Addressing the issue on Child Soldiers

This seminar made me relate to my fellow Muslims in Mindanao, because whenever im in that place, the place where my grandfather is living I did saw a children who is under 18 holding weapons, the feeling when I saw children like that makes me think that there is more people needing education for a good future than I saw here in manila. knowing the stories about these child soldiers breaks my heart. I really pity them because they are not able to experience the same privileges that I experience like education, good health or what not and with that I have come to realize how fortunate I to have this kind of life am. I am looking forward to the end of this issue and I hope that all of us would be able to do some action about it. Colonel Dickson P. Hermoso is currently the Chief of Public Affairs Division, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City. He had special assignments and positions that earned him honors and distinctions concerning conflict management and resolutions. He has an actual involvement and vast experiences in peace- building and conflict management in Luzon and Mindanao.

Hostage Crisis

While the actions of the man are clearly misguided, the overall handling is really bad. The hostage taker already released hostages early in the day, mostly elderly and children. He asked for food and gas for the bus’s air conditioning. He gave a 3pm deadline but the deadline passed without incident. It should have been properly cordoned off and people moved back. In failure of this, a bystander was shot by a stray bullet. Pure luck the bystander lives. Then at the end of the event after the hostage taker was shot, bystanders stormed the bus area and it was chaos. I am pretty sure this hindered the retrieval operations and movement of authorities. I hope the victims and their families recover fully from this horrible ordeal, which I believe could have been prevented had everyone involved thought about their actions first than recklessly ruining all efforts for a peaceful surrender of the hostage taker.
Like many Filipinos, I'm also completely disappointed and very angry with the fact that the crisis was totally mismanaged by our government and a lot of innocent lives were wasted. Sadly, the incompetency and inefficiency of our government shone brightest in this incidence, which led me to feel that we again lack the needed leadership to move forward. In hindsight, all the crisis-management team needed was a good leader someone level-headed, patient, peace-loving, determined, brave and smart enough to take hold of the situation and resolve it. That leader, frustratingly, I believe we still sorely lack. To the people of Hong Kong, know that the whole Philippines is deeply mourning with you on this great loss and tragedy and we share the anger over the appalling professional standards and the lack of strategic planning over the crisis. However, please spare our fellow citizens who are peacefully working and staying in your country. It is not them who should bear the consequences of the actions of one crazy man and the mistakes of our government.

Public Diplomacy

We had a seminar about public diplomacy and for me it was a little funny for me, anyway, the first speaker start the blog with an introduction and brief story about his experiences, and the favorite fact that he said that if your going to another country you should never let your country down, because whenever I'm out of the country I keep forgetting about our country, seriously because sometimes I'm embarrass. Tourism is a good chance to participate in big trade shows like the one in London World Federal Market that in tourism it is a good venue to discuss the value of the products and negotiate product's rates. These people want to make money profit- minded and so we want to make sure that they can earn here in the Philippines. The speaker also told us that DOT receives the smallest budget allocation from the government. Even though that is the situation, he said that their exhibits are popular or pinipilahan, especially their free massage booth. Back then I thought DOT just deals with advertisement but no they also have diverse roles that they play. And lastly when our professor tell us a story about “have you ever been to..?” a lot of people in our country do not see other places of our own, but if you’re going to realize something, I mean, for me it is beautiful to look other places in other country because you already have the Philippines.

Group Activity

My group was the one who discussed the bilateral relationship of the Republic of the Philippines with South Korea. The fact, South Korea is currently a major trading partner of the Philippines. The cooperation between the Philippines and South Korea in the political, security, economic,development fields is expected to continue as both parties strive to further strengthen relations. I thought that we will have discussions but we had a group assignment.

Foreign Policy

Our topic is to strengthen our foreign policy and our national interest. For me, if we try to strengthen our foreign policy we would have been the best country, for me. Because, I think that we don’t have the cooperation, this is need for all the projects and some normal things we’ve doing with people, full cooperation in our country is needed to be improve. These organization just guiding us for our improvement for the better of others, but come to think of it, if we don’t have cooperation, do you think we’re going to arrive of the perfect conclusion? I don’t think so, I see our government should be the first who would pursue that full cooperation so that the followers or our people in our country will support because they can see the effort and changes for the better. The organization helps us to connect and also combine with other countries because it also can strengthen our countries and fewer problems.

Philippine foreign relation

Our discussion is about foreign relations. A country’s diplomacy, foreign policy and foreign relations are all about threats and opportunities assessing threats and dealing with threats, recognizing opportunities and seizing opportunities. What are the threats against the Philippines today? By now, it should be clear that the threat of invasion is not one of them. One could even argue that it never has been since the Philippines became an independent country. One could go further and contend that a misconception of threat as an invasion by massive armies from across the seas distorted the Philippines’ foreign policy. It placed the Philippines under suspicion from other newly-independent nations, including some of its neighbors. And it allowed the problem of the American bases to persist and fester.

PNOY asean foundation

In the Bulwagang Apolinario Mabini, President Noynoy Aquino gave his speech about our relation with ASEAN. Some of the concrete steps the President mentioned are the country’s commitment to abide by the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, the support to the ASEAN Connectivity project and further cultural exchanges with its ASEAN neighbors. “Today, the ASEAN Charter is more of an aspiration rather than a reality. My administration will do its part in the long process of creating a more binding commitment to our mutual economic and political interests,” Mr. Aquino said in his speech. I knew that his speech would be good after all. Philippines under his administration will fulfill its international commitments without undermining and forsaking its national interests. I commend how he was able to be proud with his country by stating how the Philippines is a country that is attractive to investments and that how we are able to harmonize our national interest with our international responsibilities. It will help us to improve our country. In his speech before I notice that he didn’t mention some important things for our country, but it done well as it is. I hope that he can carry the problems that our country will encounter.