MANILA – Former Department Foreign Affairs (DFA) secretary Albert del Rosario won’t contest DFA’s plan to cancel all courtesy diplomatic passports, including his.
Del Rosario on Saturday said he did not misuse his diplomatic passport, which was issued to him in 2016 as privilege accorded to a former DFA chief.
“If that’s what they want to do, so be it,” del Rosario said. “It becomes no good once they refuse to revalidate. But I have a regular passport. It’s relatively new.”
“I was saddened by some suggestions that I was misusing my diplomatic passport. It’s not true,” he added. “The purpose of the trip was clear that it was for business. So there was no misuse of my diplomatic passport. I declared what I was going to do there.”
DFA chief Teodoro Locsin on Saturday said they will cancel all courtesy diplomatic passports and would stop issuing such special travel document to former DFA chiefs and envoys.
Diplomatic passports are given to high-ranking government officials – the President, Vice President, members of the Congress, Cabinet members, the Chief Justice, and the central bank governor, among others – for ease in travel on official missions.
Bearers of diplomatic passports were granted visa-free entry for a certain period of time in states where Filipinos with regular passports would require such travel clearance.
Del Rosario was held at the Hong Kong International Airport upon his arrival at 7:40 a.m. on Friday. He was held for almost six hours before being ordered to return to the Philippines for unknown reason./PN
