“He remains most popular.”
Many of us are very much preoccupied about whom to elect this coming May 2022 presidential election. President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has allowed the electorate to guess whether he will seek reelection. But because of fear the opposition might just create trouble by questioning his decision before the Supreme Court, it is likely he will run for vice president.
The temptation is there, and this stems from the fact that he remains most popular. The reason he is seeking reelection is a different reason from what the average voters have in mind. The Liberal Party as usual zeroes in on such issues as human rights violation, extrajudicial killings, and the extravagant expenses incurred in the name of his Build, Build, Build projects.
The communists insist on disguising themselves as nationalists, centering their attack on their favorite staple of human rights but calculated and calibrated to link the sins of the present administration to their hated Marcos regime. They tone down the US bases by substituting the issue by accusing China of illegally occupying the South China Sea and depriving our fishermen of their livelihood.
The nearest charge of the opposition against the President is the threat by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to prosecute him for the extrajudicial killings of suspects in the early years of his administration. Some believe this has somewhat jolted the President and is possibly the reason the President refuses to step down.
Many suspect that the US is behind the drumming up of the issue. Their objective is to embarrass him for alleged human rights violation but visibly connect much of it with their anti-China rhetoric to justify its geopolitical objective of isolating China in this part of the globe. Rightly applied, US partisanship against Duterte to advance and promote US position against China in this part of the globe. The Philippines, not even the opposition, is on their mind.
The only hitch is that the Duterte administration has pointed out that the US is not a signatory to the ICC even threatening to arrest any ICC prosecutor that would investigate and set foot in the US for its conduct in Iraq, for its treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo and for locking them up in secret detention centers in what is known as operation “secret rendition.”
This opposition should by now realize that the anti-Chinese support of the US is not to sympathize with them but to see to it that the issue would somehow help to stem the influence of China. The Duterte administration should be reminded that his coziness with China is the principal reason why the US engineered the ouster of President Marcos.
Today is 2021 and China’s influence is not only apparent but could be seen all over Asia. The so-called victory of the Aquino administration over our claim in the South China Sea continues to be played up both by the local and international media. Their local clappers continue to create tension by accusing China of dumping human waste and toxic waste in the South China Sea.
The defeat of the Duterte administration is foremost in the mind of the US. To US policy makers, the objective is to secure a geopolitical advantage in the South China Sea. It would seem that the first line of US defense is to ensure that the US bases in the Philippines will not be vexed or asked to leave.
Corollary to this is the US military assistance to this country. Particularly, a number of US supplied aircraft resulted in the death of many of our pilots and servicemen. Most hideous, the US keeps announcing they were given under the military assistance agreement. The latest was the crash landing of a US-built C-130 Hercules transport plane we acquired at a cost of more than P1 billion despite the fact that the aircraft has been in service since 1956. Forty-five died and 49 were injured, and their media hooters remained unusually silent.
Many political observers see that the US continues to dictate the supply of military equipment despite the fact that many are second hand, outrageously overpriced and have resulted in many fatal accidents. In fact, our defense acquisition, it says, is intended to fend off possible invasion from China.
Many of its pro-American sympathizers in the opposition, the Church, the oligarchy, and from the vacillating middle class ignore or tend to overlook Malaysia as the greatest threat to our security with respect to the disputed islands in the South China Sea and for its support to local insurgency for the Islamic separatist group. Malaysia has no rightful place in the South China Sea had it not been for the British-created federation.
The issue raised against Duterte remained calculated to affect their interest rather than to the nation where they should show their allegiance. Unfortunately, these are interests that bear no direct geopolitical interest of the US. This also explains why the opposition is hampered in putting up a credible candidate against the President.
The opposition cannot castigate the achievements of the President as propaganda. People can detect they are merely sour-groping. Despite the fact that the President affiliated himself with PDP-Laban, the party remains treated by Senator Pimentel as a private organization, to be reined in by him. The policy direction of the party is obviously on the side of such institutional pillars of reaction and conservatism.
PDP-Laban appears to be balanced but in truth, the party is a staunch supporter of US policy in this part of the globe. This column has long anticipated that PDP-Laban will support Senator Manny Pacquiao should he decide to run for president. It is not even a question of being supported by leaders like Pimentel but the US itself is aimed at promoting their newly found lackey.
This is a dilemma for admittedly China has all the financial resources to allow the President to carry out many of its projects. This also explains why the traditional party like the Nacionalista Party, a party that wooed much the President to join has suffered the same sickness of political atrophy because the leaders there suffer the same malaise of political megalomania.
Yet, CPP continues articulating an outmoded ideology anchored on anti-Americanism to entice radicalism among our people. The party reflects more of the hardheadedness of the party to respond to change contrary to their claim of being dialectical. The party today stands as the only communist party not invited by the biggest, oldest, most successful, and most powerful party in the world.
The US for its part is willing to play tango with this terrorist for as long as it will advance and promote its objective of thwarting China’s influence in the region. President Duterte experimented on this by appointing known communists into his cabinet. The trouble is that the party itself refused to avail of that window of opportunity until the unwritten modus vivendi ended in an all-out war.
Many suspect the intransigence of the communist leadership to reach a compromise was itself dictated by Washington more so after the Trump administration stepped up its anti-China rhetoric. The Philippines is now caught in the crossfire for it seems the Americans were unwilling to relent, fearing it could be interpreted as victory to China.
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