"The march toward democratic rule takes years; it comes in many shapes and forms."
"The march toward democratic rule takes years; it comes in many shapes and forms."
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. is right. There is no way the Philippines, or any self-respecting nation for that matter, specially those belonging to ASEAN of which the country and Myanmar are members can endorse the declaration of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR) calling for the release of ousted and detained Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Ki with all the accompanying arrangements, spoken or otherwise, that intervention required.
Joining China, Russia, Venezuela and Bolivia among UNHCR members dissociating from the UNHCR statement, Locsin echoed the fundamental principles adopted by ASEAN members noting that while it backed Myanmar’s progress towards democracy, the Philippines believed in its neighbor’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Said Locsin: “As a sovereign country in a world of sovereign states, the Philippines cannot stress strongly enough the primacy of national internal efforts towards democratic reforms, and never by the imposition of foreign solutions whether in regional or multilateral contexts, including through this Council.”
In an earlier statement, Locsin strongly criticized members of the European Union who brought the case of Myanmar before the UNHCR calling them “hypocrites.” He noted that these countries themselves brought about this latest development as they virtually stripped Aung San Suu Ki’s moral standing when they sniped at her “passivity” in the case of the Rohingya refugee crisis while continually haranguing Myanmar’s “slow progress towards democratic rule” in the process despite that country’s efforts to do so after years of military rule.
Indeed, it is patently uncalled for for any sovereign state, no matter how powerful and influential it maybe, to impose its own ways and beliefs on others without at the very least recognizing the latter’s internal situation and historical development. The march toward democratic rule takes years; it comes in many shapes and forms. It cannot and should not be a one-size-fits-all undertaking. One country’s “democratic governance” may be another country’s “authoritarian rule.” Of all countries, Western nations should be the first to recognize the same, having gone through years and years of struggle to put together their own systems and institutions of democratic governance.
This is why it is necessary to call these countries out to restrain themselves and refrain from imposing their will and interfering in the internal affairs of other sovereign states. This was precisely what Locsin himself advised when he emphatically noted “non-interference” as a cardinal rule in his first reaction to the military takeover.
The Philippines, Locsin said, “has been very supportive of Myanmar’s progress towards a fuller democracy and cognizant of the Army’s role in preserving its territorial integrity and national security, as well as the unifying role of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in the history of the country and Army her father founded. The realization of this democratic process can only be achieved through the complete restoration of the status quo ante.”
In making that statement, Locsin merely reiterated the fundamental principles governing the relations among ASEAN Member States as contained in the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (TAC) of 1976. Otherwise known as The Manila Declaration, the accord listed six such basic principles as follows:
• Mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, and national identity of all nations;
• The right of every State to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion or coercion;
• Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;
• Settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful manner;
• Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and
• Effective cooperation among themselves.
With these principles on hand, need we say more about the recent developments in Myanmar except to urge the country’s leaders to bring the nation together and proceed with the struggle towards the kind of democracy that best exemplifies the nation’s heritage and historic rights while preserving its territorial integrity and enhancing its national security?