Forgive me, but it is better to delay or even scrap a pre-announced agreement to be made than to scrap an already done deal. If the original excuse was good for anything, then why did we have to cancel the NBN-ZTE contract after we signed it and further embarrass China now? The truth is it was never a good enough reason. And, how stupid must Malacañang think Filipinos are if they can even dream that they can get away with the pitiful excuse?

For starters, the amount may be a large sum but it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of spare money the Chinese have. China is literally awash with cash and, having nothing better to do with its money, has become one of the leading global lenders. That is why the NBN funding was supposed to be in the form of a concessional loan in first place. The trade deficit alone of the United States with China reached a staggering US$763.6 billion in 2006. And, now we find Aling Gloria peddling the story that the Chinese government might take offense over a mere US329 million contract whose profit margins are definitely even less? That excuse is even harder to swallow than the results of the 2004 elections.

Since my ancestors come from China, I cannot be accused of making racial slurs when I say it was a poor excuse to priorize the feelings of the Chinese government over what is right, legal and moral. We do not want to offend the sensibilities of China when in fact, they have no minimum wage and a very low standard of living while we, on the other hand, have one of the highest wage rates set by law, which is why investors prefer to go there instead of here? Are we supposed to believe that this is that our official government policy now?

Wage differentials are so bad that Chinese manufacturers, for example, directly export over one billion pairs of shoes to the US alone annually while our own shoe factories in Marikina City are running at half capacity and make just over a hundred thousand pairs simply because there are not many buyers for our higher-priced shoes. And yet, our self-declared leader is willing to sell the country down the drain simply because she thinks we should not offend China? Does this also mean Aling Gloria approves of China's use of child laborers and penal conscripts to bolster its manufacturing competitiveness against countries like the Philippines in making things like cheap digital video disc players and foodstuffs?

This is also one of those reasons what, if we accept, we will never be able to clearly draw the line on where to stop. If the Americans, for example, want to deploy a hundred thousand of their troops in the Philippines simply because they have nothing better to do, do we also cave in because even more than the Chinese, we should be wary of our diplomatic relations with the Americans? If we do not want offend the Chinese, why not the Americans as well? Or the Russians, the French or the Talibans for that matter? Throw in al-Qaeda for good measure. Anyway, no one is asking: "What about the feelings and the welfare of the Filipino people?" Tayo lang naman ang naghihirap sa pinagagawa nila!

I hope the paid minions who get P500 for attending this admi-nistration's own EDSA Revolution anniversary rally today remember that question. The rest who of us who are asking are free to join the rally for the genuine EDSA spirit in Makati and Mendiola.