We are wrong, very, very wrong

THIS year and in the coming years, disregard our biased economists and the compliant mainstream media when they proclaim that our country is (again) ready for another “economic rebound.” They would try to “prove” it thru hard numbers and statistics that are usually “massaged,” by the way, to fit the official government narrative.

The hard reality staring us in the face and which should be of primary concern to all is that, we are to be left behind further by our ASEAN neighbors who chose to exercise ‘realpolitik’ and careful diplomacy in pursuit of their own effort to uplift the living condition of their respective citizens.

I am referring to the decision of BRICS, the rising global socio-economic bloc composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (thus the acronym) to approve the membership of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia as their “partners” in the ASEAN region, during its last summit in Khazan, Russia last October.

As such, expect these countries to further overtake us, for us to be further left behind, in terms of economic growth and development in both the short and long term.

And all because we dread the thought of displeasing Washington.

One of the key “prerequisites” for BRICS membership consideration is for the “applicant” to be known as consistent in the exercise of an ‘independent foreign policy,’ a good practice that we abandoned under the present dispensation.

As a US puppet, we have shut our doors to the huge global market for our goods and services that BRICS offer just because one of its founding members, China, is in the crosshairs of America’s next war in Asia.

China, for its part, has clearly run out of patience with the present administration when it also started its own version of “assertive diplomacy” by deploying its coast guard vessels and other maritime assets even to areas that are part of our EEZ such as the Bajo de Masinloc (that we lost in 2012, no thanks to the stupidity of the PNoy administration).

If assertive diplomacy or ‘assertive transparency’ is what we are now resorting to on the say-so of US warmongers like the self-named “maritime security expert,” retired US Airforce officer, Ray Powell, then China’s regular presence in our “territory” show they can practice it too—and there is nothing that we or the United States can do about it.

And at the expense too of our shrinking market in mainland China for already, despite its own territorial dispute with Vietnam, Vietnam now occupies the former Philippine position as the “biggest supplier” of bananas in China up to 2023.

Is this what we really want? Continued retrogression from here to eternity because we do not want to settle our differences with our peaceful neighbor for over 1,000 years and now the world’s largest market and economy?

And if we are falsely convinced that, oh well, ‘there is the EU market for our goods,’ then this is another exercise in daydreaming. The EU economy too is in continued decline, no thanks to their decision to cut-off the supply of Russian oil and gas since the start of Russia’s war of national survival in 2022 against Ukraine and the NATO alliance.

It seems that we are living in a Fantasy World anchored on our continuing neo-colonial mentality that identifying our national interests with that of the West is our pathway to national progress.

Our neighbors joining BRICS prove we are wrong, very, very wrong.