By My Blue Heart on Wednesday, 8 of December , 2010 at 3:54 pm
Filipino sailor Jesus Sumook was honoured as a hero in a ceremony at Lynnterm, Port of Vancouver in North Vancouver, B.C., October 5, 2010. In 2006 Sumook was helping to unload a ship full of B.C. wood pellets at a Swedish port when he saved the life of a worker who had fallen unconscious in the hold.
The ceremony took place aboard the Saga Tucano, which is now in the port of Vancouver. Sumook is working aboard the vessel, and the presentation was arranged after the foundation finally tracked him down.
Sumook, a father of two, said he refused to give up on the dockworker as long as he had a pulse.
He began to administer CPR.
“Then he began to gasp,” Sumook said, smiling as he recalled the moment back in November 2006 in the port of Helsingborg.
Asked Tuesday if he felt like a hero, Sumook laughed, shaking his head.
“But I am proud,” he said, adding that his daughters — aged 10 and 6 — have both told him they are proud of him too.
“That makes me very happy.”
Present to congratulate Sumook Tuesday were representatives of local labour groups, including the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents dockworkers like the man that Sumook saved.
The Carnegie Hero awards were established worldwide in the early 1900s as a way of recognizing civilian acts of bravery.
It took the Swedish organization more than two years to find Sumook as the sailor moved from port to port on his global schedule. Many of the ports had no Swedish representative, complicating the effort.
Tuesday, he received an inscribed gold watch, a certificate and a cheque. A lunch was also organized as part of the celebration.
“It is for heroism,” said Anders Neumuller, Sweden’s consul in Vancouver.
“It is a story that really needs to come out so that more people see what they can do in a situation like that.”
Capt. Clifford Faleiro, operations manager for Saga, added:“That he risked his own life to save someone else’s speaks volumes about what he did, and I think he rightly deserves all the praise and recognition he is getting.”
By My Blue Heart on Tuesday, 7 of December , 2010 at 3:40 pm
Aquino was elected as new president of the Philippines in May 2010 with the slogan of combating corruption and fighting poverty. Corruption has been very extensive under his predecessors, especially while Arroyo was reigning (2001-2010).
It is most questionable if corruption will ever vanish completely. Aquino’s fight on corruption is an enormous task that will take many years to combat. And it is probably not something that will happen in his presidency, though this initial effort is of utmost importance. Corruption remains a serious threat to prosperity and development in countries all over the world.
A 2010-report by the Transparency International (TI) showed that on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean), the Philippines maintained a score of 2.4 in this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
Aquino’s effort to eliminate corruption as the rule of conduct in the political system in the Philippines is therefore even more admirable. A president labelled as incorruptible is inspiring in this effort, and gives high hopes that changes in the political structures in the Philippines can happen at last.
According to a group of Filipino-Chinese businessmen (Anvil Business Club), President Benigno S. Aquino III ranks alongside Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, as incorruptible, writes The Royal Danish in Kuala Lumpur on it’s website.
Aquino is likened to Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-1990), who led his country from poverty to prosperity, as being “incorruptible.” Wilson Lee, one of the founders of the Anvil Business Club, said, that like famous leader Lee Kuan Yew who transformed Singapore into an economic superpower, Aquino could do the same to the Philippines, because the two leaders share several similarities.
Aquino also still enjoys the support of the Filipinos. In a just publicised survey on the public satisfaction with the government’s general performance, the rating result was “very good”, with a net satisfaction score of +64 (73-9). This survey was the first during Aquino’s presidency, and marked the reversal of a long run of negative net scores in former president Arroyo’s scores on public satisfaction.
