Ramos asks Goh to delay Manila trip after hanging
Ramos asks Goh to delay Manila trip after hanging
MANILA (Agencies): President Fidel Ramos said yesterday he had convinced Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong to postpone his scheduled official visit to the Philippines after Singapore hanged a Filipina maid, despite Manila's appeals for a stay of execution.
The Filipino leader told a press forum that he "felt bad" about Singapore President Ong Teng Cheong's decision to reject his two personal appeals for a delay in the execution of convicted double murderer Flor Contemplacion, 42, which was carried out last Friday.
"There is also a little consideration and courtesy among heads of governments and heads of state," Ramos said, but added that he understood his Singapore counterpart's situation.
The hanging of the mother of four, who many Filipinos believe was not given the chance to prove her innocence, touched off a storm of protests across the Philippines which forced many Singaporeans to leave the country in fear of their lives.
Manila and Singapore subsequently announced that Goh's scheduled April 12-14 visit would be put off to a date to be confirmed later.
Ramos said in his letter to Goh, made public yesterday, that "in the light of recent events I was constrained to suggest such a course of action" because proceeding with the visit would have been "difficult."
Contemplacion was convicted last year of killing a fellow Filipina maid and a Singapore toddler in 1991. Manila had sought a re-opening of the case to accommodate the testimony of three Filipinas who insisted that the woman was innocent.
Singapore says he confessed to the crimes and did not change her plea despite several opportunities for her to do so.
Ramos said "the economic benefits" of Manila's large overseas work force, officially estimated at up to five million, "are much more than the social costs."
He said they remitted US$2.9 billion of their earnings to their home country through the formal banking system in 1994, but that their total earnings could well approach $8 billion.
He said Filipino diplomats abroad "must be made aware of the need to protect and uphold the dignity of our Filipino workers."
The Philippine ambassador to Singapore, Alice Ramos, no relation to the president, and the envoys to six other countries where there are large concentrations of Filipino domestics have been summoned home by the foreign ministry to testify at two official probes on the hanging.
One of them was a fact-finding body created by President Ramos, the other by a senate body.
Meanwhile, a straw poll of Singaporeans found little sympathy for the angry Philippine reaction to the hanging of a Filipina maid here last week, the Straits Times said yesterday.
The newspaper said most of the 90 people interviewed said protests and threats against Singaporeans in the Philippines over the hanging on Friday "were plainly based on half-truths, lies and misplaced sympathy".