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Let’s talk about
unification
ONE has to commend the intentions of Evelyn
Zaragoza toward what she refers as ‘Unification’.
The latest meeting held on Sunday, October 22, at
Lidcombe’s Sizzling Fillo restaurant provided a profile
of the section of the Filipino community in Sydney
with a stake in the unification movement.
It appeared pretty clear to us that the stakeholders
to whom Ms Zaragoza has been addressing the issue
were the two organisations that claim being the ‘peak
body’ representing all of us.
These are the Philippine Community Council
of NSW (PCC-NSW) and the Alliance of Philippine
Community Organisations (APCO) who have been at
odds with each other for some time now.
The proposition has been that, were the PCC-NSW
and APCO to unite and become one organisation, the
Filipino community would speak with ‘one voice’.
But to put it more accurately, the resulting ‘one
voice’ would not necessarily include the voices of
many more other Filipino-Australians who are not
members or associated with any Filipino community
organisations.
One can safely say that there are more Filipinos
outside Filipino organisations than there are who can
claim membership to organisations.
By JAIME K PIMENTEL
Consulting Editor
This suggests that ‘one voice’ can only mean the
voice of one section of the Filipino community: that of
organised clubs and associations.
Our view is that the Filipino community is already
united in many ways. Maybe not in the political sense,
as in establishing organisations with members vying
for official positions.
But one can tell that we have a clear semblance
of unity from the way we rally behind our achieving
Filipino-Australians wherever they live in this country.
We rallied as one for our X-Factor and Australian
Idol contestants; got behind as one to raise funds
for disaster victims in the Philippines; even beat our
chests as one watching Manny Pacquiao win another
boxing title on television.
In fact, all our Filipino organisations rise as one
when challenged.
Maybe we are not looking deep enough into
the hearts and minds of the Filipino-Australian
community to understand how united we already are.
Can it be that Ms Zaragoza has actually made it
possible for us to see through the haze by moving all
of us to talk about the subject of ‘unification’ through
a series of open discussion?
That alone, in our view, has made a success out of
Ms Zaragoza’s project toward unification. n
AK NewsMagazine, Vol 8 No 2 | NOVEMBER 2017
03