“They lost their sense of decency to recall that the person they are going to deal with now is the son of the president they ousted from power in 1986, and even filed contempt charges against the current President they now badly want to talk with.”
It was absurd and undiplomatic for US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to ask President Marcos about the stand of the Philippines with regard to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
It was asking the President the obvious that Blinken himself knows the answer.
It was insulting to ask Marcos, knowing that the Philippines is not a party to the issue that divides China and Taiwan today.
Blinken should have refrained from asking the question, knowing it was US Speaker Nancy Pelosi who created the tension by visiting Taiwan.
China would simply not set idly how the US openly reneged on its promise to keep a One China policy.
The question raised by Blinken may appear to be an innocent one, but the US wants to entrap BBM by compelling the country to side with Taiwan, which was purposely created by Pelosi’s unauthorized visit.
In substance, if one will realistically assess our military agreement with the US, we can say that it has been rendered functus oficio by the changing events taking place in the region.
American diplomats have become shameless emissaries to what their government wants to convey.
They lost their sense of decency to recall that the person they are going to deal with now is the son of the president they ousted from power in 1986, and even filed contempt charges against the current President they now badly want to talk with.
Such is an incomparable hypocrisy, so brutal that it even has the gall to remind us that any defense pact agreement we have with them must cover the whole area of South China Sea.
Today, the Philippines stands as an unwilling ally of the US.
What this supposed ally did in engineering the ouster of our government is incomparable in the annuals of diplomacy.
As one would put it, the Philippines remains a docile ally of the US.
Some believe the purpose of Blinken’s visit was to put pressure on our President to visit the US, possibly to coincide his speech at the UN General Assembly this September.
The meeting with President Joe Biden would appear coincidental and not a choreographed meeting.
In that, Blinken makes the US appear more important than BBM’s meeting with the Chinese leadership.
The US tries to erase that ignominious chapter in its conduct of diplomatic relations that not so long ago the US abducted the First family, including the duly elected President to Hawaii and there filed so many trumped-up charges against them.
The script of the US plan is to make BBM a classic example of the proverbial biblical prodigal son because the possible meeting with Biden would now appear as far more important than giving courtesy to China which has respected our sovereignty, not requested any military base, and has surpassed the US in economic assistance to uplift the country.
Now the US is invoking paragraph 2 of Article 5 of EDCA that we have to repay for whatever improvements the US made for their stay in this country.
They carefully planned the meeting with Biden to coincide with the possible visit of the President Marcos to New York.
Such is a desperate scenario of wanting to maintain an ally in Asia, being the only country it colonized at the turn of the century.
The possible meeting is more symbolical as it conveys many things.
First, the meeting between Biden and BBM is an attempt to resurrect the status of the US as a disgraced ally that many pro-Americans in this country hope to ideologically rejuvenate.
Second, the possible meeting is a slap on the face of China’s leadership as more important than the avowed policy declaration made by former Presidents Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., and President Duterte.
Third, the possible meeting would completely set aside the importance of the issues raised against the US.
Being in their turf, the US is expected to call the shots on the issue affecting its military bases here.
Fourth, the pending issue of joint oil exploration between the Philippines and China, which was unreasonably abrogated by Teodoro Locsin, and our conflicting claims with China in the South China Sea, will be conveniently set aside.
Fifth, China will be greatly offended by the unwarranted sliding down of its position as friend of the Philippines, and this will affect the pending economic development assistance offered by China and the position laid down by President Marcos himself that the Philippines will, in the conduct of its foreign policy, open its windows with the socialist bloc including China.
Today, the argument of the US is typical of the increasing nastiness of the US diplomats.
It is reflective of their economic inability to conduct a sound foreign policy.
Historically, President BBM adopted the policy laid down by his father which is to firmly demand the gradual dismantling of the US military bases based on what was signed in the Johnson-Marcos communique during his visit to Washington in 1966 now restated in Article XVIII, Section 25 of the 1987 Constitution.
In the last book written by the late President himself, he said renegotiation should not be centered on the bases but should include the term for which they will be allowed to stay, which was reduced from 99 years to 25 years, the number of bases allowed to operate from an original of more than 25 to two at the signing of the agreement.
President Marcos Sr.’s negotiators were meticulous in such items that would constitute the final agreement, foremost was amount of rent, the reduction in the number of hectarage used, criminal jurisdiction over the bases, taxation of imported items by US personnel, and the collective bargaining agreement of Filipinos working inside the US bases.
The US vehemently objected to Philippine demand for payment of rent, saying the demand would serve as precedent to other countries.
The US panel offered instead economic assistance for which the Philippines was able to obtain a substantial amount of more 700 million dollars in a span of five years.
After the installation of their lackey in 1986, the US wasted no time seeking the return of their bases and restoring all the privileges they enjoyed.
They initially offered President Estrada the idea of Visiting Forces Agreement.
Originally, the visit envisioned that US forces will once in a while drop anchor in the Philippines like a jail warden counting the number of prisoners in his custody.
The visit gradually became regular and later became permanent until such time that they demanded the right to build structures and facilities for their “visiting” forces.
The subsequent agreement entered into by the Philippines with the US erased all the precedent setting provisions such as the period for their stay in the country, payment for the use of the bases, jurisdiction over those soldiers that violate Philippine laws, payment of electricity, and water consumption.
Since the US termed the stay of their forces here under the category of “visiting forces,” we should insist that we should never accept the condition of making their stay permanent or accept the proposition that they are here to defend us against anybody or compel us to pay for whatever permanent structures and facilities they built.
(rpkapunan@gmail.com)
