They want to re-float the MV Princess of the Stars? I’d rather not, if it were up to me.
The proposal to re-float the vessel makes sense only because of its humanitarian aspect – it’ll help recover the bodies. But we all know that this is a business decision. Recover the bodies, sure, but isn’t it pretty obvious that the main point is still to recover the vessel and thereby eventually resume making money with it? Only the unbelievably or deliberately dense would say otherwise.
SO, my proposal is – raise the damned thing; recover the victims; and allow it to settle back to where and how it is situated now. AND leave it there.
Leave it there as a reminder to all and sundry that life is fragile; and that because it is fragile, life must be protected at all costs – especially from crass commercialism and hubris.
Leave it there because the spirit of the law says that the perpetrator of the crime cannot be allowed to profit from the proceeds of his criminal acts; Sulpicio Lines cannot be allowed to recycle this vessel into yet another means to make money for itself; not ever, and especially not when the memory of the people who died in this ship is still fresh.
Or if it’s too morbid to leave in the water ( a feng shui expert once commented that the reason our country persists in the doldrums is many of our modern statuary show people in anguish, or anger, or – in the case of Ninoy Aquino – dying), turn it into scrap iron, and out of that create a lighthouse (or some other monument) that will serve as a warning to all ships not to set sail into a typhoon.
Or if a lighthouse is too pedestrian, why not use the scrap to build a statue of a woman, waiting to welcome her sons and daughters home from the sea?
And in order to round out this list, why not chop the ship up into little pieces to be used as artificial reefs. The imagery should be obvious: out of death, life; that which caused death has been transformed into something which shelters life; swords into plowshares and all that.
Any other suggestions in the comments will be welcome.
Filed under: musings, news, weather, Princess of the Stars, re-float, Sulpicio
I favor chopping up the ship and exporting the scrap metal to China with the proceeds going to the families of the victims.
cvj: now there’s a practical solution! but won’t the money be too small to be significant to the recipients? That’s why I kinda favor constructing a monument of some sort.
Amen to this post.
I’m all for chopping the ship too and making a memorial for the victims and their families, and making artificial reefs with it.
niki:thanks, sweetie! 😀 I miss you!
Forget the ship. How about chopping up the owners and managers of Sulpicio Lines?
Seriously though, the best monument would be to hold those responsible to account for their actions.
If you experience riding that ship you will be amazed by beauty. In fact it is the best and largest ferry in the country. I said let the Princess float again and let the captain and coastguard sunk in the bottom of the sea.
Agree. It the driver and not the car. http://cebuimage.blogspot.com
Anthony: I hear you, man. But I think that a monument – an actual physical monument – would help keep the lesson alive and honor the memory of the needlessly dead. I mean, I want Sulpicio ground to fine dust as much as anyone else, but when they’re gone, what’s going to remind us? In this flash-cut world, we need all the reminders we can get.
Assuming 300 USD per ton and 10K metric tons of recoverable scrap metal, that would translate to 3Million USD or 3500 USD per victim (~160K pesos). Not big, certainly not enough but it will help.
cvj: that’s exactly my point, uncle. 160 thousand? Come on. Right now, they’re offering 200 thousand and everyone is sneering; will another 160 really matter?
This is the kind of mendicant mentality that I oppose so much; being content with less than what is fair, simply because “every little bit helps.”
Rom, just to clarify, i did not propose they be content with the 160K (which is why i said above that it is ‘not enough’).