No ‘plot’ to oust Bert Romulo, JDV vows

Speaker Jose de Venecia rang me up yesterday to state that he is supporting Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo to the hilt and has nothing to do with any "move" to supplant him.

He indirectly confirmed that Ambassador to the United Nations Lauro Baja had been "interested" in becoming Foreign Secretary, but this only happened when Baja "heard" that Bert Romulo was being "offered" the Ambassadorship to Washington DC, a demotion from his premier Cabinet post. JDV said he had informed Baja that this rumor was incorrect and, besides, he had reminded the UN envoy, "Romulo has been recommending you to be Special Presidential Envoy in various initiatives, like the debt problem and other diplomatic mainliners."

If that’s so, the Speaker’s message to Ambassador Baja had been to "cool it."

Anyway, JDV reiterated that he’s 100 percent behind Romulo, and told me he had contacted the President to assure her that rumors to the contrary were unfounded and even malicious.

I think one of the worst problems we have in this country is that there are too many ambitious people trying to ease out other officials so they can get their jobs.

The Oust Gloria movement is of this category. Those who’re seeking to eject GMA from the Presidency either want to replace her in power, or are supporting wannabes lusting to become "interim" President, or "revolutionary" President, or Chairman of a junta, either military or mestizo, a civilian-military "transition" government.

Recently, the official next to GMA most under siege has been DFA Secretary Bert Romulo whose post as our foreign policy minister and foremost international spokesman is coveted by two or three others who’re waiting in the shadows to ambush him along the way.

This will not do. In our dealings with foreign countries and on international fora, like the United Nations, and now the counter-terrorism conference scheduled to begin tomorrow in Cebu, it must be clear that only one official speaks for the Philippines on the diplomatic front, and has the full backing and confidence of the President.

Remember the saw which is so old it may sound hackneyed: "A House Divided Cannot Stand."

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Incidentally, Speaker JDV confirmed he is leaving today for Madrid, then, after meetings there will proceed to Barcelona where he will address the Catalunyan parliament, as well as confer with the leaders of 40,000 Filipinos (many of them already Spanish citizens) living and working in that Catalan province.

During his eight-day sortie to Europe, JDV will also visit Bucharest, the capital of Romania, to confer with his counterparts there.

It is truly breathtaking how Joe de V. so tirelessly travels and knows everybody, wherever he goes, in the corridors of power. I don’t suppose he plans to visit Dracula’s castle in Transylvania (Romania). The Romanians say that the so-called Count Dracula got a bum rap as some "evil" vampire, when he became the butt of novels and half a dozen motion pictures (one of them starring a terrifying but charming Brad Pitt) as a bloodsucking immortal sleeping in a coffin by day, but attacking hapless victims at night.

He was, in reality, a patriotic hero called Vlad the Impaler. Frankly, I don’t see how impaling one’s enemies even in a patriotic cause would make any character more simpatico.

However, I’ll await JDV’s report on this matter when he returns.

Doesn’t he ever get jet lagged? He was just in Kuala Lumpur going through another endless round of dialogues.

I remember that some years ago, he went to Iraq (long before Bush and Rumsfeld), traveling from the Jordanian border over miles of desert by night – he couldn’t fly because US and NATO aircraft were imposing a "no fly zone" policy – to meet with now-deposed (and on trial) President Saddam Hussein in one of his "secret" palaces.

JDV told us later he had gone there to try to get Saddam to pay him a substantial sum (memory falters, but I think $104 million) which he claimed Saddam owed his former company – and adjunct of Land-Oil – for building highways and infrastructure projects in Iraq.

Joe came home empty-handed. Now, of course, he’ll never get paid.

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The visit of China’s President Hu Jintao to Washington DC demonstrates how far China has skyrocketed to economic and political power since the dark days of ostracism and gloom following the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

China’s economy shot upwards by 10 percent in the first quarter of this year, topping the 9.9 percent growth it has been almost ritually recording earlier.

When this writer first went to the People’s Republic of China in October 1964, China was a nation of 800 million Mao-suited people on bicycles. Today in a nation of militant, upmarket 1.3 billion people, bicycles are being elbowed off the avenues and even sidestreets by cars and other luxury vehicles. China is now manufacturing more cars than its domestic market can digest and is seeking to become a net exporter of automobiles. The Chinese manufacturing machine will soon be capable of producing 18 million cars per year. The Chinese also manufacture fighter jets which it sells to countries like Pakistan, eager to expand their air force capabilities.

In fact, China has doubled its trade surplus with the United States in the past five years to $202 billion. (The US current account deficit, in turn, now exceeds $800 billion – with China’s trade surplus accounting for 27 percent of this deficit). China’s reserves are expected to hit a trillion dollars (yep, $1000 billion) later this year, as correspondent Eduard Luce reported from Washington DC last week.

Tomorrow (April 20), US President George W. Bush and Mr. Hu Jintao are slated to discuss, among other issues, narrowing that trade gap.

China has promised to remove its ban on imports of US beef, crack down on pirated computer software, and consider allowing foreign firms to vie for Chinese contracts. I think Mr. Hu will hang tough, however, on revaluing the Renminbi, China’s currency, which Americans claim is being deliberately depressed by as much as 40 percent by Beijing to render Chinese goods cheaper for US consumers (Chinese-manufactured products dominate supermarket and shopping mall shelves in the USA) and make American products more expensive in China.

China’s Deputy Prime Minister Wu Yi is leading a parallel delegation of over 200 Chinese business executives, holding out the prospect that these businessmen could sign as many as 107 contracts to purchase $16.2 billion in US products during their whirlwind tour of several states. (Among them, the agreement to buy 80 commercial jetliners from Boeing for some $4.6 billion has already sweetened the pot. This is not good news for us – some of the pilots needed to fly those Boeings will probably be "pirated" from the Philippines).

In sum, China is on the move – and on the rise. Washington DC is increasingly aware of – and alarmed – by this challenge.

As for us, it’s like the Big Surf off Oahu, in Hawaii. The competition between the two giants presents us with a choice. If we don’t catch the wave and manage to ride its crest on our economic surfboard, it will either engulf us or leave us wallowing helplessly in its wake.

The Chinese ideogram for "crisis," we’re constantly being reminded, is composed of two combined, meaning "danger" and "opportunity." In my younger days, I studied what some now consider the "wrong" language, Nihongo or Japanese, not Mandarin. I don’t know if it was wrong. The Japanese borrowed their kenji characters from the Chinese – and in both languages they may be pronounced differently, but they mean the same thing.

Even the Taiwanese recognize the opportunity of "investing" in mainland China. They’ve invested, despite the frowns of their own government in Taipei, more than $100 billion in China – in fact, transferring vital technology to their mainland brethren, and "opponents."

Remember that Beijing always mentions that it has 700 missiles targeted at Taipei and other strategic points in Taiwan. Alas, the Taiwanese may be financing the production and maintenance of those missiles. But business is business. "Return on Investment (ROI) remains, even in this age of IT, cyberspace, and "blogging" the bottom line.

As for us, we don’t progress because we’re obsessed with political monkey-business.