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The
Philippines has become the collateral damage in the
heating proxy war between the US and China for dominance
in the region. In effect, this is what former Senate
President Frank Drilon is saying when he parlayed the
juicy “inside story” on the Philippine-China deals,
particularly the Spratlys issue as told to him in
confidence by two senior Arroyo administration officials
in 2005.
Quoting
former Foreign Affairs secretary and now Philippine
Ambassador to Japan Domingo Siazon Jr., Drilon said the
United States is “pissed off with the China deals signed
by the Philippines, including the joint seismic study in
the South China Sea.”
That
study, known as the joint marine seismic undertaking (JMSU),
was signed by the national oil companies of the
Philippines, China and Vietnam. It was earlier hailed as
a breakthrough in dealing with the long-standing dispute
over ownership and use of the reported riches in and
around the Spratly Islands, which are being claimed by
the three signatories plus Malaysia, Brunei and even
Taiwan.
Earlier,
Drilon poured more fuel into the burning issue when he
said that then-Presidential Legal Counsel and now
Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez sought his counsel on how
to ease the pressure allegedly being applied on her at
that time by then-Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. to issue a
favorable opinion on the JMSU’s legality. It was a
revelation which has engendered even more speculations
about the raging controversies surrounding almost all
Philippine-China deals.
By
teasing us with these “stories” more than two years
after the fact, Drilon reinforced the lingering public
view that prior to his breakup with Malacañang, de
Venecia was acting as the padrino or godfather of
these deals. Whew!
That
gives another twist to these deals, which can only
further degrade our enhanced and favorable relations
with China, our big neighbor and No. 1 trading partner.
Which is a pity, of course, since we are all aware of
the costs of such a downgrade, especially at a time when
the US, Japan and even Europe are themselves mired in
the economic doldrums and are therefore unable to lend a
hand in sustaining our development.
But that
“hot” story about our relations with China will have to
wait another day.
Both
Siazon and Gutierrez have since denied having talked to
Drilon about the Spratlys and other
China
deals at all. So has de Venecia went out of his way to
accuse Drilon of being a rumormonger and himself a
notorious padrino of questionable
foreign-assisted projects? He cited the findings of an
inquiry into the irregularities which reportedly
attended the construction of the Iloilo International
Airport. That de Venecia counterpoint, if true, only
shows that almost all “big-ticket” deals in this
country, especially of the official development
assistant-type, are graft-prone, and that corruption is
politically neutral as it involves all sizes and
stripes.
But what
is even more disturbing is the fact that Drilon’s
revelations merely reinforces the view that there is
more to the heated controversy surrounding the national
broadband network (NBN)/ZTE, Spratlys and other China
deals than meets the eye.
Our
American Big Brother does not look kindly at the warming
Philippine-China relations and is doing everything to
overturn the enhanced relations even to the point of
undermining our very sovereignty and democratic
processes. That includes muddying the waters on the
so-called graft-ridden deals, or using its resources and
assets, in and out of government, to promote instability
or inject a sense of despair to lay the groundwork for
subverting our institutions, or even the duly
constituted authority, among others.
In fine,
what
America
is telling one and all is: break out from our bear hug
and you are a goner.
If that
is so—as seems to be the case with the confluence of
events leading to an agitated and tension-filled
atmosphere, and the dogged, if not increasingly hostile
and fighting, demands of all kinds of groups, including
known American boys and girls coming out of the
woodworks—then you will understand why the Joey de
Venecia-Jun Lozada circus and its attendant drama is not
going to die down anytime soon.
If, by
any chance, it dies down, you can be sure that another,
more atrocious “controversy” crops up. By the time we
know it, we have been so weakened we will be ready for
the picking and back into Uncle Sam’s bear hug all over
again.
We just
hope that the hug will not be such that we will lose all
our balls and our self-respect in the process. Talk
about the makings of a “Banana Republic,” as the late
Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma warned before the Estrada
fall in 2001. All because we have pissed off “Big
Brother.”
And the
fishing goes on
Which
brings us to the “word war” now engulfing the “search
for truth” on the NBN/ZTE controversy as Sen. Panfilo
Lacson readies his next “witness” for the hearing on
Tuesday.
In a
strongly worded riposte to the shrill claims of the
“Resign” columns that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference
of the Philippines (CBCP) is deeply divided and that it
was the “Mindanao bishops” who saved the day for Mrs.
Arroyo, former CBCP president and Cotabato Bishop
Orlando Quevedo debunked such claims and countered that
the bishops are one in the view that the present process
is flawed.
Said
Quevedo: “The image of a divided hierarchy could be a
media creation. Four or five bishops with a contrary
opinion receive a lot of disproportionate media
exposure. Yet, bishops with such contrary opinions
constitute less than 10 percent of the whole hierarchy.
The unity of the bishops has always been there even at
the time when they issued the statement that they were
not asking for the resignation of the President on July
10, 2005.”
That
view has since been validated by no less than Archbishop
Oscar Cruz, one of those mentioned as having a contrary
opinion, when he insisted that he will not be gagged by
the majority’s unanimity in junking resign.
But it
was the Cotabato bishop’s take on the ongoing Senate
inquiry and the “search” process that was even more
emphatic, as he noted that “. . . the present process of
arriving at the truth is seriously flawed for a number
of reasons, which includes views that the Senate has
become a partisan venue for the opposition to pile
charges upon charges, proven or not, for their own
political interests. . . .”
This
view has since taken off as more and more people get
pissed off with the piecemeal, helter-skelter manner by
which the Senate has been indulging itself on the
controversies du jour. Sayang. |
