(Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the May 5, 2021 issue of the Manila Times. Despite its grave repercussion, Sec. Locsin refused to issue a public apology to the government of China, insisting his offer of apology is only personally directed to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Due to space constraint, this would be reprinted in two parts. The author, himself a former Philippine ambassador, has granted his permission to this paper, as he has done previously).
FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., whose claim to fame in his senior years is that he has tweeted more than Donald Trump, is a disgrace to our country, to our diplomatic corps and to President Duterte. The President must not allow such a scoundrel to remain in office a second longer.
His tweet against China is such a gaffe that if he has an ounce of integrity left, he should resign.
Can you imagine any official of any country in charge of its relations with the world insulting in such a vulgar manner another country:
“How politely can I put it? Let me see… O…GET THE F**K OUT. You’re like an ugly oaf forcing your attention on a handsome guy who wants to be a friend; not to father a Chinese province …”
And to use such expletives against China, the nation that in our pandemic crisis immediately provided us with 2.5 million vaccine doses, compared with that from the Covax vaccine alliance totaling only 500,000 doses?
Doesn’t he (President Duterte) care at all that with our top diplomat being so vulgar that the rest of the world will think that Filipinos haven’t heard of “tact,” “civilized manners” and “diplomacy”?
US President Theodore Roosevelt popularized that adage in diplomacy: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Locsin speaks too vulgarly yet carries not even a toothpick.
Unfortunately, Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. lost his usual nerve, probably afraid of Locsin’s tweeting prowess, and meekly commented: “We will not interfere with Secretary Locsin’s right to free speech.”
What? Locsin has the right to disgrace us Filipinos in the eyes of the world, that we Filipinos can’t argue rationally, especially on a territorial dispute that involves four other nations, that we are capable only of hurling curses?
Not even North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, nor leaders of a few African countries just emerging from the Stone Age, can compete with Locsin’s crudeness.
The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who cleverly said he smelled sulfur in the United Nations podium where President Bush had stood, had infinitely more sophistication than Locsin.
Locsin even continued his sleazy analogy in his next tweet, implicitly saying that China is impregnating his boss Duterte, who is willing enough to do so: “But [Duterte] doesn’t have a uterus. If he tried to give birth to a Chinese province it would be a ball of crap at best.”
Locsin even implicitly threatens Duterte that if does give birth to “a Chinese province,” “it will be the end of the regime.”
That claim, that Duterte’s is trying to make the Philippines a “province of China,” is exactly the Yellows’ propaganda line, desperately being propagated through such crude devices as tarpaulins hung on the city’s overpasses announcing such to Sen. Risa Hontiveros’ hysterical Facebooks posts.
The big problem with Locsin is that he spends more time tweeting like some teenager instead of studying this complex problem of the South China Sea disputes, and in his intellectual laziness swallowed hook, line and sinker the past Aquino 3rd’ regime’s inane narrative against China, which the US got it to adopt.
He even pretends to be witty when he tweeted: “What is so hard to understand about Duterte’s UN declaration that the Arbitral Award made all maritime features Philippines,’no one else’s.”
Duterte did not say that. What he said was that “[T]he Philippines affirms that commitment in the South China Sea in accordance with Unclos and the 2016 arbitral award.” But the award did not make all maritime features the Philippines.’
The award even emphasized that nothing in its ruling means its finding over four countries’ claims of sovereignty in the Spratlys, which includes territorial seas and EEZs generated from the Spratlys as an archipelago.
Shameful
It is so shameful for our country’s foreign secretary to display such ignorance over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, right now the most important foreign relations issue confronting the country. Not only China and the Philippines claim the maritime features there, but also Vietnam, Taiwan and even Malaysia.
When Locsin twitted, referring to China: “O…GET THE F**K OUT”, he obviously didn’t know that if ever China vacates the Spratlys, the Vietnamese will rush in, most probably with their battle-hardened troops, and so will the US-trained Taiwanese Marines stationed at the nearby Taiping, and even the Malaysians with their Special Forces which took over five reefs, commando-style, in 1986 and 1999.
In his Sinophobia, Locsin is ignorant of the fact — as Antonio Carpio with a Vietnamese wife wouldn’t tell him — that it is Vietnam that has the most number of occupied islands and reefs in the Spratly, totaling 22 as against China’s 8 (including Scarborough).
Even Whitsun Reef, where Locsin claimed Chinese “maritime militias” massed last month, is mainly controlled by Vietnam which has four fortifications there, as against China’s two.
But I am probably wrongly accusing Locsin. What would you think is the mind of 72-year-old who has a full-time high-pressure job, yet who sends 100 tweets a day? (to be continued in the next issue).