THE Ayungin Shoal water cannon incident last November 16, 2021, was provoked by a supply run by two completely covered “bancas” in the pitch-darkness of night. Chinese Coast Guard patrols used non-lethal water jets to force them to abort their re-supply mission.
The incident created another anti-PHL-China friendship story to be sensationalized by Philippine mainstream media and exploited by the anti-China and anti-Duterte propaganda.
I predicted in my November 18 article entitled “Xi-Biden create Amity, Amboys act up”, and the Amboy’s mischief did break out in the headlines that same day. Mainstream media blared, “Outrageous water cannons” of the rust-eaten, dead hunk of brown metal called BRP Sierra Madre grounded at the Ayungin Shoal with its crew of eight Marines on board.
Political clowns, US Imperialism and its allies had a field day to get a punch at China in the news.
In the 22 plus years of resupplying the deliberately grounded BRP Sierra Madre, only twice did such a ruckus with China erupted.
First in 2014 at the height of the disputes, and 2019 when hysterical party-list reps Zarate and Alejano shrieked about a “blockade” but described the Chinese CG as “1,600 yards away” from our boats.
In the last incident, the supply run was in the dead of night with boats fully wrapped up in tarpaulin.
Despite Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana days later telling China to “back off,” he did actually spend a few days negotiating for the restoration of the supply runs while the Chinese side “requested” that no military escort should accompany the boats. The supplies did reach our Marines, proving to one and all that diplomacy is the key.
There are elements who don’t want diplomacy and are pushing Filipinos to go to the brink, like non-Filipino speaking former Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario, who wants a “Joint Philippine-US Patrols” in the Ayungin (as if the US will oblige) and the suggestion from Manuel Mogato, Pulitzer award winner for fake reportage on Duterte’s “EJK,” who wrote, in his column in the little known “Pressone” website, “Take a risk but don’t start a war.”
Mogato, whom I call Kuhol from the comedy show Mongolian Barbecue wrote, “The Philippines should not play a cat-and-mouse game with China. Beijing knew of Manila’s intention to reinforce BRP Sierra Madre and replace it with a more permanent structure.
China would not dare attack a public vessel. It could risk an escalation because of the country’s Mutual Defense Treaty with the U.S.” –Like Locsin and other Amboy cabal, selling the MDT.
The Chinese CG did use water cannons. Where are the U.S. defenders? Nowhere!
Unlike the dumb Kuhols, Carpio, Batongbacal, et. al., the Chinese do not use military vessels. The Coast Guard and its “white ships” and water cannons that cannot be, strictly and generally speaking, construed as naval force. This is also why the U.S. finds the unidentifiable “Chinese Maritime Militia” (CMM) such a problem.
This latest Rambo show set-up by the Amboys stayed in the frontpages for two weeks. This week it has all but faded.
The showtime value of the anti-China scenes are getting shorter and shorter in the face of the vast awakening of our people to the reality of China’s immense goodwill effort, donating and delivering 55-million doses of vaccine and more coming, donated bridges across the Pasig now being used, financing the P175-bilion 650-km Manila-Matnog PNR railway that is to start construction, etcetera, etcetera.
The geopolitical maturity Filipinos have grown, watched Duterte chastising the U.S. and reaping harvests from China, seen 1.8-milion Chinese tourists spending $ 2.3-billion in 2019 alone, top buyer of our bananas and No. 2 of our coconuts. And Kuhol wants us to “risk” all these for Ayungin Shoal?
When Tomas Cloma and later President Ferdinand E. Marcos (FM) declared the parts of the South China Sea we claimed were “terra nullius” by virtue of Japan’s renunciation of title to the islands, the fact remained that there were prior claims by other countries.
But FM occupied ten islands (one later stolen by Vietnam) which China has not physically tried to take. So, we already got a really fair share of the SCS, and one 60/40 oil-gas deal with China in our favor likely in the future.
The Amboys are telling Filipinos to hold Ayungin tight, like the story of the monkey slipping his hand into a bottle grabbing a peanut and can’t figure how to get his hand out holding on to the peanut.
The Filipino is not dumb, with his two arms and hands the Filipino is already carting off tons and tons of goodies from China for a long time to come.
(Samahan si Ka Mentong Laurel at mga panauhin sa “Power Thinks” tuwing Miyerkules @6pm Live Global Talk News Radio (GTNR) sa Facebook at sa Talk News TV sa You Tube; at tuwing Linggo 8 to 10am sa RP1 738khz AM sa radyo.)