I missed the action on 46th Street

By Alex P. Vidal

“Embarrassment and awkward situations are not foreign things to me.”—Paul Rudd

I WAS 13 minutes by walk away from the Aretsky’s Patroon restaurant in East Manhattan, where a small group of Filipino American protesters, led by Bayan USA, stormed October 29 evening to oppose Harry Roque’s nomination to the UN International Law Commission (ILC), a body of experts tasked with developing and codifying international law.

I sorely missed the tumult at Aretsky’s.

The restaurant is on East 46^th Street; I was staying on East 51^st Street.

We are near the United Nations (UN) Headquarters.

On normal days, I passed by the restaurant on my way for a long walk up to the East 81^st Street to visit my favorite electronics store in the Upper East.

New York City was hosting the UN International Law Week.

Since Roque is a lawyer, he was probably in New York City as a private person; he can’t be using the taxpayers’ money for the trip if the occasion had nothing to do with his job as President Rodrigo Duterte’s chief apologist.

We expect our media colleagues in the Philippines to verify this matter.

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A Facebook “friend” since before joining the Duterte cabinet, Roque was attending a private reception, and the placards-toting protesters called the presidential spokesperson out for his role in the Duterte administration’s brutal war against drugs, which is now under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

They called him a “war criminal” and “hypocrite” who “failed to uphold international law” for being Mr. Duterte’s “right-hand man.”

If I were Roque, I would ignore the protesters since, as a public official paid by the taxpayers, I had nothing to gain but would have everything to lose if I added fuel to the conflagration.

But Roque fired back in a statement and lambasted his tormentors who, he said, sought “to deliberately cause harm to innocent people in their attempt to disrupt a private reception we were tendering for representatives of several foreign missions in New York.”

The protesters had belied Roque’s allegations of harm committed on innocent people during the sunset brouhaha.

Roque was terribly in an awkward position.

It was certainly a big embarrassment on his part, especially if he can’t justify his presence in New York City at the expense of the Filipino taxpayers.

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WE are the only city in the world where the next mayor “has been (almost) determined” even before the start of election day.

I’m referring to the election in New York City on November 2, which also includes elections for city council, public advocate, district attorney and other ballot measures.

Since New York City has been known to be a largely Democratic metropolis, Democrat Eric Adams, a Brooklyn borough president, former state legislator and retired New York City Police Department captain, has been penciled to wrap up the mayoral contest against Republican Curtis Sliwa, who was in the hospital as of this writing after being hit by a cab (his supporters swore it wasn’t a political gimmick).

Adams, 61, had earlier defeated Democratic primary candidates in the city’s first-ever ranked-choice election, and is favored to win the general election.

If elected, Adams will be the city’s second-ever Black mayor.

A radio personality and founder of the controversial Guardian Angels volunteer subway patrol, Sliwa faces difficult odds of winning as the Republican candidate in a city where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly eight to one.

Almost every Filipino American in our community said they would vote for Adams, except our friend, Luis Lomuntad, 64, former President Trump’s most loyal supporter in the Filipino community.

“Magaling yang si Sliwa. Sana siya ang manalo (Sliwa is good. I hope he will win),” Luis told me several nights earlier in Elmhurst.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two dailies in Iloilo—Ed)