” in evacuation centers.
Romulo said Filipino diplomats in the United States put up a disaster center in Houston, Texas, as well as evacuation centers in Dallas and San Antonio, both also in Texas.
Philippine Consul General Marciano Paynor, who is with the Los Angeles consulate, told Arroyo that Fil-Ams based in Houston had opened their homes to other Fil-Ams who had fled flood-devastated Louisiana.
“They’re taking in relatives and friends of friends,” Paynor told the President in an overseas call aired live over NBN 4.
Many Fil-Ams who were evacuated from New Orleans went to nearby Baton Rouge or fled to Houston, Cielo Martinez, Philippine honorary consul general in New Orleans, said in an overseas call.
She said other Fil-Ams there stayed in their homes, waiting for the floodwaters to ebb which could happen in between two to three months when pumps in New Orleans, now 80 percent under water, were expected to run again.
Martinez told the President that her house was under seven-to-10 feet of water.
Due to mandatory evacuation, the Philippine Honorary Consulate General in New Orleans is temporarily closed until further notice.
The Consulate General in Chicago advised Filipino nationals in the affected areas should follow the advice of local authorities. Filipino nationals in other parts of the United States were also advised to avoid unnecessary travel to the affected areas at this time.
The Chicago Consulate General has posted on its website the names of Filipino nationals Mississippi and Louisiana who have comtacted the office and wished wish to let families and friends know they are safe after the storm.
The list can be seen at chicagopcg@sbcglobal.net.
Ms Arroyo extended her sympathies and said: “It’s not only the Philippines that takes time to recover, the most powerful country, the United States, would take two to three months to recover fully,” she said in Filipino.
The President also said events showed that “disasters do not choose rich, poor or developing nations.”
“Let us all help each other,” Arroyo said, thanking Martinez and the Fil-Ams who had opened up their homes to fellow Fil-Ams, reiterating appeals to Filipinos in the United States to help the flood victims.
Romulo told Arroyo that Filipino diplomats had received $20,000 in donations, half of which had come from Filipino businesswoman Loida Nicolas-Lewis. The other half came from diplomats and personnel of the Philippine Embassy in the United States.
The foreign secretary appealed to donors to make their checks payable to the American Red Cross, which would receive them from the Filipino diplomats.
“[The Philippine posts] are appealing for donations in cash or in kind, in medicine or in blood,” Romulo said, adding that the donors’ names and their donations would be posted on the embassy website.
National Disaster Coordinating Council Executive Director Glen Rabonsa told the President that the country was prepared to send a 25-member humanitarian team to the United States within the week.
“Even if we’re not as rich as the US, we have the chance to help and we’re doing it,” Ms Arroyo said in the televised program. “This is not only about helping alleviate pain and anguish but about two nations sharing the sacrifices for freedom and human dignity over more than a century.”
The President noted that the United States had always come to the aid of the Philippines in times of disaster and “we shall always be first [to help] a long-standing ally.”
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MANILA --- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo survived attempts by the opposition to impeach her as the House of Representatives dismissed all three complaints filed against her on September 6.
After a marathon overnight session, the House voted 158-51, with six abstentions to uphold a justice committee report that recommended the dismissal of the impeachment cases that include alleged election fraud and graft and corruption.
At exactly 3:24 p.m., the House declared the adoption of Justice Committee Report 1012 following deliberations that began at 4 p.m. Monday. Actual voting however began at about 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, September 6.
However, opposition leaders immediately warned that they might challenge the legality of the vote at the Supreme Court, as demonstrators gathered in protest of the House decision.
Ilocos Sur Rep. Salacnib Baterina, vice chairman of the justice committee, identified those who abstained as Quezon City Rep. Vincent Crisologo, Maguindanao Rep. Baesendig Dilangalen, Manila Rep. Jaime Lopez, Iloilo Rep. Ferjenel Biron, Iloilo Rep. Janette Garin, and Misamis Oriental Rep. Augusto Baculio.
Except for Crisologo and Dilangalen, the four other congressmen are members of the majority bloc.
Lopez is the chairman of the House justice committee on banks while Crisologo and Dilangalen are members of the pro-opposition Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (Coalition of United Filipinos, KNP), which carried the late Fernando Poe Jr. as its presidential candidate in the 2004 election.
Among the pro-administration lawmakers who voted against the committee report were Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin, Bataan Rep. Antonino Roman, Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas, and PL-Buhay party-list Rep. Christian Señeres.
Locsin said he voted against the dismissal of the complaint not because he wanted to impeach the President.
“Yet the rules of impeachment mandate that the legal effect of a no vote to the committee report is to vote to impeach the President, which I cannot in all honesty do,” he said.
“But my refusal to sign the report for its failure to present the plenary with a competent complaint already compels my decision today [September 6],” he said.
“I am sorry, but impeachment remains too important a remedy for grave official abuses to leave wholly undefended, either from the mistakes of those who have rashly undertaken it in this instance, and from those who have so casually dismissed the same. I vote no,” Locsin said.
After the House vote, Makati Representative Ronaldo Zamora, the pro-impeachment lead prosecutor, said he was “distressed by the result of the voting.”
House Minority Floor Leader Francis Escudero said that although the pro-impeachment team was “saddened by the event,” they would accept the decision of the House.
In a statement released to media, Speaker Jose de Venecia called for a “period of healing and reconciliation.”
De Venecia, a key Arroyo ally, called on the people to put behind a “divisive issue that had threatened to stir more political unrest and stall economic growth.
He also urged his colleagues to draw a line under the crisis.
“While our own President Arroyo has many faults, the fact remains that she is still our best option in the country,” De Venecia said.
He said sending the impeachment case to the Senate, for a full trial would have been a “terrible mistake” which would have brought the legislature to a standstill and further divided the country.
A crowd of around 5,000 led by former president Corazon Aquino, Susan Roces and two defeated candidates from last year’s disputed presidential election marched on the House chanting slogans for Arroyo to step down. (MNS)
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MANILA --- Malacañang is set to send a 25-member team to the United States to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.
“President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has authorized the sending of a 25-member team to the United States to assist victims of hurricane Katrina,” Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said in a statement posted on the government website www.ops.gov.ph.
Bunye said the first 10 members of the team, consisting of doctors, nurses and sanitary engineers are scheduled to leave early next week.
The President has expressed sympathies to hundreds of American victims.
“We express our profound sympathies to the American people in the midst of this sudden tragedy,” Mrs. Arroyo said.
She added: “America has never hesitated to come to the aid of distressed Filipinos in times of disaster and we also feel the anguish of death and destruction of a friend and ally across the Pacific.”
The President said the Filipinos and the Philippine government wish the American people a speedy recovery from the calamity.
More than 78,000 people were in emergency shelters and tens of thousands of homes and businesses were beyond repair, US President George W. Bush said after flying over the scene of the disaster.
Katrina hit Lousiana and Mississipi and the rest of the US Gulf Coast with 140 mph (225 kph) winds and a 30-foot (9-meter) wall of water that inundated miles of coastline, trapping people in attics and on rooftops. (MNS)
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