Ramos sticks to his guns in row with Singapore
Ramos sticks to his guns in row with Singapore
MANILA (Reuter): President Fidel Ramos has rowed back on his threat to break ties with Singapore and said he was studying "other options" to settle an explosive row over the hanging of a Filipina maid in that island state.
Analysts said Singapore's execution of Flor Contemplacion, a mother of four, had driven Ramos into a corner and predicted heads would roll to save the presidency from serious damage.
Ramos told a television talk show on Saturday evening a diplomatic rupture with Manila's ally in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would be a drastic move.
"Severing of relations is a serious solution but there are other options and some of them we are now undertaking," he said. "We are trying, through our common interests with Singapore, to find a fine solution."
The diplomatic crisis erupted after Singapore hanged Contemplacion on March 17 for double murder despite Ramos' appeals to stay her execution.
Faced with a national outrage over the execution, Ramos on March 22 downgraded ties with Singapore by recalling Manila's ambassador and threatened to break relations completely if an inquiry he ordered showed Contemplacion was unjustly hanged.
He also threatened to fire officials found negligent in the handling of the maid's case and repeated that threat on Saturday when asked about a public clamor for him to sack Foreign Secretary Roberto Romulo and Labor Secretary Nieves Confesor.
Ramos said the two ministers knew they served at his pleasure and added: "I am ready to dismiss (officials) depending on the findings of the (inquiry) commission."
Contemplacion, given a hero's burial in her hometown last week, was hanged for the 1991 killing of a Filipina maid and a three-year-old Singaporean boy.
She confessed to the murders but many Filipinos believed she was tortured and accused Romulo and Confessor of not doing enough to protect her legal rights.
Testimony on Thursday by a Filipino forensic expert, who exhumed the remains of murdered maid Delia Maga, that it was unlikely that Contemplacion killed her and that it was possible the murders were committed by a man bolstered public opinion that Singapore hanged an innocent woman.
Ramos proposed an autopsy by a third party, possibly Interpol, to resolve the conflicting autopsy reports by Filipino and Singaporean experts.
Other officials suggest asking the help of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"The buck stops here. In the ultimate analysis, I am fully responsible for the lives and welfare of Ms Delia Maga and Ms Flor Contemplacion," Romulo told the inquiry on Friday.
Political commentator Teodoro Benigno said Ramos had no other choice but to satisfy the public cry for blood if he wanted to save the presidency from permanent damage and his party from defeat in next month's legislative and local polls.
"He has found himself in the middle of a nutcracker he probably never imagined," Benigno said by telephone. "He can get out of this by chopping off heads. If he does not do that, his political survival is at stake."