Futile end games to every Yellow problem
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-22-2015 WED)
It's a feeling of exasperation when one takes stock of this country's trajectory--from its elections to its foreign policy, its economic realities, and so on.
Elections here are a proven farce with its election body and its automated election system completely discredited. Yet the freak show goes on.
Its major foreign policy pursuit is mired in a hopeless conundrum: UP Maritime Affairs Director Jay Batongbacal recently wrote that the UN arbitral tribunal may still rule in favor of China despite the latter's absence, a disaster as much as any hoped for win that will never yield any compliance even for a hundred years.
The Philippine "No Dialogue with China" crowd believed it had struck on a very powerful argument in the international stage when it raised the "island building" issue against China. But brought to wider attention by US and French-reared geopoliticist Peter Lee's July 18 article on Asia Times ("Okinotorishima-ization: South China Sea arbitration case enters middle game") on the Okinotorishima rock features near Taiwan and mainland China, visible during high tide and built up by Japan into a huge facility with a lighthouse, four-story structures, etc., and the basis of their argument becomes flimsy at best. Google the word and you'll see the huge Japanese "island," which these rabble-rousers are silent on.
At the conclusion of the lengthy article and to point out the futility of it all, Lee referred to our Iranian-Filipino colleague, Ateneo political science professor Richard Javad Heydarian, as "the leading defender of the Philippine strategy in the Western media, (who) endeavored to manage expectations if the Philippines does not prevail in the arbitration case… or prevails and the PRC disregards the ruling…" I texted to Richard that Lee apparently does not read enough of what he has written as I know that Richard has been calling on BS Aquino to start engaging in dialogue with China.
Richard texted back to me, "Actually even in my TV interviews on GMA and CNN, I emphasized on the need to have diplomatic engagement and on The Diplomat (an Australian foreign policy-military magazine) they have asked me to analyze the downside of pure confrontation with China. But there's a lot of negative reaction from the hardliners here when I talk about engagement…"
The hardliners he's referring to include the likes of the so-called West Philippine Sea Coalition and big mainstream papers, including the Inquirer, working non-stop to muffle broadminded discussion that could break the "information gulag," which they obviously would like to fence the Filipino public in.
But broadminded and visionary discussions calling for productive engagement with China and promising multiple bounties from such actions are eliciting positive responses. To our last column ("Thailand gets trains; RP, bases"), we received this text from a former multiple-term congressman: "Tnx. Quarreling with China deprives us of opportunities to link up the whole country by rail. Huhuhu…"
Of course, we also get our share of brickbats and name-calling (like "Fifth Columnist"… hahaha) from the hardliners who can articulate no more than such Neanderthal grunts.
The defense alliance of Filipino anti-China and Amboy crowds hoping to rope in to backstop their offensives against China are facing rough seas at home. The US, though still the world's largest military, is cutting back its forces by 40,000 troops and its budget by $90 billion, both of which do not augur well for its "Asia Pivot."
Meanwhile, Japan's Shinzo Abe government that is leading the "reinterpretation" of that country's Constitution to allow its military to join other allied armed forces (like those of the US and Philippines) is being opposed by 66 percent of the Japanese people (represented by a hundred thousand who protested before the Diet's deliberations).
Back home, Philippine mainstream media and a premier survey group are hyping the "lowest hunger rate" in a decade, which uncannily comes just before presidential election year, hoping to gloss over the country's continued dependence on food importation to complete its food requirements, its agricultural sector still trapped in marginal productivity, or its institutions for agricultural development wallowing in corruption.
What they won't say is that the Philippines continues to be trapped in "austerity programs," as evinced by the real 50 percent under- and unemployment rate for the past 30 years after the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustments saw millions leave for jobs abroad--this much Greece shall begin to see in the years ahead.
The Filipino nation is made to hope that the unending cycle of problems, among the many others that cannot fit here, can be solved in the next presidential elections. But the same old personality game of oligarchy-endorsed, media moguls cum US embassy- nurtured candidates are still in it while the political parties are the wagging tail to the celebrity candidate and not the other way around as it should be in a genuine democracy. And, to top it all, a foreign-controlled, non-transparent, graft-ridden election company and its machines are still usurping the electoral process.
Smartmatic was disqualified twice by the Commission on Elections' briefly reigning, straight and honest Bids and Awards Committee, headed by Helen Flores. But the Right Honorable Lord Mark Malloch Brown, newly-minted British full owner of Smartmatic (whom the US-based LaRouche movement calls the "guru of color revolutions" and finance predator George Soros' associate), arrives in Manila, sups with BS Aquino in Malacañang, and a week later Ms. Flores is removed, with Smartmatic getting the contracts for 170,000 Smartmatic voting machines. Where does this end? Only Noytards will pretend not to know what this end game will be.
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