(Eagle News) — Malacañang on Monday, April 16, said it was only exercising its sovereignty when it blocked the entry of a European socialist party politician for violation of immigration laws, and ordered him deported.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said that Giacomo Filibeck, who was stopped at the immigration counter of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport in Lapu-Lapu on Sunday, April 15, had, after all, been blacklisted for violating the law provision that prohibits tourists staying in the country from “engaging in partisan political activities.”
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said that an immigration order also specifies that “foreign tourists in the Philippines are enjoined to observe the limitation on the exercise of their political rights during their stay in the Philippines.”
Filibeck, deputy secretary general of the Party of European Socialists, “was not supposed to do that because, being a tourist, he does not enjoy the rights and privileges of a Philippine citizen, particularly the exercise of political rights which are exclusively reserved to Filipinos,” Morente said.
According to Guevarra, “…the government has the right to refuse entry to those who have committed these illegal acts in the past.”
“So we are not obliged to allow anyone into our territory if we do not want them in our territory. Unfortunately, the socialist leader was one of those that we determine as a person that we don’t want to be in our territory…That’s the exercise of sovereignty,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said.
Akbayan, the sister party of PES that invited the foreigner to the Philippines to attend a congress, condemned the government’s move.
“This is a gag order to all and sundry that you cannot look into the human rights situation in the Philippines..,” Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin said.
The other foreign delegates who were to attend the Akbayan congress, however, were allowed entry by the government. (With a report from AFP)
