Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez will push for the creation of a government entity that will take care of maintaining all the government’s properties overseas as he strongly opposed ideas of selling some of the country’s cultural heritage abroad.
Romualdez said at a recent virtual Kapihan sa Manila Bay that he will discuss his proposal with his cousin House Speaker Martin Romualdez. The ambassador first raised his proposal to then Senator Panfilo Lacson but the resolution was sidelined during the pandemic.
Under his proposal, the planned government corporation will not only maintain and take care of the government prime lots abroad, but will also ensure that these properties cannot be sold without the body’s approval and “not just by anyone who has some crazy ideas of just selling these properties just like that.”
“These are historical buildings,” said Romualdez, who is also a cousin of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
According to Romualdez, they even renovated and upgraded the Washington ambassador’s residence, a chancery in Washington D.C., to make it “representative of our country.”
“But some were even thinking of selling these properties,” he said adding it is “wrong” to dispose these cultural and prime assets.
For instance, he said, the Philippines sold its property, which was owned by the Government Service and Insurance System, in the Union Square in San Francisco. “That building is now worth billions,” he lamented.
Another Philippine government property that had been sold is a prime lot in London, just right in front of the Kensington Palace. He shared that the Philippine Ambassador to London at that time told him that from the Philippine building they could see Princess Diana come in and out of the Kensington Palace.
“It’s a prime property and now we’re renting in London. So these are things I think people should realize that it's not a question of just selling and selling properties for something. Once you sell it, it's finished,” he said.
The Philippine ambassador’s residence in DC alone has been a government property since 1946 and is placed under the National Heritage Commission. “It is now a landmark, which means it cannot be sold without the expressed approval of the executive branch,” he said.
The Philippine embassy in Washington, DC was a scene of many Filipino activities and of past Philippine presidents, he said.
“It is the highest crime for us to simply sell that just to raise money for what,” he said citing an attempt to sell the Philippine property in Japan. He pointed out that the government property in Tokyo was “paid for by Filipino blood, part of the reparations by the Japanese for World War II.”