LAST June 20, 2022 this newspaper, Pinoy Exposé, wrote an editorial reaction to a June 12, 2022 piece in the Manila Times by Mario Ferdinand Pasion entitled “DFA protests controlled by the US State Department?”
The DFA subsequently lamented angrily the inquiring title and content of the piece that it said “did not offer any tangible proof that the protests were filed on behalf of any entity other than the Philippine government.”
Pinoy Exposé’s editorial supported and followed up Mario Ferdinand Pasion’s with the editorial “Who are the US Minions at the DFA fooling?” and proceeded to demonstrate howthe current DFA secretary Teodoro Locsin has contradicted and violated the “independent foreign policy” enunciated and practiced by President Duterte in several specific instances.
An instance cited by the Pinoy Exposé editorial include the DFA vote in the UNGA blaming Russia for the Ukraine War which was in direct contradiction to President Duterte’s explicit declaration of neutrality on the issue and uttered several times before and after the UNGA vote.
Another instance cited is Locsin’s open and publicized approval of the AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) pact that touted a nuclear submarine supply deal which all of the ASEAN expressed rejection of and which President Duterte expressed “concern” over its potential to trigger a “nuke arms race” as well as push nuclear proliferation.
I add my voice and provide proof of the DFA’s consistent selective filing of loud diplomatic protests timed for politically sensitive moment and opportune occasion involving PHL-China events, while turning a blind eye and two deaf ears to blatant violations of Philippine sovereignty by other countries particularly the United States.
Mario Ferdinand Pasion cited the timing of the DFA diplomatic protest over Chinese boats at Whitsun Reef using the two-month-old news item from April as pretext, timing it for the US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman visit to president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos and Philippine-China Friendship Day, commemorated during the June 9, 1975 anniversary of the signing of the PH-China communique establishing formal diplomatic relations between the two countries. Such timing of the DGA’s protest cannot be just accidental, and it happens too frequently and regularly.
There is another way to prove the complicity of the DFA in the deliberate timing of any diplomatic protest, by showing what they do not protest when violations by other countries, particularly by the US, are committed in full view of the public:
Last January 21 2019, newspapers reported a US warship sailing close to the Philippines’ Panatag island, close enough to be in the country’s “territorial sea” without notification.
There was no squeak from the DFA and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana is quoted by the Inquirer report of the incident saying, “We do not have a say on whatever the Americans do in the South China Sea…”
In August of 2019, the Manila newspapers published reports of Vietnamese vessels impounded in Tawi-Tawi for Illegal fishing. If this was a Chinese fishing vessel the DFA would have immediately fired off noisily a diplomatic protest. The DFA answer to Mario Ferdinand Pasion’s article boasted of the DFA filing 6 diplomatic protests on Vietnamese violations, but that clearly is tokenism.
In the same report from GMA News I have on file, Defense Secretary Lorenzana is quoted saying “Vietnam most frequent poachers in PH water” and SCSPI, as satellite monitoring service over the South China Sea, shows thousands of Vietnamese boats plying all the SCS and violating with impunity Philippine waters yet the DFA only has a miniscule number of protests against Vietnam?
In September of 2020 US surveillance planes illegally used Malaysian and Philippine aircraft identification codes as disguise while flying close to China’s coast. The Philippine National Security Adviser on October 1, 2020 noted this and announced that the US “may have used PH code to test China,” but the Filipino public never heard of any diplomatic protest against America filed by the DFA.
On February 3, 2022 a US aircraft carrier lumbered across the waters between Sorsogon and Samar apparently sailing from West to East through Philippine archipelagic and territorial sea, recorded by a photographer named Michael Fugnit who provided the photo of the ship to ABS-CBN which published the report. Four months have passed since this widely publicized report but no protest from the DFA.
On May 26, 2022 a US MQ-4C Triton drone was recorded by the SCSPI as crossing Philippine air space traversing the China Sea and the East Pacific. This report was posted in Twitter.
Why did the DFA not note this and coordinate with the Philippine defense and national security officials to investigate and if found true, which is likely with the evidence at hand, file a diplomatic protest with the US?
With an Amboy as secretary of the Foreign Affairs Department and a bevy of Amboys still inside, we can expect biased issuances of diplomatic protests but not one against our former imperialist master.
We hope PBBM will take utmost care in appointing a new secretary for the department to ensure the independence of our country’s practice of its foreign relations.
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