Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 23:07:00 05/06/2008
While President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo likes to seize every opportunity to take credit for any progress in the economy, in one crucial aspect of her presidency, she has proven rather inept. This is in the area of diplomacy. To be sure, she’s had modest achievements in person-to-person diplomacy, particularly in obtaining clemency and concessions for overseas Filipino workers facing imprisonment and possible execution. But these humanitarian achievements are slim because they only serve to underscore her tactical, and not strategic, approach to her office and the powers she wields. In a larger, strategic sense, she has been a failure.
At the beginning of her presidency, she tried to turn closeness to America into the lynchpin of her diplomatic efforts. In the tactical pursuit of the Iraq hostage taking, she ditched her administration’s commitment to Uncle Sam.
She then turned to China, but again, instead of carefully cultivating that relationship, she approached it in an opportunistic manner. She viewed it primarily as compensation for waning American support. While she continued to give the United States free rein in Mindanao, she pursued Chinese support to prove she had other powerful foreign friends. And she decided to use Chinese aid as an instrument to consolidate domestic support by turning it into a series of lucrative opportunities for moneymaking.
The result is the squandering of opportunities and carefully nurtured relationships that have soured—not just with the US and China, but even Japan. And now comes trouble with Malaysia.
Since the time of President Diosdado Macapagal, our relationship with Malaysia has been uneasy, in large part because of our claim to Sabah, and Malaysia’s covert and overt support for Muslim secessionists in Mindanao over the years. Since the Corazon Aquino administration, presidents have downplayed our Sabah claim in order to smoothen relations with Malaysia. In return, Malaysia has contributed to the Mindanao peace process. Malaysia’s national interest isn’t served by the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the region (which is also why Indonesia, a traditional Philippine ally, has supported the peace process).
Last month Malaysian authorities announced their intention to pull out of the peace process. This followed a breakdown in the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) over how the proposed expansion of the territorial coverage of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) would be accomplished. The MILF wants the expansion to take place without their making an explicit acknowledgment of fealty to the Philippine Constitution. The government, on the other hand, says this can be done only by means of a plebiscite—to which various Muslim groups express opposition.
In reality, Muslim rebels don’t care how the expansion of the ARMM is accomplished; they don’t want to have to state their adherence to Philippine government processes. Allegations have been made that the government’s proposed agreement formalizing the whole thing includes a stipulation that the rebels adhere to the Constitution, something they have objected to in principle from the start. And so, they allege bad faith on the part of the government. The rebels’ participation would come, they insist, only after the government has delivered on the expanded ARMM setup, and not before.
The Malaysian government under Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is facing domestic problems because of recent electoral reversals. It has proposed turning Sabah into the nation’s rice bowl, and the possibility that the increased settlement of the area by ethnic Malaysians—and a ramping up of existing Malaysian efforts to deport ethnic Filipinos—will be the result. In addition, the last thing the Malaysian government needs is for the opposition under Anwar Ibrahim, which is more aggressively Muslim in its rhetoric, to use the collapse of talks with the MILF an issue. Better to cut and run and pin the blame on the Filipinos.
Which leaves the administration with a dubious legacy. What will be the second-longest administration after Ferdinand Marcos come October 2009 might end up with nothing to show for it in Mindanao.
Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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