Tomorrow, the President goes to Tokyo to honor the invitation extended by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the last Asean Summit held in Vientiane. After a hectic schedule over the next two days, he will be seeing the Emperor of Japan at the Imperial Palace on Thursday the 27th before returning to Manila.
The fact that the trip to staunch US ally Japan immediately follows his state visit to China, after having visited Indonesia, Laos and Brunei, all member-states of Asean, indicates President Duterte’s desire to balance our relations with all countries.
Balance is the key word.
Now a lot of observers will dispute this, and point to the “undiplomatic” language our President has used when describing the United States, the EU, even the United Nations in the manner by which they have “interfered” in his crusade against drug abuse.
They have excoriated him for swinging from right to left, calling this “wild swing” a “national tragedy.” They talk of “old gold” referring to America, being exchanged for the instant glitter of Chinese silver, and prospectively they think, of Russian dross.
Brash though his tactics may be, and rash though his language is, this president, our President, is pursuing balance.
For the longest time, and more so in the last six years of the Aquino presidency, our foreign policy was one of predictable unbalance. It almost always hewed to wherever the powerful US of A leaned. In many eyes, particularly among the developing nations, the Philippines was regarded unkindly as a “vassal” state of its former colonizer.
To a nationalist like Duterte, son of the first quarter storm, who read and idolized Recto, Diokno and Constantino, he is just “swinging the pendulum” from extreme right towards a central desideratum. Of course, others would say it is swinging wildly from right to left, but then again, how do you bring something to center if you do not swing to its left?
There is method in his “madness.”
Sure, many find this discombobulating. I myself sometimes wince at the language. Never before had they witnessed a Filipino leader spewing such language on the international stage, such as declaring in Beijing that he was separating from America, or before that, calling the holies of the United Nations a bunch of idiots. Or to many Fil-Ams, the unthinkable—exclaiming p…i at POTUS, mismo!
There was a time when Philippine presidents genuflected before American pro-consuls. A long-dead president spoke glowingly of an “independent” Philippines under the “wise and benevolent guidance of the great United States.” One other sitting president was rumored to have been “summoned” in the early morning to the embassy upon Dewey Boulevard (now Roxas) by its ambassador. Another allowed the resident CIA to run his campaign, and having won, kept this propagandist as one of his closest advisers.
Well, not Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Not this Filipino, the first president from Mindanao.
Many an aspiring Filipino leader would never contemplate snubbing an invitation from the ambassador of the US of A. Except Duterte.
In the run-up to the formal campaign, when noise was being created by the Davao City mayor, the pro-consuls in Roxas Boulevard dismissed the guy as just a “flash in the pan.” They did not take him seriously at all.
They invited the other contenders to have long chats with their ambassador, while they had informal talks with these aspirants’ confidantes. To their surprise and perhaps chagrin, the “flash in the pan” emerged as a serious contender after much public hemming and hawing.
By late January of 2016, they started to touch base with the guy’s friends and advisers. And sometime in March, they wanted him and their chief pro-consul to meet.
Problem was, their chief pro-consul wanted him to come visit his Forbes Park residence, an exclusive gated village of the supra-elite named appropriately in memory of an American governor-general. But the provinciano from the banana and durian farms of Mindanao refused.
It was not because of the Meiring incident, when an American blasted himself inside his hotel room in Davao while tinkering with his home-made bombs. It did rankle the Davao City mayor that days after, operatives of the US of A shanghaied Meiring from his city without any by-your-leave. But that was long ago, and Duterte knows when it is time to let bygones be bygones. In his own Bisaya terms, “dili ako mag-dumot” (I don’t hold grudges forever”). Boy Nograles and his scions are good examples.
The advisers wanted a neutral place as venue. They knew their principal would never countenance setting foot upon “foreign soil”, which is what under international diplomatic praxis, the embassy or the ambassador’s residence are.
What kind of presidential aspirant would refuse an invitation to enter the McKinley mansion of the personal representative of POTUS? I have advised some in the past who unwaveringly graced such invitation. And I know of at least two candidates for president in 2016 who did come a-visiting McKinley upon Forbes.
The pro-consuls explained that the choice of venue was dictated by “security” reasons, nothing physical, but rather, the possibility of detection and media attention when entering “neutral” places. By April though, still no meeting. Later it was communicated that a “neutral” venue could be arranged. But by then, the by-now leading candidate was extremely busy traipsing the campaign trail, hoping to approximate even half of what the competition had already visited. Schedules were very tight.
And then the “lapsus verbo,” the unintended consequences of an early-morning rally narration of how an Australian lady was brutally victimized in a hostage-taking incident in the early days of the Davao City mayor.
The American ambassador weighed-in. That was pure political intervention.
The candidate, later to be president, gave tit for tat. His political adversaries thought it was time for the kill, and whether consciously or not, the ambassador played along.
But this is not a narrative about “hugot,” which is today’s patois for “where is he coming from?”
Truth is, if you find yourself stuck in a certain position, no matter how “right,” you extricate yourself by going “left.” And then finding what ought to be center, which is the true right.
Balance is what Duterte wants to achieve. It’s not about “getting even” with someone who’s packing his bags. Nothing personal, just the national interest as a truly nationalist president sees it.