Duterte rejecting ruling on sea row

TWO ARTICLES in the Inquirer, in juxtaposition, tell the story of how our country never really learns from the tragic lessons of the past and why we somehow have it in us to seemingly commit “hara-kiri” every so often. It also reflects how we have such a distorted sense of nationalism. And how we are so fickle.

In “What’s magnificent about withdrawal of US bases?” (Opinion, 4/11/16) former ambassador Hermenegildo C. Cruz says it well in his concluding paragraph: “It is difficult to see how the removal of US bases in 1992 constituted a magnificent episode in our history… it is evidently a catastrophe. From here on we have to live under the shadow of Chinese weapons, including nuclear arms in due course.”

Indeed, shortly after the United States vacated Subic and Clark in 1992, it was a brief three years, in 1995, before China occupied Mischief Reef, the first of many we were to lose. China then went on its creeping occupation of other isles, shoals and reefs within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. This reached a climax in the standoff in Scarborough Shoal in April 2012. The Aquino administration, finally realizing the futility of negotiations with China, hauled China into court by filing its case in the United Nations’ Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. The court is expected to come out with its verdict anytime now. This legal track, coupled with the Philippines’ warm re-embracing of the US military—we are offering the United States five Philippine military bases for use of its armed forces—is the bedrock of the country’s defense of national sovereignty in the face of Chinese aggression.

Comes now presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte vowing to reject whatever verdict the PCA would issue (“Duterte favors making deal with China,” News, 4/11/16). Duterte said he would “demand economic concessions from China in exchange for Manila’s backtracking from its claims.” Implied is, of course, a second rejection of the US military.

What then is the world to think of us should a Duterte presidency come into being and his China policy implemented? We have precisely sought favorable world opinion to gain moral support for our standing up to Chinese bullying, which we have secured—for, indeed, we have received assurances from our friends in Europe, the Americas and Asean—and we are now to discard it, and in a “blink of an eye,” as it were. What are our closest allies—the United States, Japan and Australia—to say, they who have committed to strengthen our decrepit naval and air forces and to come to our assistance in case of conflict? The consequences of these flip-flops to our credibility, respect and dignity as a people can only be harrowing and devastating.

These are days for serious reflection among our people. Surely, we are a people with a capacity to sift through the smokescreen of bluff and buffoonery in an election campaign. The puzzle is that we have elected demagogues to be our leaders in the past. We just seem to never learn from the tragedies of the past.

—MARIANO S. JAVIER, [email protected]