Just a week after President Duterte had returned from his state visits to China and Japan, international news outfit Reuters reported that the United States State Department has halted planned rifle sales to the Philippines. Citing information gathered from the aides of Sen. Ben Cardin—who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—the senator opposed the sale of the rifles on the grounds of the continued reports on human-rights abuses and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.
Local news outlets picked up and published the report, as Filipinos wrapped up the long All Saints’ Day weekend. It didn’t take long before the news went viral on social-media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, where most people expressed concern and worry over the cancellation of the arms sale. This was followed by reactions from Sens. Leila M. de Lima and Panfilo M. Lacson.
The former said the possible reason for the cancellation was due to the government’s “incomprehensible and ridiculous policy shift to anti-Americanism and prototalitarian Chinese hegemony in Asia.”
Lacson, on the other hand, has assured that we should not worry about losing the chance to buy from the US, as there are “tens of other countries that manufacture better and, probably, cheaper assault rifles than the US.” He also reiterated the call to revive the Department of National Defense’s (DND) self-reliance program to enable us to produce our own ammunition and firearms.
Yet, despite assurances from Lacson of alternative sources and the ability to produce our own, some people on social media reacted negatively to the news, expressing fears that the cancellation of the sale would severely impact our national security and our law-enforcement organizations. Social-media users a week earlier also reacted negatively over reducing our dependence from the US, using the famous “Ma Ling and Spam analogy”.
In that analogy, reducing dependence is the same as substituting a can of Spam with Ma Ling, a product perceived to be inferior. But does the Philippines really stand to lose from this canceled deal in the long run?
Unbeknown to younger generations, the Philippines once produced its own rifles under the former Self-Reliance Defense Posture in the 1970s. Under license from Colt, for example, Elisco Tool Manufacturing Co. produced the M-16 assault rifle for the Armed Forces and was able in 1983, with government help, to purchase the ArmaLite brand, its facilities and machinery, and model-range lock, stock and barrel.
Although the program of self-manufacturing has ended, the Philippines still has companies—both old and new—that have the expertise and capabilities of providing the firearms government agencies require. The government needs to create and then implement a new defense industrial policy to effectively determine a public-private agenda in order not to completely depend on foreigners to supply our needs.
This new wake-up call is an opportunity and not a misfortune. It is only a matter of how we approach the situation, and what we do with it. Every situation that the nation encounters, which we can then move forward from with greater independence, is better for the future.
1 comment
If he thinks other countries would get him better and cheaper weapons then that makes him stupid for going to the USA for weapons in the first place