Amid the hardships brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite the health, political and economic challenges the Philippines is facing in its post-pandemic development trajectory, resolving our West Philippine Sea (WPS) row with China peacefully must be a priority because this would be a win-win solution for all Filipinos.
On a personal note, as Chairman of the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI), I believe that the sentiment of the country’s business and industry sector is for a peaceful resolution of the Philippine-Sino territorial dispute, amid rising tensions at the West Philippine Sea.
A widely discussed topic today that is related to our WPS territorial dispute with China were the backchannel meetings of former Sen. Antonio Trillanes with top Chinese officials during the April 2012 Scarborough standoff between the Philippine Navy cutter BRP Gregorio del Pilar and two Chinese surveillance ships. The Chinese surveillance vessels took position at the mouth of the lagoon to prevent a BRP Gregorio Del Pilar team from taking into custody several Chinese fishing boats caught illegally extracting corals, giant clams and live sharks from the shoal.
In an earlier television interview, Trillanes said, “tagumpay ang backchanneling” (the backchanneling was a success). However, I am confused, if not amused that Trillanes could claim “tagumpay” (success), when we don’t even know the purpose and what transpired in those meetings. He never explained anything to the Filipino people. I find it repulsive for him to think that Filipinos are too naïve to take his “tagumpay” claim at face value. The former senator should have been more circumspect with his words.
Borrowing the statement of a prosecutor who was not an acquaintance of this columnist when he dismissed a libel case filed against me, he said, “The stature of a person is not what he says he is. It is what other people say he is.” With that, I find Trillanes’s “tagumpay” claim on his backchannel talks with Chinese officials a misnomer, if not self-serving.
First, for a credible measure of the backchannel talks’ rate of success, it is not for Trillanes alone to say that the talks were successful, but the people as well. Second, except for former President Benigno Aquino III and perhaps a select few, nobody knows about the former senator’s goals in those talks. So, how can Trillanes be rated for his “success” in the backchannel talks, when we don’t even know the things he was supposed to attain in those meetings?
And lastly, if Trillanes’s claim that his backchannel talks with Chinese officials were indeed “tagumpay”, why was he not tapped or utilized in the succeeding efforts of the Aquino administration to resolve the country’s WPS row with China?
Like my radio co-host and former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, we’re all groping for answers on what was Trillanes’s role in those talks. Claiming that he was only required to report the details of his backchannel talks with China to then President Benigno Aquino III could be a Constitutional Oversight, if not an Unconstitutional Overreach. I suppose the former senator is aware that “sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.”
As such, being a duly elected senator during the backchannel talks, with his cloak of sovereign authority at that time, Trillanes should tell the nation the boons and banes of these talks. This would not only enable the Filipinos to measure whether Trillanes’s backchannel talks were “tagumpay” or not. But most importantly, he would be performing his responsibility to keep the people that elected him into office informed about developments affecting the nation’s security and integrity.
Dr. Jesus Lim Arranza is the chairman of the Federation of Philippine Industries and Fight Illicit Trade; a broad-based, multisectoral movement intended to protect consumers, safeguard government revenues and shield legitimate industries from the ill effects of smuggling.
4 comments
TAGUMPAY – TAGO SUMPAY.
TAGUMPAY = TAGO SUMPAY
Baka tagumpay kasi kumita siya na malaki
Tagumpay siya sa sarili niyang mundong baluktot.