AMIDST the scene of ruins and desperation, President Rodrigo Duterte brought to victims of Typhoon Lawin not only relief goods and rehabilitation funds but hope.
His message reverberates across the land. American diplomats and acerbic anti-Dutertecritics can whine and rile over the language and ways the President described his China expedition but they cannot simply argue against the tremendous success of his China visit.
“His cup runneth over”. Both the Philippines, which is the recipient of bonanza, and China which is the benefactor, are winners in this classic display of exceptional diplomacy which only Duterte can conjure. China has proven to the world that it is not the enemy and that the Philippines has finally and proven it can navigate its own foreign policy without having to consult a domineering “ally”.
For Duterte, he earned the respect not only of China and although grudgingly even by the US.
The foreign and domestic critics, used to the norm of diplomatic conduct of the West, are left clueless and defenseless for indeed how can one argue against success?
Thus they resort to scare tactics among these the idiotic allegation that the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) that yields billions of dollars and employs millions of Filipinos might fizzle out in thin air. Isn’t it childish to advance the proposition that because Duterte is bringing the Philippines closer to China or Russia and now Japan, they interpreted that to mean Duterte is cutting its ties with the United States and in so doing the BPO investors will pull out of the country?
By now, the West must have understood the hyperbole that Duterte is adept at. But what is of course clear as daylight is that the President is veering away from total dependency to the US of A and is chartering another path of economic and peace process that would dovetail with the geo-political and social exigencies. After all the Western nations started it, wooing and investing in China. Why fault the Philippines, a tiny sovereign nation in the Pacific, if it venture on its own and break bread with China?
The problem with America is that it interprets and evaluates alliance in terms of what defense value will accrue to them first, trade next and friendship later. Thus we see the importance of its Asian pivot which is obviously an integral part of its defense network in the Pacific and by their own euphemistic assertion- an intervention to insure free navigation in the international waters in the South China sea.
What of BPOs?
US outgoing Ambassador Philip Goldberg come up with a veiled threat that the America is home to seven-million OFWs that remits substantial amount of money to the Philippines and that the lucrative BPO industry in the country has clientele all over America. This threat sends BPO operators cowering in fear and asked for an audience with President as though Duterte can be convinced to beg with bended knees before an American President to ask that BPOs be spared.
None of that will happen. Come to think of it, American businessmen are astute as their politicians. In a capitalist system, believe it or not, what matters is profit.
If the biggest investor in the Philippines is an American firm, as Goldberg asserts, it is not because it was cajoled by the American government to put its capital here out of mercy. The consideration is always profit.
Ever wondered why despite its humbling defeat before the ill-equipped Vietnamese forces American business was the first to surface in Hanoi and in Saigon? But what can be more emetic than when after alluding sordid issues against China, the US and the European countries were first to swallow their vomit and brought their capital because they knew that China is most profitable what with cheap labor and a consumer market of more than 1.5-billion population? The diatribes against this looming economic giant are lost if not melted in the magma of success of China which is now the second if not the first economy in the world.
The Philippines was sleeping in the kangkong pond during the term of President Noynoy Aquino. A little over 100 days, President Duterte resuscitated the moribund relations between China and the Philippines.
The issue over Scarborough will always be there but so are the rest of the islets with multi-lateral claims. This President will not stay dormant and ineffective like his predecessor. Against the pieces of advice from FVR and those who claim they have exclusive franchise to diplomacy and world affairs Duterte gets results. In short he must be doing something good.
Listening to him deliver a message of sympathy and hope to victims of Lawin, he said, “maghintayhintay lang tayong kaunting panahon. Okay na tayo”.