ATTY. FRANK MALILONG

Either he has not heard the joke or he is joking. The joke is that Cebu City does not have a Chinatown because the whole city is Chinatown. Councilor Jerry Guardo is now saying that we should have one and that taxpayers should spend for its creation. That could be another joke. Our former barangay captain (who is much better than the current one) obviously does not look at his Chinatown as a local government unit but as a community. LGUs are created by law. A community, on the other hand, evolves. Has he checked if Bacolod and Davao, which he cited as examples of cities that have a Chinatown, have ordinances that created them?

President Duterte wants the Filipino workers in Kuwait, all 260,000 of them, to come home. It seems, he said, that the Kuwaiti government does not like their “style of working.”

Actually, it’s our government’s style of rescuing OFWs that Kuwait hates. The last (and first?) time we did it, we did not coordinate with the host country because in our view, it had to be a covert operation. Unfortunately, an embassy official apparently did not know what covert meant and gloated about it on the web. When the Kuwaitis learned about it, they were not exactly ecstatic.

Duterte has been exceptionally courteous in dealing with Kuwait. The usual expletives were noticeably absent when he announced his plan to repatriate the OFWs in Kuwait. Instead, he said that he was grateful to the Kuwaiti government and that he did not bear a grudge or hatred against them.

What a welcome change.

Either he has not heard the joke or he is joking. The joke is that Cebu City does not have a Chinatown because the whole city is Chinatown. Councilor Jerry Guardo is now saying that we should have one and that taxpayers should spend for its creation. That could be another joke.

Our former barangay captain (who is much better than the current one) obviously does not look at his Chinatown as a local government unit but as a community. LGUs are created by law. A community, on the other hand, evolves. Has he checked if Bacolod and Davao, which he cited as examples of cities that have a Chinatown, have ordinances that created them?

He says his Chinatown is going to be in the downtown area where the businesses are owned by the Chinese. If the community has already evolved, why the need for an ordinance establishing it? Acknowledgment and recognition?

What goes with that recognition? That Filipinos who have no Chinese ancestry cannot do business in the community? That the only establishments that will be allowed to operate there are those that sell textile or cook Chinese food?

The proposal may be well-meaning but instead of honoring the Filipino-Chinese, it actually demeans them. They are no longer just shopkeepers, textile retailers, cooks and fortune tellers toiling in Magallanes, Manalili and Plaridel. The new generation is composed of professionals -- lawyers, doctors, accountants and engineers, to name a few -- and business executives and entrepreneurs who own and run almost all the big businesses in the country.

Besides, officially designating a specific place as Chinatown could be divisive and unmake the strides towards assimilating the Filipino-Chinese with the mainstream of the Filipino society.

If Guardo wants to honor the Chinese or, in his own words, give thanks for their significant contribution to the economy, he should find other ways that will not alienate them from the native-born Cebuanos. For starters, he can help facilitate the issuance of the City Hall document that would enable the opening of the Chinese heritage museum at the old Gotiaoco building.

A subway will jack up fare by five to 10 folds. Many people cannot afford this on a regular basis, especially students. We will make sure we use a system such as monorail that is perfect for Cebu tourism. PHILTRAM’S JOSE GUARDO, ON THE FIRM’S PROPOSED MONORAIL PROJECT FOR CEBU