PBBM: “No territorial conflict with China”

SINCE the start of PBBM’s visit to the United Nations in New York for his “debut”—live and in person—at the UN General Assembly last week, Filipino anti-US imperialism and anti-American advocates had been concerned over his rhetorics that seemed to be veering towards a renewed “special relations” with the vicious, atrocious and treacherous Western superpower.

To Filipino anti-imperialists who have enjoyed and gotten used to former President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s trenchant exposés and diatribes of and against America’s historical and current crimes against developing nations and humanity, President Bongbong Marcos’ friendly words about the U.S. is disconcerting and jarring.

The sideline meeting with US President Joe Biden featured some of the kindest words from PBBM for the U.S. which, in some cases, controverted historical fact.

The pro-American or Amboy Philippine mainstream media like CNN Philippines even  headlined, “Marcos pivots to the US: ‘We are partners, allies, and friends.’

PBBM’s statement contradicts the fact that the US stole Filipinos’ hard-won independence from Spain, killed 500,000 Filipinos during our War of Resistance against US Imperialism, pushed the Korea and Vietnam Wars that dragged along the Philippines as a mercenary for American aggression.

His statements also defy the fact that the U.S. obstructed Philippine economic progress in the unequal trade treaties imposed on us, the debt trap that victimized us in the 80s and our de-industrialization under the ambit of “globalization.”

One statement of PBBM however turns the situation around and reassures genuine Filipino patriots and nationalists who yearn for full independence from the US and durable peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

In answer to former Aussie Prime Minister and now Asia Society president and CEO, Kevin Rudd’s question about the supposed conflict between the Philippines and China, PBBM gave a surprising reply.

According to PBBM, the Philippines has “no territorial conflict” with China. This remark shows clearly that PBBM is definitely not “pivoting to the U.S.” and refusing to toe-the-line about the Philippines having a “conflict with China.”

For indeed, there is on-going and long-standing dialogue over the South China Sea between the two countries aimed at finding solutions and not division.

“The position that the Philippines takes is that we have no territorial conflict with China. What we have [is] China claiming territory that belongs to the Philippines,” Mr. Marcos said in an interview with Rudd.

President BBM’s approach to diplomacy around the sensitive issue of the country’s relations with China and the U.S. is entirely the opposite of President Duterte’s, and it takes some “adjusting” on the part of anti-US and anti-imperialist sectors of Philippine society to really understand what he said.

But now, it is clear, and I repeat, PBBM is not pivoting to the US but is sticking to an equidistant position in relation to all powers.

But “equidistant” is also already a “separation” from the master-vassal relationship that the Philippines had suffered under from the time of the Commonwealth period to the transition to a fully independent foreign policy under his father, President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos who established formal relations with China in 1975.

Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign affairs faces more contradictions. The past week a group of Filipino fishermen spotted several Vietnamese fishing vessels poaching in the Katimugan South) Reef of the Spratly Islands area claimed by the Philippines as part of its EEZ (exclusive economic zone) and territory. Pictures were taken of the Vietnamese fishing vessels and one boat identified as “qng37097ts” identified.

The Filipino fishermen have submitted their report and photos of the Vietnamese poachers to the Philippine Coast guard and hope action can be taken against these poachers who have been observed to use illegal fishing techniques such as dynamite, superlight, compressor and cyanide fishing resulting in massive damage to the reefs nurturing the fishes below the sea.

The resulting devastation of our Filipino fishermen’s fish catch are well known as our fishermen have been suffering dwindling fish catches over the past decades.

This problem of the Vietnamese poachers swarming into the Philippine EEZ and territory is not a new complaint, it is in fact a well-known reality that is given scant attention by our Department of Foreign Affairs and mainstream media.

In October 2018 then Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana himself complained to reporters, “Normally, fishing boats ng mga Vietnamese sila ang karamihan na pumapasok sa atin eh…” (fishing boats of Vietnamese are the majority of those entering our waters…” This admission really exposes the truth that it is not Chinese fishing boats that are abusing our seas.

Why isn’t the DFA recording these Vietnamese violations and reporting them properly, and filing diplomatic protest in the same manner that they do with alleged Chinese transgressions?

The DFA boasts of filing over 380 diplomatic protests against China, but we never hear a squeak when it comes to Vietnamese violations that our fishermen report, the same silence we got over similar violations by Indonesia.