A weakling’s response

 

 

It was an apology that wasn’t an apology. Worse yet, a weakling’s show of remorse after wilting to pressure from a foreign government that has no diplomatic relations with the Philippines.

 

The Taiwan government rejected as insincere the apology issued by Philippine President Benigno Aquino III for the shooting death of a Taiwanese fisherman last May 9 on Philippine waters just north of the island of Batanes. Taiwan’s premier Ma Ying-jeou rallied his countrymen to “prepare for a prolonged war” as he announced a slew of sanctions to be imposed against the Philippine government, which included an immediate ban on the recruitment of Filipino workers, the recall of the Taiwanese representative in Manila and an order to the Philippine envoy in Taipei to return home.

 

Taiwanese fishermen burn Philippine flag as they  protest inTaipei last May 13
against the killing of a local fisherman by the Philippine Coast Guard. Click link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G0T0d_AbUk to view Taiwan vs. Philippines
(The Fishing War) - Golden Retriever vs. Chihuaha.

More sanctions from the Taiwan government could be expected such as the suspension of economic and trade relations between the two nations and a ban on tourism travel to the Philippines. All sanctions considered, both countries will be hard-pressed, although the Philippines will be hit hard most.

 

Taiwan is behaving like a great power that looks down on little countries in Asia like the Philippines. One foreign observer noted that even India is a small country in Taiwan’s eyes.

 

Taiwan doesn’t want just an apology but also to conduct its own investigation of the shooting incident. President Noynoy Aquino has blinked first, exposing his obvious lack of preparedness to face a diplomatic row similar to his handling of the Rizal Park hostage-taking incident in 2010 involving Chinese citizens from Hong Kong.

 

Foreign policy appears to be the weakest chink in President Aquino’s armour. After being rattled by Chinese bullying in the South China Sea, Aquino had to run to America, his former colonial master, for help. Spurned by the ASEAN for his proposal for a united stand against China in the South China Sea conflict, President Aquino went alone for an international arbitration of the dispute which would most likely prolong the impasse instead of solving it. To date, China continues its aggressive behaviour in intruding in Philippine territory in the South China Sea and President Aquino could do nothing but issue empty reassurances that the Philippines has the capability to repel any foreign intervention.

 

When the ragtag army of the self-proclaimed Sultan of Sulu attempted to recover Sabah which it claims has been the sultanate’s property all along last March, President Aquino again could not do anything but watch in horror as Filipino Muslims were massacred by the Malaysian military. This just proves President Aquino’s weakest suit as Taiwan now takes its turn in bullying the Philippines.

 

The Philippine government has acquiesced to Taiwan’s demand that it conduct its own investigation of the shooting incident in the Bashi Channel where the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of both countries overlap. In agreeing to a parallel probe, the Philippines has waved the white flag although it has also allowed Hong Kong the same right to jointly investigate the hostage-taking incident in 2010. At least, Hong Kong is part of China which has diplomatic relations with the Philippines. But one wonders why the Philippine government didn’t demand that Malaysia similarly accede to a joint investigation of the Sultan of Sulu’s failed foray on Malaysian land?

 

There are reports that Filipino workers in Taiwan are being subjected to physical assaults and harassment as Taiwan’s nationalistic jingoism heats up. The interests and protection of Filipino workers must have weighed heavily on President Aquino’s mind in giving in to Taiwan’s demand for a joint investigation rather than defending the country’s territorial integrity. This kind of father-figure was sorely lacking in the President Aquino’s diplomatic stance during the massacre of Filipino Muslims in Malaysia last March.

 

Besides an official apology and a joint investigation by Taiwan and the Philippines, the Taiwanese government is also demanding compensation for the fisherman’s family, punishment for the guilty and bilateral talks over a fisheries agreement to avoid similar incidents. In other words, Taiwan is dictating the terms of an acceptable resolution, leaving the Philippine government with nothing to do but comply. But these are not preconditions in promoting diplomatic peace and harmony. Instead, these are terms coming from a position of arrogance.

 

If international relations would be carried out unilaterally, then such relations should be called by another name. Taiwan is behaving badly and its reaction to the shooting incident is way out of proportion, especially for a country which has not been officially recognized by its neighbours in the region.

 

In allowing its citizens to turn their nationalistic anger toward Filipino workers who are fully blameless, Taiwan is committing xenophobia and racial intolerance. Is Taiwan actually gearing up for war? It’s ludicrous to think so.

 

Should the safety and security of Filipino workers in Taiwan be the Philippines’ primary concern, the government should prepare a plan to repatriate these workers and not simply caution them about limiting their visibility that could further enrage the citizens of Taiwan. Just like in previous wars such as those in Iraq and Libya, the Philippine government immediately took steps to repatriate Filipino overseas workers caught in danger’s way. The government should not vacillate and worry about the loss of jobs and dollar remittances. Nothing is more important than the safety of Filipino workers, especially when Taiwan is ratcheting up its threat of a “prolonged war” with the Philippines.

 

Never mind that Taiwan is the Philippines’ fourth largest source of remittances from Asia. Or Taiwan was the fifth largest source of foreign tourists (216,511) last year. Or Taiwan was the Philippines’ ninth biggest trading partner and eighth largest source of foreign investments.

 

The Philippine government does not deserve to be treated in an arrogant and high-handed manner by Taiwan. It has continued to treat Taiwan as a friend by maintaining economic and trade relations despite of the One-China Policy. Is there any more room left to allow diplomacy to work?

Amid row with China, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III announces
$1.8 billion military upgrade vs. "bullies."

Allowing Taiwan to conduct a parallel probe of the shooting incident is demoralizing to the Philippine Coast Guard in particular, but also establishes a wrong precedent. From now on, we could expect foreign governments to demand that they conduct their own investigation of any shenanigans committed by their nationals on Philippine soil or waters. When Filipino citizens are victims of crimes or suspects of criminal wrongdoing abroad, never has the Philippine government demanded that its National Bureau of Investigation be allowed to conduct its own probe. Our NBI does not act in the same way as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation or the CIA when American interests are at jeopardy abroad. We just don’t have the ability and resources, and we are only a small nation and our timidity is only natural and to be expected.

 

But at least the Philippine government can use diplomacy by requesting the safe repatriation of Filipino workers when they are unnecessarily placed in harm’s way. There is no substitute for the safety and lives of our overseas workers, and this should be the single and most important factor that the president must consider.

 

If it would mean a significant drop in foreign remittances by overseas Filipino workers, then that it is the price we must pay. Maybe this a wake-up call for the government to concentrate its efforts in generating jobs instead of prostituting our skilled workers overseas. It’s about time for our government economic planners to realize that overreliance on foreign remittances is not the best way to strengthen the economy. In addition to promoting job growth, the government should redirect its economic priorities in developing local industry which is necessary to arrest the foreign drain of talents because this is the most effective way of achieving full employment.

 

The real test of an effective national leader is not solely his ability to win elections for his party. If this is so, then President Aquino must be a good and strong leader and he has passed the test.

 

But when his countrymen are being slaughtered in a foreign land or when a foreign government tells him his apology is not enough, that he should accept the foreign state’s demands or else face more sanctions, then that president must be lacking of courage and will to stand up for his country. In any estimation, that president is a weakling.

Southern discomfort

 

 

Last October 15, 2012, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak were all smiles as they posed for posterity with members of the peace panels for the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who had just signed their framework agreement for peace. Hopes were high that finally peace would be within reach after so many years of fighting with the adoption of an historic agreement laying the framework for a new Muslim autonomous region to be called Bangsamoro.

President Benigno Aquino III does his "noynoying" on the recent Sabah
standoff. Photo courtesy of The Tribune Editorial cartoon. Click link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WKHztMo04 to view President
Aquino's Press Conference  on the Sabah Issue.

President Aquino was relying on the Bangsamoro framework agreement as the lasting legacy of his presidency, a grand peace initiative that has eluded his predecessors. A major achievement, more significant probably than anything else like his symbolic campaign against corruption. Likewise, Malaysian PM Razak was optimistic that his high-profile role as broker for peace would clinch his re-election in the coming Malaysian elections. It was friendship and cooperation, both symbolic and statesman-like, between the two leaders that would have cast them as rising leaders of the Southeast Asian nations.

 

Everything was going according to plan until the Sabah standoff. Who would have thought the old claim of the Sultan of Sulu over Sabah was like a posterior itch that wouldn’t go away? What about the Malaysian PM’s brokering for peace, was he really sincere in bringing the warring parties to an agreement or simply taking advantage of the opportunity to score points for his re-election? And how about the unmasking of President Aquino’s lack of leadership during the crisis and his inability to protect his own people?

 

Even if the Malaysian military is able to comb out all the supporters of the Sultan of Sulu in Sabah, all dead rather than alive by their preference, this will still be a great debacle for the Malaysian PM that could cost him his re-election. President Aquino, for his initial subservient position to Malaysia’s stand and rebuke of the Sultan’s armed incursion into our neighbour’s backyard, would always be painted by many as the one president who gave up his own people to the wolves. No matter how one looks at this crisis, both leaders would find it very difficult to escape the wrath of their respective citizens.

 

Malaysia is reported to be deporting close to 800,000 Filipinos from Sabah, all Muslims and former residents of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi who have originally escaped from the internecine war between the Philippine military and Muslim insurgents in Mindanao. Most of these Filipinos now possess citizenship cards which were granted by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammad Mahathir in an alleged effort to secure political domination of the state by using immigrant votes.

 

A royal commission was established by the Malaysian federal government to investigate illegal immigration in Sabah which could have accounted for the surge in its population. The recent military confrontation between Malaysia and the Sultan of Sulu’s army may hamper this investigation or facilitate the deportation of Filipino Muslims from Sabah as they now appear to be returning to Sulu and Tawi-Tawi by the hundreds daily. This could also seriously spoil the re-election of the current Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak as he faces strong criticism for his government’s handling of the Sabah stand-off and the manner of exodus of Muslim Filipinos.

 

President Benigno Aquino III might be the biggest loser from this Sabah bloodbath. His hands have been tied by his friendship with the Malaysian PM for helping the Philippine government broker a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Aquino’s initial pronouncements on the Sabah conflict were all carefully crafted to support the actions of the Malaysian government against the Sultan of Sulu’s army. Even as the sultan’s soldiers were getting annihilated, all Aquino could muster to do was berate the sultan like a child and order him to withdraw his troops. Aquino even threatened to extradite the sultan to Malaysia with whom the Philippines does not have an extradition treaty. Instead of resorting to diplomacy in order to negotiate a ceasefire and possibly a face-saving pull-out of the sultan’s army, Aquino opted to let Malaysia handle the situation unilaterally even if it meant killing all the sultan’s soldiers.

 

Allowing your own people to get massacred, is this the kind of statesmanship expected of a president? Especially, when your people are up in arms in order to redress an arguably legitimate grievance.

 

Nobody expected President Aquino to embrace the sultan’s war, but when the situation has deteriorated to a crisis of humanitarian proportions, the better angels of our human nature dictate that we summon everything possible to save lives. We rally to the side of humanity, for saving lives is more important than any military victory at the expense of loss of human lives. We don’t keep denigrating the sultan’s decision to send his army however senseless it was when our Muslim brothers are getting killed. Or we don’t write opinion columns like Conrado de Quiros who keeps on describing the sultan’s military misadventure as idiotic, foolish and an utter waste. De Quiros continues to call the sultan’s incursion in Sabah as tragic and farcical in order to absolve President Aquino of any culpability for not doing anything during the crisis.

 

The Sultan of Sulu had always been victimized by a history of deception and trickery by colonial powers. In July 1878, Spain entered into a Treaty of Peace with the sultan which allowed them to set up a small garrison in the town of Jolo. Under the said treaty, the sultan would retain his rule outside the walls of the Spanish garrison. But that kind of protectorate relationship would be exploited by Spain in ceding the Philippine Islands to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which included the Sulu islands and territories in Mindanao which had never been in full Spanish control. The sultan thought that the agreement with the Spaniards was similar to the one he signed six months earlier with the British North Borneo Chartered Company, which paid him $5,000 annually for the use of his North Borneo territories (now Sabah). This is now the same lease agreement being invoked by the present Sultan of Sulu in reviving its claim over Sabah.

 

Students from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City rally
for peace in Sabah, Borneo. Photo Aaron Favila/AP.

After their defeat by the U.S., the Spaniards turned over a garrison on the island of Siasi, southwest of Jolo, to the sultan. It was not until May 1899 that the U.S. troops took over the Spanish fort in Jolo. The Americans had not been able to get troops to Jolo sooner because they could not afford to send any troops outside of Luzon where they had been locked in a fierce battle with Filipino insurgents.

 

When the Americans arrived in Jolo, they told Jamalul Kiram II, the sultan of Sulu, that the U.S. had taken over the islands from Spain. They asked the sultan to recognize the U.S. and honour the 1878 provisions of the treaty which the sultan had signed with Spain. But the sultan refused, stating that the U.S. was a different entity and that the U.S. should enter into a new treaty with the Sultanate.

 

So the Americans negotiated the Bates Treaty of 1899 with the Sultan of Sulu, which turned out to be a classic example of American deception and how to use treaties in disingenuous ways. The Bates Treaty granted some degree of autonomy and protection to the Sulu Sultanate, effectively keeping them out of the Philippine-American War which was peaking in Luzon at that time. But once that war had ended, the terms of the Bates Treaty were broken which the United States considered an impediment to their colonial administration. American troops moved to bring the Moro territories under American military control, leading to the Moro War which would last for thirteen years, making it the longest war in U.S. history.

 

It was the wording relating to American sovereignty in the Bates Treaty and a critical error in its translation that the U.S. capitalized on in incorporating the Sulu archipelago into the new Philippine republic in 1946 when it granted independence to the Philippines. Thus, the Bates Treaty was in effect the first step towards the dissolution of Muslim sovereignty and the dismantling of the Sulu Sultanate.

 

History seems to repeat itself with the present Philippine government under President Aquino doing a Bates Treaty déjà vu. In entering into a peace agreement with the MILF for a new Bangsamoro nation, the government is effectively bringing the Sulu Sultanate to a final closure. The proposed Bangsamoro substate will be the new Muslim domain, all the lands to be incorporated in this new territory will all be subject to the Bangsamoro government; the Sulu Sultanate and all the lands under its former realm will be part of this new substate, thus reducing the southern Muslim kingdom to a mere historical footnote.

 

Maybe this is the primary reason behind the sultan’s military foray in Sabah, to let President Aquino and the rest of the Muslim world in the South know that the Sulu Sultanate will not allow any new government such as the proposed Bangsamoro to simply ignore them as if they never existed. History is on the side of the Sultanate of Sulu which has antedated even the Republic of the Philippines, or its colonial governments under Spain and the United States. If this is the case, then President Aquino has dug a very deep hole. The government’s peace accord with the MILF is in serious trouble, and the peace-building initiative in Mindanao that has proved so elusive in the past will have suffered yet another major setback.

Betraying Sabah

 

 

In possibly his last redemptive hour, the beleaguered dictator Ferdinand Marcos ordered the military to disperse without shooting the millions of people that gathered on EDSA in those two fateful days of the People Power Revolution. With his raspy voice almost inaudible, the dictator’s order was captured on television while giving his instructions to General Fabian Ver, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

 

The Malaysian military conducts house-to-house search in Sabah for the Sultan of
Sulu's men as the sultan (Sultan  of Sulu Jamalul Kiram III, foreground) declared
unilateral ceasefire. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdvnfrkIWM4 to
view "Malaysia raids Sabah village to end stand-off."

Imagine if the soldiers had instead fired at the huge throng of demonstrators. Or the tanks deployed by the army unleashed their artillery toward the unarmed mass of protesters. Or the helicopters hovering above fired their guns on the people assembled in front of Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo. No doubt, that could have been the mother of all carnage.

 

If that tragic ending happened, would Conrado de Quiros of the Philippine Daily Inquirer be writing there was “fringe” painted all over those “revolucionarios” just like the way he described the Lapiang Malaya Massacre of 1967 and the current Sabah shootout between the Sultan of Sulu’s army and the Malaysian military?

Unarmed, some with their families and children in tow, the demonstrators in EDSA were virtually exposed to harm’s way. It would have been so easy for De Quiros to call the EDSA uprising a tragic farce if it ended tragically. But as history unfolded, the EDSA revolt had the sweetest ending one would have ever imagined, a victorious unarmed people’s uprising against a heavily geared-up Armed Forces of the Philippines. No bloodshed, no casualty, no accounts of anyone wounded, except for sunburn, hundreds of thousands of hoarse throats, and swollen toes from pounding the EDSA concrete.

 

In 1967, Valentin delos Santos and his 380 Lapiang Malaya followers, armed with bolos and wearing amulets which they believed would protect them from harm, charged at the Malacanang gates to overthrow the government of Ferdinand Marcos. A phalanx of policemen and members of the Philippine Constabulary stopped them with gunfire from their M-16s. The carnage ended with 33 dead and 47 wounded, all members of Lapiang Malaya. Their leader Valentin delos Santos was sent to the National Center for Mental Health instead of prison.

 

De Quiros wrote that the recent foray of the Sultan’s army in Sabah was no different from the Lapiang Malaya assault of Malacanang in 1967. Both tragic and farcical, he said in his column. For good measure, De Quiros should have added the Katipunan’s launching of the Philippine Revolution against Spain in Pugad Lawin in 1896. Similarly armed only with bolos and their brave hearts, the Katipuneros must also be out of their wits that they could defeat the Spanish military with what they had.

 

Or perhaps, the adventurous Argentine forces that invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands on April 2, 1982, which prompted the British government to dispatch their navy to engage the Argentines and retake the islands. The Falkland Wars lasted 74 days and ended with the surrender of the Argentine forces, which returned the islands to British control. Did the Argentines act in desperation, madly thinking they could match the naval superiority of the British?

 

Why does Hamas keep on firing missiles from the Gaza Strip to Israel knowing that would only raise the ire of the powerful Israeli army which is always prepared to launch a counteroffensive and invasion of Hamas territory? Or why on earth do Palestinians and Israelis continue to engage in an internecine war without victory for either of them or lasting peace in sight for the region?

 

Writing about the Prussian campaigns of 1793 and 1794, Carl von Clausewitz had recognized war as a political phenomenon, fought for a purpose that was political, or at least always had political consequences. The recent Sabah incursion, the 60’s Lapiang Malaya assault, the invasion of the Falkland Islands and the continuing Hamas incursions on Israeli territory are not motivated by sheer madness or led by people who were simply on the fringe as De Quiros would conveniently suggest. No matter how commentators conclude their observations after the fact, the one thing that always stands out is the political nature or consequences of these military adventures, successful or not.

 

The Lapiang Malaya massacre, for instance, brought out the brutality of disproportionate response to an attack that was doomed to fail in the first instance. Why use the heavy arsenal of lethal weapons against knife-wielding attackers when they could have been dispersed by water cannons?

 

Lapiang Malaya consisted mainly of poor peasants who were disillusioned with their perceived oppression by the government and the continuing evil influence of Western powers. When their demand that Ferdinand Marcos step down was rejected, they took the matter into their hands and launched a frenzied siege of Malacanang. Nuts, yes, but the government’s response was beyond insane and inhumane.

 

Now that the Sultan of Sulu has declared a ceasefire, although unilaterally while the United Nations has also called for peace talks instead of continued violence, the arduous task begins in deconstructing the Sultan’s frame of mind and why he went bonkers, as many would like to suggest, such as De Quiros for example. Surely the Sultan knew that his supposed invasion of Sabah will not succeed, at least in the strict military sense. But why would he sacrifice the lives of his few good men? This is what De Quiros cannot fathom, thus he dismissed the military incursion as a farcical and insane adventure. De Quiros even suggested that the Sultan’s unwise decision to dispatch his army would have the lingering effect of jeopardizing the government’s initiative to forge peace with our Muslim brothers in the South. Perhaps, even rob President Benigno Aquino III of the glitter and international admiration of a possible Nobel Peace Prize, according to De Quiros.

 

The Sultan’s military misadventure obviously has a political purpose, if not at least the political consequence of disrupting the government’s implementation of the last piece of the peace plan with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

 

Political, in two ways. One, the revival of a moribund claim to an ancestral land that had been relegated to the backburner by every Filipino president after Diosdado Macapagal, the only president who supported the Philippines’ claim over Sabah. There is both historical argument and documentary evidence that support this claim, except that the government has not pursued it either through negotiations with Malaysia or the formal filing of a claim with the international court. Consider too that the Malaysian government continues to make lease payments to the Sultan of Sulu, which my old friend and university classmate, Al Tillah, governor of Tawi-tawi, has confirmed. Although the amount paid to the Sultan every year is very minimal by today’s standards, what this means as a contractual obligation says a lot.

Map showing Sabah and the Philippines. The Sultan of Sulu's army landed in
Lahad Datu, an hour away by boat from the Sulu Archipelago.

President Aquino was caught flatfooted by the Sultan’s decision to resuscitate his family’s claim over Sabah, overreacting and even condemning the Sultan for sending his army to launch an alleged invasion. But anybody in the Sultan’s shoes would understandably be enraged with the government’s inaction, which implied the acceptance of the forgone conclusion that the Sabah claim is all dead and moot. If the Sultan was driven to commit lunacy, he could be forgiven because the present government is also largely at fault for doing nothing: for abandoning the Sabah claim which arguably could have been legitimate, until reversed by an international court, and for leaving the Sultan’s people in harm’s way and feeding them to the wolves instead of seeking a diplomatic solution. What else is new anyway with a president known for doing nothing?

 

Take a simple hostage-taking as a comparable scenario. What would the police or government do as its first response? Send in a negotiator to calm down the situation. Instead, President Aquino berated the Sultan like a child and let the Sultan’s army be annihilated by Malaysia’s military. President Aquino forgot that he was also endangering the lives of about 800,000 Filipinos in Sabah—Muslim Filipinos all of whom have escaped the on and off war between the Philippine army and Muslim secessionists which he now wanted to end through peaceful negotiations with the MILF. Forget about the Sultan’s claim over Sabah in the meantime. There is a peaceful mechanism to resolve this issue. But the situation in Sabah has deteriorated into a humanitarian crisis, a foolish war (as De Quiros is wont to call) between a heavily armed Malaysian army against a ragtag group of foot soldiers from Sulu. President Aquino should have been advised by sober minds on how to defuse the conflict.

 

The second political purpose or consequence of the Sultan’s foray in Sabah has to do with the present government’s cavalier attitude in forging a lasting solution to the Mindanao crisis. To the government, the only side that matters on the table is the MILF and the rest of the world is just a bunch of kibitzers. President Aquino’s peace panel ignored the Sultan and his historical grievance against Malaysia, the much-weakened but still alive Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the splinter group of rebel Muslims under the banner of Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), or even members of Congress and other civil society organizations who may have a stake in the peace process. There was no transparency in the government’s initiative to agree with one Muslim faction to the exclusion of others for a new Bangsamoro nation, a distinct geographical area carved out of the country’s territory and subsumed in a relationship of sovereignty association with the central government. And why has the government-friendly MILF been so quiet when their brother Muslims were being slaughtered in Sabah?

 

This latest Sabah episode only reveals the delicate cracks in the peace process that the present Philippine government has tried to sell to Muslim Filipinos in the South. By snubbing some Muslim groups which also have a huge stake in the peace negotiations, the Philippine government is resorting to the same deceptive schemes previously imposed by the Spanish, the American and British colonial powers on the Sultan of Sulu and his heirs to trick them in betraying their ancestral domain.

 

Since time immemorial, no foreign government, including our own Philippine government, has been fully honest in its dealing with the Sultan of Sulu, or for that matter with the whole Muslim population in the South. Is it any wonder then why the Muslims of Mindanao have always pined for their own free Bangsamoro, a nation separate and apart from the central government in Manila?