June 20, 2025 l Manila Times
This capital city of British Columbia province lies on the southern tip of Vancouver Island near the US-Canada border. Geographically, it is equidistant to the city of Vancouver on the Canadian mainland and the American city of Port Angeles in Washington State.
Known for having the mildest climate of any Canadian city, Victoria has many parks and green spaces that have inspired its description as a garden city. Its British colonial heritage can be seen clearly in its architecture, especially the Parliament Buildings complex and the Fairmont Empress hotel facing the city’s Inner Harbour.
According to financial comparison site HelloSafe, Victoria is the second most attractive city in Canada for students next only to the country’s capital, Ottawa. HelloSafe is a Canadian-British insurance platform with headquarters in Toronto and London.
Shocking results of HelloSafe’s latest global survey on the most dangerous vacation nations in the world ranked the Philippines as the most unsafe country for travelers in 2025. The travel safety index is based on 35 different criteria under five categories: frequency of natural disasters, societal violence, involvement in internal or external armed conflict, health infrastructure and militarization.
Ranking second and third, respectively, were Colombia and Mexico, followed by India, Russia, Yemen, Indonesia, Somalia, Mozambique and Pakistan that rounded out the top 10. The survey was conducted before the current conflict between Israel and Iran that erupted last weekend.
The New York Post said the reason why the Philippines got the highest score in the survey was “high levels of violence within society.” Reference was made regarding recent crimes targeting foreign visitors as well as the presence of terrorist organizations such as the Abu Sayyaf Group and the communist New People’s Army (NPA).
Philippine government officials should consider this survey as a wake-up call due to its implications on our tourism industry in particular and the national economy in general. They must take steps to refute the results despite HelloSafe’s assurance that “this index is not intended to reflect the tourist attractiveness of a country, but rather a global index of security and safety based on the largest possible number of objective criteria.”
Another cautionary tale is the “unholy alliance” between House Speaker Martin Romualdez and the Makabayan bloc of party-list legislators in the lower chamber of Congress. Romualdez’s initial objective in recruiting the leftist group was to secure the speakership and marginalize the once-powerful Duterte bloc. A congressional probe unraveled the excesses of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called war on drugs and the abuse of emergency powers during the pandemic. But it also exposed the speaker’s ultimate goal to neutralize potential contenders in the 2028 presidential election.
The concessions granted to the Makabayan bloc seem to have taken their toll in terms of disrupting industrial peace in the transport and manufacturing sectors, alleged misuse of committee allocations for ideological training and using parliamentary platforms to influence national policy on education, agriculture and social welfare while eroding public trust in defense institutions sworn to protect the republic.
Since the start of the 21st century, legal leftist organizations have been mainstreamed after they participated in the 2001 EDSA Dos uprising that ousted then-president Joseph Estrada. In 2010, they supported presidential candidate Manuel Villar — who placed third behind Estrada and the eventual winner, Benigno Aquino III. Then in 2016, the Left actively campaigned for Duterte and was rewarded with several positions in his Cabinet, only to be removed unceremoniously after a bitter fallout.
Romualdez should learn from the lessons of the past and avoid miscalculating the risks of national security in exchange for political power. Miscalculations in assessing the potential dangers or negative consequences can lead to poor decision-making, increased vulnerability to harm and missed opportunities for positive outcomes. He must remember that the world’s longest ongoing communist insurgency is the NPA rebellion, which has been active since 1969.
Singaporean Defense Minister Chan Chun Sing aptly shared this view during the recent Shangri-La Dialogue 2025: “As competition in the security and economic domains increase, so has the need for guardrails and communication channels to reduce the risk of miscalculation.”
***The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of his office as well as FINEX. For comments, email nextgenmedia@gmail.com. Photo is from Pinterest.