AFTER 90 days, our military forces have finally taken over the grand mosque in Marawi City and are now clearing all the adjacent buildings that the Maute extremists and their Islamic State-related confederates had occupied since May 23rd. The extremists did not make a last stand, but simply pulled out before our troops arrived. This was the good news. The not so good news is that a number of hostages, including a Catholic priest, remain unaccounted for. This could mean that the extremists may have simply relocated to another base, from where to strike again as soon as they have regained their strength.

Whatever it is, the end of the Marawi siege does not mean the end of the problem the Mautes created by linking up to the Islamic State and declaring the establishment of an Eastern Province of the Islamic Caliphate in Mindanao. This remains a continuing threat. But the end of the siege months before the expiration of Proclamation 216, which declares martial law and suspends the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in the whole of Mindanao until December 31st, allows President Rodrigo Duterte to respond to the humungous issues confronting his government outside Marawi with greater confidence and chance of success.

Only one thing is needed: he must rethink his stand on the issues, and correct his mistakes. There is abundant room for it.

Drug killings and corruption

Consider two major problems. The extra-judicial killings in the brutal war on drugs, which have killed thousands of poor and powerless suspects without due process or documentation, but have not touched the big drug lords and their political patrons; and the massive government corruption exemplified by the corruption in the Bureau of Customs, recently exposed by the illegal shipment of drugs from China through the BoC’s “express lane” under the protection of unnamed and untouchable political patrons.

Public concern on these issues has peaked, following the murder of 81 drug suspects in Manila and Bulacan in just three days, including the 17-year-old Grade 12 student, Kian Loyd de los Santos, who was buried on Saturday, mourned by thousands of angry protesters, and the earlier discovery of a P6.4 billion shipment of shabu (metamphetamine hydrochloride) from Xiamen, which had gone through the Customs’ “green lane” like a government-to-government shipment, and has since provoked a lot of finger-pointing.

Kian’s murder threatens DU30 with a wave of street protests which may not go away even after his burial and the filing of criminal charges against his killers. Four policemen, who were directly involved, have been charged with murder and torture, but certain legal and political circles tend to believe the culpability goes higher than those who shot Kian twice in the head and once in the back, while kneeling and begging them to let him go because he had to prepare for his class exams.

Principals by inducement?

These circles believe DU30 and PNP Director General Chief Ronald (“Bato”) de la Rosa are primarily “indictable,” the President for having ordered the police to “kill all” suspected drug dealers, and “Bato” for having given the specific order to the police regional commanders, in their last command conference at Camp Crame, to kill at least 32 per day, for a bounty of P20,000 per kill. Under our penal code, they are culpable, the lawyers believe, as “principals by inducement.”

DU30 cannot be charged in court with any criminal offense until he is first impeached and convicted upon impeachment. And because of his nearly absolute control of the House of Representatives, which has the exclusive power to initiate all cases of impeachment, he cannot be impeached either, no matter how culpable. But Bato is not an impeachable official and does not have the same immunity from suit as the President. Therefore, some interested parties may wish to proceed against him.

Can DU30 afford to see “Bato” prosecuted as a “principal by inducement” in Kian’s torture and murder, and in the death of so many others? That may be asking too much. But can DU30 at least order an end to the police killings and a complete review and documentation of all the police and vigilante killings since July 1, 2016?

Can he afford to remind DU30 himself and the police that the latter’s role as law enforcers is to preserve law and order at all times; that he cannot use the police as his “private army,” as the online statement of the Patriotic and Democratic Movement has charged, nor can he unleash them upon their prey like wild beasts in the jungle?

Their legitimate and lawful duty is to prevent crime, collect evidence against criminals, arrest them and bring them to justice for their crimes, but never to execute them like vermin on mere suspicion of any crime, or on false charges that they had tried to shoot it out with the arresting officers. This is the exact opposite of the mission of the military, which is to engage the armed enemy, and to “search and destroy.” And this is what DU30 should be able to remind himself of.

It would be a giant step if he could assure the nation and the world that DU30 is willing to begin again, rather than continue a failed policy that has turned the country into a narco-state and a killer as well. If he can do this, then he could still rewrite his human rights record, and have his fiercest human rights critics, both domestic and international, eating out of his hands.

Neither easy nor impossible

This cannot be a piece of cake. But neither is it impossible. First, we begin by doing what is necessary, says a great saint, then we do what is possible, and eventually we find ourselves doing what previously seemed impossible.

DU30 showed acute political sense by ordering the prosecution of the policemen involved in the murder. This is in sharp contrast to his treatment of the policemen involved in the November 5, 2016 killing of Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, inside his detention cell at the Leyte subprovincial jail in Baybay City at 4 o’clock in the morning, and of those involved in the July 30, 2017 pre-dawn massacre of Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr., his wife and 13 other family members and friends inside their homes.

In the Baybay killing, which the National Bureau of Investigation had described as a “rubout,” DU30 ordered the charges of murder against the policemen downgraded to homicide, and the leader of the team, Supt. Marvin Marcos, is now threatened with a promotion to the next higher rank. In Ozamiz, the policemen were commended for a job well done.

In Kian’s killing, DU30 surprisingly shot down efforts by the victim’s assailants to manufacture evidence against Kian. He also made no effort to bar the protest marches or the airing of the video showing how Kian was killed.

The effect of videos

This seems a calculated risk, given how such video images could fuel public indignation against him and the police. During the Vietnam war, it took a single photo of a police execution to change the tide of world public opinion against the US government and its allies. I refer to the story of South Vietnam’s Police General Nguyen Ngoc Loan.

On February 1, 1968, at the height of the Tet Offensive, Loan used his .38 caliber Special Smith and Wesson “Bodyguard” revolver to execute, in front of an NBC TV cameraman and an Associated Press news photographer, a Vietcong prisoner in handcuffs, who had earlier cut the throats of a South Vietnamese military officer, his wife, six children and an 80-year-old grandmother. The AP photo was broadcast worldwide, won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for News Photography for phographer Eddie Adams. In no time at all, it galvanized the anti-war movement worldwide.

After the war ended in 1975, Loan moved to the US and ran a pizza shop in the Washington, D. C. suburb of Burke, Virginia, where he died of cancer in 1998. Upon his death, Adams, regretting that his Pulitzer Prize-winning picture did not tell everything about Loan or his victim, who turned out to have committed so many war crimes before his execution in Loan’s hands, eulogized the man as a “hero.” But the US and South Vietnam had long lost the war, and it was too late to correct any false impressions created by his prize-winning photogaph.

Bolder steps needed

This tells us not to underestimate the possible long-term effects on the public mind of the video on Kian’s killing. But DU30 is apparently not bothered, and that’s something one must credit him for. Yet having taken the first step, he should have the courage to proceed now with bolder steps. He should order an end to all the killings, and while seeking to check drug-dealing in the slums and the ghettos, he should give greater emphasis to the flow of drugs from China, Sinaloa, the Golden Triangle and other sources, and the hitherto criminal activities of the big drug lords and their political patrons.

On corruption, which is intertwined with the narco trade, ending it is conceivably harder and more complicated than ending extra-judicial killings. First, the corrupt mind begins by declaring that corruption is limited to stealing money from the public till. By this definition, the distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral is abolished. Fornication, adultery, pornography, various forms of sexual depravity no longer have anything to do with corruption. Treating the public treasury as a private reserve just because one is in power is no longer corruption. Occupying an office one is not qualified for is no longer corruption.

This is a fundamental issue DU30 and his men must restudy and rethink. Under DU30, the entire government, not just the BoC, may have become more corrupt than ever before, and he may need a Diogenes with his lighted lamp to look for an honest man to help him set things right. But in such a situation, an honest man may have become the most dangerous threat to everybody else. In such a situation, DU30 will have to be the first one to declare that it is not enough for the President’s close-in advisers to say that his son is not involved in any wrongdoing at the piers for the nation to conclude that, indeed, he isn’t.

* * *

IN MEMORIAM. Eduardo Olaguer, 81, remembered by many for his role in the Light a Fire movement during the Marcos years, died in the peace of our Lord on August 20, and was laid to rest by family and friends at Loyola Memorial Park on August 26, after a solemn funeral mass in Latin at his private chapel. Ed, a devoted Catholic, spent his last days promoting a faithful devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Eucharist… Amelyn Veloso Zapanta, 43, whose genial personality used to grace the CNN Philippines TV screen, and who used to conduct live interviews on Radio Veritas, was called to her eternal home on August 24 and was interred yesterday at her husband’s hometown in Taytay, Rizal. I ask the gentle reader to pray for the repose of their souls. Thank you very much.

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

fstatad@gmail.com

Let us do this chronologically.

Days before the release on July 12 of the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, at The Hague, on the Philippine maritime dispute with China, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, Jr. announced he was willing to sit down with Beijing for bilateral talks on the possible joint exploration of mineral and marine resources of the disputed maritime areas in the South China (West Philippine) Sea.

Francisco S. Tatad

This apparently alarmed the US government, which had openly supported Aquino’s position and chided Beijing for its refusal to agree to arbitration and to recognize the jurisdiction of the arbitral body. On the eve of the release of the ruling, which everyone expected to be favorable to the Philippines, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter telephoned Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana to talk about the impending verdict and its implications to the security of the region.

Kristie Kenney’s role
Hours before our “victory,” US State Department Counselor Kristie Kenney, a former ambassador to the Philippines, met with Yasay at the Department of Foreign Affairs “to call on the parties to respect the ruling.” This was completely ironic because the Philippine government was the only party to the arbitration, and could not have been expected to “disrespect” a ruling in its favor. If at all, the Philippines should be the one asking China to respect the ruling and the US to help persuade Beijing.

In reality, Kenney’s call was a rebuke to the newly initiated foreign secretary for his gratuitous statement on bilateral negotiations, which caught Washington totally by surprise. Nothing was reported from the Kenney-Yasay conversation, but when the ruling from The Hague came and profuse and euphoric reactions greeted it from the US, Japan, Australia and the European allies as well as from all sorts of netizens, Yasay had to welcome it in measured tones, calling for “sobriety” at the same time.

Albert del Rosario recycled
Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who had been quoted as saying the Philippines would be a frontline state in containing China’s rise, and had engaged Beijing in steaming rhetoric on the South China Sea issue when he was still in office, was recycled out of wherever he was enjoying his retirement for publicity purposes, to speak actively about the ruling and receive the applause of the public who had yet to see our victory at the The Hague was completely psychic.

Yasay’s next opportunity to be heard came at the 11th Asia-Europe Summit Meeting, in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on July 15 – 16, where on behalf of DU30, who was unable to attend, he called upon China to bind itself to the process it had rejected from the very start. He was somehow overshadowed in the press by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who pressed the point against China far more strongly than he did, prompting the Chinese government to point out that Japan was not a party to the issue at hand.

ASEM unmoved, FVR mooted
In its post-conference statement, ASEM refused to be drawn into the Philippines-China controversy, limiting itself to a general statement to the peaceful settlement of territorial disputes. Apparently, Yasay had some conversation with the Chinese delegation at the margins of the conference, but nothing came out of it in the press. Yasay’s performance provoked rumors of his early departure, prompting the President to issue a statement dismissing such possibility.

At the same time DU3O announced he was going to name former President Fidel V. Ramos as his special envoy to start talks with the Xi Jinping government. This was promptly welcomed by Beijing, and Ramos himself indicated genuine interest in it. But the latest word from Yasay is that there won’t be any talks with China, unless the latter agrees to discuss the PCA ruling, which it does not recognize.

Talks torpedoed?
This tends to show that some powerful actor has succeeded in torpedoing the rapprochement project, and that we should expect belligerent rhetoric and tension, which we were trying to arrest, to ratchet up. This means that the new DFA management never understood why bilateral talks were needed, in the face of a ruling that tends to create a worse crisis than the one it was seeking to ease.

To this observer the merit of bilateral talks was never in doubt. But the talks have to be without any preconditions. We just won the arbitral ruling, true; but no power on earth could compel China to recognize it. So why would China want to have talks with us that begin with a discussion of what it does not want to recognize? And what benefit do we hope to gain from it?

On the other hand, if we sit down to discuss ways and means of working together for peace and economic development without touching a gaping wound that’s still so fresh, China would most probably appreciate our generosity and try to match it to the fullest. This is the Asian way, unfamiliar to the West. Eventually, after we have been bonded by the strongest economic, social, cultural and human ties, we could perhaps begin to talk of the most difficult territorial problems between us.

A Korean tale
The story of a young Korean I had met on one of my earlier trips to Seoul seems most apt. He said he had a Japanese classmate with whom he fought on the first day they met—over the issue of Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. The Japanese militarists had killed his parents, and he wanted to take it out on the young Japanese. He broke his nose, although he himself did not go unscathed. Despite this incident, he took pains to befriend his perceived nemesis.

They became such good friends that whenever any of his other friends would begin to talk of what the Japanese did to Korea in the past, he would immediately change the subject, and his Japanese friend would be profuse in his thanks. One day his friend asked about his dead parents, and if he could visit their graves to pay his respects. From then on, it became so easy for them to discuss their dark past.

GMA tried joint exploration
DU30 and Yasay were not the first ones to mention the possibility of joint exploration of marine and mineral resources in the South China (West Philippine) Sea. In 2004, during the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration, the Philippines and China already agreed to conduct joint exploration for oil and gas in the disputed waters. In March 2005, Vietnam became the third party to the Joint Maritime Seismic Undertaking (JMSU).

This, however, fell apart because of maritime incidents between China and Vietnam, and certain controversies involving China’s big business contracts in the Philippines. There was also a move to question the constitutionality of the JMSU before the Supreme Court. Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, who has taken the lead in discussing the Philippine claim as against China’s so-called “nine-dash line” in various forums, maintains that any joint exploration with China as an equal partner would violate the Constitution, which permits foreigners not more than 40 percent equity in the exploitation of the country’s natural resources.

Marine Peace Park
But Carpio is willing to adopt the idea of Dr. John McManus, professor of Marine Biology and Fisheries at the University of Miami, that the disputed areas be converted into a Marine Peace Park for the benefit of all. This is not much different from a previous proposal in this column that the area be declared a common heritage of mankind, free from any kind of military weapons, particularly nuclear, or the political control of any nation, but for the benefit of all. This sounds like an idea whose time has come, although rather utopian; but I fear it would be immediately shot down by the military powers who see the South China Sea not only as the great waterway through which passes $5 trillion of the world’s annual trade but also as an irreplaceable playground for the world’s most powerful aircraft carriers, warships and submarines.

Without any means to compel China to comply with a ruling that invalidates its so-called “nine-dash line,” there is obvious need for the Philippines and China to talk and avoid inflammatory rhetoric and counterproductive political or military initiatives. As I have said a few times before, we have no need of war with China, nor can we afford it. Given our limited resources, how do we feed 1.3 billion Chinese, if they survive such a war, and should we win it?

US and China must talk
But since the real conflict is the geopolitical rivalry between the world’s lone superpower and Asia’s rising regional power, there is even more urgent need for them to sit down and discuss the terms upon which we are to build a new world order. The basic conflict is civilizational, and must be resolved as such.

As the British author and journalist Simon Winchester puts it in his book Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers, the Eastern civilization on the West side of the Pacific and the Western civilization on the East side of the Pacific have finally met to turn the Pacific into the inland sea of tomorrow, where the Mediterranean was the inland sea of the ancient world, and the Atlantic the inland sea of today. America has dominated the Pacific for the past 60 years, but its declining economic and political power has rendered it insecure about China’s phenomenal economic, political and military rise.

Search for equivalence, avoiding the ‘Thucydides Trap’
America needs to see, Winchester writes, that China is not interested in replacing or challenging the US as a world power. It does not intend to colonize, enslave or dominate any country or people like the Western powers, but simply wants to “enjoy equivalence.” This mistaken fear of China, left unchecked, could lead to what has been called the “Thucydides Trap,” in which a rising power causes fear in an established power which inevitably escalates toward war. We learn this from the History of the Peloponnesian War, which happened when after Athens and Sparta defeated Persia, Sparta’s growing fear of Athens led the two former allies to destroy each other.

In a major 2015 article in The Atlantic, Prof. Graham Allison of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government asked whether the US and China are headed for war because of the Thucydides Trap. A few years before that, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a speech before the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on March 3, 2012, warned the US against falling into such a trap.

Chinese President Xi Jinping himself has said, “We all need to work together to avoid the ‘Thucydides Trap’—destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers… Our aim is to foster a new model of major country relations.”

Indeed this can be avoided, not by demonizing the rising power or trying to prevent its rise, but by peaceful and constructive engagement, which begins to happen when the contending parties sit down without any preconditions to talk.

fstatad@gmail.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

I grew up in a remote small village of Catanduanes, an island-province on this side of the Pacific where we had no court of law nor even a village cell to detain those who disturbed the peace. By necessity, we were obliged to maintain a zero crime rate. But neighbors and spouses still quarreled, sometimes violently, and whenever this happened, the parties would come to my father, who had a reputation for being a just and honest man, to conciliate or arbitrate. He would talk to the parties, ask a few questions, and then advise them to overlook each other’s defects and compose their differences. Somehow it always worked.

Francisco S. Tatad

Why is this a mess?
I cannot seem to understand why my late father’s simple way of arbitrating petty domestic quarrels never failed, while this expensive and elaborate international process has only produced a stalemate, a terrible mess. As a citizen, I join my countrymen in welcoming the ruling which, as far as they are concerned, puts our giant neighbor in a more manageable place, but as a just and honest man, I want to be sure we stand on solid ground and can, with a clear conscience, insist on China’s compliance with the verdict. I would like to be guided by Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio’s highly instructive discourses on the subject, but there are a few minor items we cannot afford to trifle with.

For starters, I don’t believe the Aquino government was candid enough about everything the public needed to know about the arbitration process. For one, contrary to what the public has been led to believe, the PCA is not a real court but a mere provider of dispute resolution services to the international community; an intergovernmental organization which began in 1899, but not an organ or institution of the United Nations, which was founded only in 1945. It is said to rent space at the Peace Palace, at The Hague, a building owned by the Carnegie Foundation, where the International Court of Justice is headquartered; but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the World Court.

What’s the real cost?
The government also never told the public how much the arbitration would cost the Filipino taxpayers. The Constitution provides that no money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law, yet no appropriation has been disclosed for this particular purpose. One report says that on lawyer’s fees alone, the government has spent $30 million (or P1.4 billion). It was supposed to split the total cost of the entire process with the other party, but since the other party did not participate, then it must have absorbed the entire cost. How much then is it? Are any foreign donors involved?

On top of the large number of lawyers and experts the government sent to The Hague, it engaged the services of noted foreign lawyers led by the famous Harvard professor Paul Reichler, who represented Nicaragua in its celebrated case in the ICJ against the United States in the 1980s. There was understandable excitement about Reichler’s formidable skills which helped Nicaragua win its case against the US, for supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and for mining Nicaragua’s harbors.

Nicaragua vs the US
But there was hardly any mention of the fact that the US refused to participate in the proceedings after the Court rejected its objection questioning the Court’s jurisdiction to hear the case, and refused to comply with the judgment embodied in resolutions before the UN Security Council and the General Assembly in 1986. The judgment commanded the US to pay actual compensation to the Nicaraguan government. Shouldn’t the public have been forewarned that like the US, China could simply ignore the arbitral ruling should it lose?

As recorded in Wikipedia, the World Court found the US in breach of its obligations under customary international law not to use force against another state, not to intervene in its affairs, not to violate its sovereignty, and to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce, and in breach of its obligations under Article XIX of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation signed between the two countries in Managua on Jan. 21, 1956.

But from 1982 to 1985, the US vetoed the Security Council resolution urging full and immediate compliance with the ICJ judgment; on Oct. 28, 1986, it imposed a final veto on the measure before the Security Council. France and the United Kingdom, two permanent SC members with veto powers, together with Thailand, abstained during the voting. On Nov. 3, the same resolution was brought to the UN General Assembly and approved with only the US, Israel and El Salvador voting against it. Still the US refused to pay the fine.

Then-US Permanent Representative to the UN Jean Kirkpatrick explained that the World Court was a “semi-legal, semi-judicial, semi-political body, which nations sometimes accept and sometimes not.” The common impression about superpowers elsewhere is that they cannot be bound by penalties and sanctions; they decide what international law is, and what it is not. The US never paid actual damages to Nicaragua; the burden was lifted from the shoulders of the US by action of the Violeta Chamorro government after the defeat of the Sandinista President Daniel Ortega in 1990. The US-supported government repealed the law requiring it to seek compensation from the US for its role in the Contra revolt, and in Sept. 1992, withdrew its court complaint against the US.

China’s non-involvement
Another critical point not well-appreciated by the public is that although the Philippines was eager to submit to the arbitral process, China rejected it from the very beginning and refused to participate. Thus the arbitration proceeded with only one party present, and China’s side was never heard. Against the 7,000-page submission of the Philippine government, there is not a single page from China defending its position on the “nine-dash line.” I don’t believe that as a nation that subscribes to the rule of law and equity, we could adopt this as our new standard of fairness.

As a former senator, I had made my own modest contribution to the internationalization of this issue, when I thought it was the right thing to do. In some Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Conferences, and the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forums abroad, I had clashed with Chinese and Japanese delegates a few times on this issue. But I don’t believe it is fair to compel China to accept a ruling in a process whose validity it had rejected from the very beginning.

Quoting some studies, Carpio says that in many cases governments that had initially declared open defiance of an adverse ruling by an international tribunal eventually complied with it, in the end. We could hope that this would happen to China. But it does not seem a likely response to the chorus of voices from the US, Japan and European governments, calling on Beijing to comply with what it considers an international conspiracy. Now, if the parties to the dispute and the long line of kibitzers work together to ease the tension and create a better climate for diplomacy, bilateral negotiations between Manila and Beijing could hopefully achieve that which the PAC ruling could not.

This is my hope. As we finally ended the standoff on Scarborough Shoal, we must now break the new stalemate.

FVR as special envoy
President DU30’s choice of former President Fidel V. Ramos as special envoy to the Xi Jinping government could be an excellent opening move. FVR has superb personal relations with the leaders of China and Taiwan, which for the first time since 1949 have found common cause against the PAC ruling. While Beijing raged in the media, Taiwan sent a warship to Itu Aba (or Taiping) in the Spratlys, as a reflex reaction to the PAC’s attempt to redefine the inhabited island, with at least 11 springs of fresh water, as a “rock.”

FVR’s father, the late former Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos, was dean of the diplomatic corps in Taiwan for many years until the Philippines cut off relations with the island-republic when it recognized the People’s Republic of China under the “one-China” policy in 1975. At the same time, having been educated at West Point, fought in Korea and led the Philippines’ civic action group in Vietnam side by side with the Americans, Ramos is seen by many as someone who will not hurt the Americans in any way just to please Beijing.

Ramos is the oldest of the four surviving former Filipino Presidents. As he engages with a government, culture and civilization that put a high premium on wisdom and age, he could probably use his to full advantage.

fstatad@gmail.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

For the past several weeks, the government had been expecting the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague to rule in its favor on its dispute with China in the South China Sea.

Official sources looked forward to it as a watershed moment. But as this is written, the ruling was yet some hours away. What would it say is the core question, but even more critical is, what would China say or do?

The process began in January 2013 when the Aquino government brought the case to the Court under Annex VII to the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The PCA is not a real court like the International Court of Justice, simply an organizer of arbitral tribunals to resolve conflicts between UN member-states. But we set great store by what it has to say.

The government asked the Court to declare that the claims on the South China Sea must be in full accord with the UNCLOS, and not with China’s so-called nine-dash line; to classify China’s occupied features as rocks, low-tide elevations or submerged banks but not islands; and to affirm the Philippines’ right to operate freely inside its Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf under UNCLOS without Chinese intervention.

The Aquino government hired a Washington-based lawyer Paul Reichler to represent its interests, and filed a ten-volume memorial to the tribunal in March 2013. However China has rejected the Philippine claim from the very beginning, rejected the authority of the PCA to arbitrate, and called on the Philippines to submit the dispute to bilateral negotiations.

In July 2015, the oral arguments were held at the Hague with only the Philippines in attendance. Then-Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said the Philippines recognized that the Court was not competent to rule on sovereignty, but was called upon to reject China’s so-called nine-dash line and “historic rights” to the disputed territory. He told the Court, to the surprise even of Filipino observers, that efforts at bilateral negotiations with China had failed. The Philippines has spurned any attempts at bilateral talks as far as this observer is concerned.

China firm, DU30 flexible
China has not budged from its position. It refused to submit a counter-memorial to the Court, and did not take part in the oral arguments. During the presidential debates, candidate DU30 said that should the Philippines win the arbitration case, he would sail a small boat, take the PCA verdict and plant it with a Philippine flag on one of the maritime featured fortified by Bejing. A few days ago, however, the Duterte government expressed willingness to start bilateral talks on joint development.

In his first official statement on the issue as foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay Jr. said the government was open to a bilateral discussion on the joint exploration of mineral and marine resources in the disputed territory. A number of sectors seemed to favor this position, but many of the government’s Western allies, notably the United States, were clearly surprised by it.

Although Manila’s partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are not solidly behind arbitration, some 40 governments are seen to be highly supportive of a purely multilateral approach to the dispute rather than a bilateral one. Leading this group is the United States, is not a treaty partner in UNCLOS.

Pentagon anxious, DU30 slams US
On Monday US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter telephoned his Philippine counterpart, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, to discuss the possible security and defense implications of the expected PCA ruling on the South China Sea, according to an exclusive report by veteran newspaperman Jose Katigbak in the Philippine Star. The report, datelined Washington, showed America’s interest in the case, not necessarily for its own sake, but as a subset of its strategic relationship with China in the Asia Pacific.

The US could not possibly have expected what it is now hearing from the DU30 administration. In a speech before Filipino Muslims in southern Davao at the end of Ramadan on July 8, DU30 harshly criticized US for its policies in the Middle East. As reported by Associated Press, and published in some American newspapers, though hardly in any Philippine newspaper, DU30 said, “it is not that the Middle East is exporting terrorism to America, America imported terrorism…They forced their way to Iraq…look at Iraq now; look at what happened to Libya; look at what happened to Syria…People are being annihilated, including children.”

Although no one has accused DU30 of misrepresenting the facts, no Filipino president before him ever said anything like it. In fact, this was the strongest broadside ever uttered by any sitting Filipino politician on record. DU30 has named several seasoned communists to his Cabinet, and said he would be a “leftist president” with an “independent foreign policy”—i.e., not dependent on the US. This was a breath of fresh air for many Filipino nationalists and progressives, but probably the last thing US Ambassador Philip Goldberg had expected to hear from the former city mayor whom he was reported (by highly qualified Mindanao sources) to have spoken to sometime in 2014 about “possibly running for President.”

Goldberg will be leaving Manila soon, to be replaced by Sung Kim, an Asian-American career diplomat, who is also a veteran communist watcher, the current special representative for North Korea Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan. This could be an indication of US apprehensions about the DU30 presidency. Just before DU30’s inaugural, several former US ambassadors–John Negroponte, Thomas Hubbard, and John Maisto–sought a private audience with DU30 in Davao. Recently, State Department Counselor Kristie Kenney asked for talks with DU30’s foreign policy team to assure them that “we want to support the Philippines. We want to be your friend, your partner.”

Negroponte, Hubbard, and Maisto are members of the US-Philippine Society, while Kenney is best remembered here as the US Ambassador during the time of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who showed up in Camp Abubakar to meet with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front leadership unbeknownst to Philippine authorities, and who showed up again in Kuala Lumpur to witness the proposed signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (with the MILF), before the Supreme Court struck it down, and aborted its signing, as unconstitutional. She is supposed to be one of State’s hotshots.

The global game
DU30, despite his being a “probinsiyano,” has apparently decided to play international politics the way it should be played–not as a zero-sum game in favor of one major partner. He will not abandon traditional ties with the US, but he will not reject the fresh economic opportunities offered by China either. China is the author of the “One belt, One road” global project, consisting of the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and the ocean-going Maritime Silk Road, which seeks to raise $4 trillion to $8 trillion in investments, in order link up at least 60 countries with modern infrastructure and transport systems.

Supporting this project is the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, capitalized at $100 billion, 75 percent of which comes from Asian and Oceanic countries, and 26 percent of its voting rights belongs to China. Among the developed countries who have joined are Australia, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. Among the Asean countries, are Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, which joined on Dec. 3, 2015. The bank has 37 founding member-governments, and held its first board meeting on June 25, 2016.

Super fast trains, modern ports and airports, dams and irrigation systems are parts of this “One belt, One road” project, which goes through Central Asia, West Asia, Middle East and Europe. The north belt goes through Central Asia, West Asia, to the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean; the south belt goes through China to Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Indian Ocean. The maritime belt will connect the South China Sea, South Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean.

One belt, one road
Will a PAC ruling in favor of the Philippines enhance or endanger our involvement in this “One belt, One road” system? Obviously, DU30 has factored this in before saying he was ready to consider joint exploration of marine and mineral resources in the South China Sea with Beijing.

Will cooperation and connectivity with China be compatible with the Philippines’ Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington? Obviously, there would be some problems, if the US deployment through EDCA is aimed principally at Beijing. But what exactly is the official narrative here? Is the US willing to say, and is DU30 ready and willing to believe, that EDCA is not intended against Beijing?

If DU30 is told that the EDCA installations inside the Philippine military bases do not contain any nuclear weapons—-in conformity with the Philippine Constitution–would he take up the proposal coming from the Save the Nation Movement and Solidarity for Sovereignty to invite himself to one of those installations and see for himself what exactly are stockpiled there?

The EDCA challenge
So far not even the AFP Chief of Staff or Secretary of National Defense has been allowed this privilege. As President and Commander-in-Chief, can DU30 not make sure that he becomes the first and only Filipino to see what a friendly foreign force has installed on friendly Philippine soil?

I will not insist on this, if there is any risk of embarrassing our historic ally. But if the President is determined to pursue a truly independent foreign policy, he could take the long-range view of being militarily equidistant to both China and the US, while remaining their strongest economic ally. He could explore the possibility of adopting armed “neutrality,” like Switzerland’s, as the genuine national defense and foreign policy of the Philippines. That would, indeed, be a historic decision and an inimitable contribution to the peace of the Asia Pacific and the world.

fstatad@gmail.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines