Embassies, consulates should start redefining roles

As Shirley Mae lay in her coffin muted talks circulate inside -and outside- the small viewing room of the funeral home.
In a separate corner just before one enters the viewing area, tables were laid with platters full of Filipino snacks and sweets — untouched.
For a woman without a single relative in Toronto, or in Canada for that matter, the number of people at the funeral home in Scarborough was impressive. Mostly speaking in sing-song Ilongo, a few of them were friends of the deceased while most were like me, “nakiramay”.
Her boyfriend, in black suit and shaved head, was at the front pew looking distraught. None of Shirley’s friends wanted to go near him.
Like many Filipina professionals, Shirley Mae Lao came to Canada direct from the Philippines via the LCP, or the Live-In Caregiver Program. Until recently with changes in government policies, it is believed to be the shorter and the easier way to be admitted to Canada. It is also the less glamorous and perhaps most perilous. But that’s another story.
Shirley who hails from Lapaz, Iloilo had been three years in Canada and based on the LCP protocol had already completed her required two-year-contract and would have had received her status as permanent resident. Death has overcome all her dreams.
On March 26 Shirley Mae tragically fell from the 11th floor of an apartment building on Lawrence Avenue West where she lived with her boyfriend Faisal Zeon. He declared Shirley’s fall a suicide. Talks swirled in the funeral home, like: the two were in a fight on that fatal night, Faisal recently married another woman, who joined him and Shirley to live in the same apartment, Shirley Mae had always to consult someone prior to making decisions, her’s is a controlled life, etc . , etc… Rumours?
Rumours or not, they are very disturbing. Toronto Police is still investigating.
It is in situations like this that the Philippine Consulate is duty bound to assist and protect Filipino citizens as if it is the Government itself. Her rights as Filipino citizen must be protected. It must make sure that justice is served in the case of Shirley Mae Lao. If the Manila Government tried to move heaven and earth in the case of the three convicted drug mules in China, there is no reason why the same government does not move heaven and earth to have justice served to an OFW like Shirley who sent remittances to the Philippines regularly.
Those drug mules had a choice of trafficking drugs or not. They knew all along that what they were doing was a crime. They were not caught in Manila but were caught in China where punishment for such a crime is death. Killing people is intrinsically wrong but that is the legal penalty in China and so was it in the Philippines years ago. On the one hand, how many lives were ruined from the use of drugs that these mules helped supply? Call me cruel, call me insensitive but they got what they deserved.
Instead of leading the nation “on bended knees” pleading for the three drug mules to be spared from death, the government should have instead hired the best lawyers who understand Chinese laws to defend them in Chinese courts. As it was we really do not know for certain whether they were vigorously defended and justly judged by Chinese authorities.
I am for what some members of Philippine Congress are proposing. Congressman Jack Enrile, for example, calls on the DFA to consider “converting embassies and consulates worldwide as OFW defense centers” because of the huge number of Filipinos who are working abroad it could not be avoided that either some become victims or run afoul with the law. Everyday, the number of cases involving OFWs abroad increases and the DFA should be best equipped to deal with ever increasing demands for its services.
Another proposal is for the government to create a separate department for OFW concerns. Both proposals could be put together if not complement each other. Times are changing and the Philippine government, particularly the DFA, must start redefining its functions overseas to serve the ever increasing population of Filipinos who are working abroad.
Beyond diplomacy and enhancing economic ties, consulates and embassies must expand its functions if they are to look after the welfare of global Filipinos in the context of countries undergoing political upheavals like the Middle East and Libya.
Since a huge percentage of the Philippines’ income comes from OFW remittances that it calls them heroes it should then put its money where its mouth is. If does not, how then could it serve the interest of Filipinos like Shirley Mae? If it does not, then all the praise and plaudit accorded to OFWs are mere pandering, better accorded to your lolong panot.