The urgency of the situation shown by Thailand contrasted with the poor response of Filipino officials.
After the release of the first batch of captives of the Hamas terror group early Saturday, the whole nation had the pleasant surprise to know that included in the 24 released is Gelienor Jimmy Pacheco.
Pacheco was employed as a caretaker of Israeli Amitai Ben Zvi, who was among the 1,200 individuals killed in the brutal cross-border assault of terrorists from Gaza.
What followed was the shameless pretensions of local foreign service officials in their thunder-stealing efforts.
Pacheco was abducted during the Hamas attack in Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October, and is now a free man after 49 days in captivity.
Local officials commenting on the release of Pacheco thanked Qatar and even Iran for facilitating Pacheco’s release, but nothing was said about Thailand, who used deft diplomacy to secure the release of the initial 10 Thais and Pacheco.
About 23 Thai hostages were believed to be held by Hamas. It turned out that the Asian batch of 11 were released in a separate agreement mediated by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas.
The hostages were not covered by the truce deal with Israel that relates to women and children and thus not part of the 50 captives that Hamas agreed to turn over under the swap agreed under the truce deal with Israel.
Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson of the foreign ministry in Qatar, said a separate negotiation track was opened when Thailand’s foreign minister visited Qatar on 31 October, which led to a specific agreement with Hamas.
Qatar, a source of financing for Hamas, has led weeks of intense negotiations, coordinating with the US and Egypt, to reach an agreement for the freeing of the hostages.
Thailand also vigorously negotiated with Iran. Bangkok maintains friendly relations, and prominent members of Thailand’s Muslim minority made unofficial trips to Tehran to seek the captives’ freedom.
Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara constantly communicated with his Iranian counterpart, who served as Thailand’s intermediary with Hamas.
Some 30,000 Thais work in Israeli farms, and 32 were killed in the gruesome terror attack in southern Israel. A similar number of migrant Filipinos work mostly as caregivers in the Jewish State.
The urgency of the situation shown by Thailand contrasted with the poor response of Filipino officials.
A day before Pacheco’s batch was freed, the officials supposedly working to attend to the crisis were clueless about what transpired.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo Jose De Vega gave a lot of assumptions but without any specific information on the impending swap of captives between Israel and Hamas.
[T]he two missing Filipinos, they are still missing, we’re assuming they are hostages. Among the hostages, we don’t expect that they’ll be among the first batch (that will be released), De Vega said.
Had the officials coordinated with Thailand, they would have known that Pacheco was among the hostages.
De Vega was not even aware that Thailand and Qatar were holding a parallel negotiation that resulted in an agreement outside of the deal struck between the terror group and Israel.
The official assumed that Israel was doing the job assigned to him in working for the release of Pacheco.
The least that De Vega and other Filipino officials can do now is to acknowledge that Thailand’s work resulted in the release of Pacheco.
Worse, President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. was fed the wrong information that the release of the Filipino hostage was through the labor of Filipino officials.
I salute the work of the Philippine Foreign Service in securing (Pacheco’s) release, and once again thank the State of Qatar for their invaluable assistance in making Jimmy’s release possible, Marcos said after the Filipino’s release.
Instead of giving their collective back the undeserved pat, the officials should now work for the release of Noralyn Babadilla and not wait for other nations to do the job for them.
The clowns in the foreign service who glorify themselves at the expense of Filipino migrant workers should be booted out.
