Wang-wang

It is a good thing some of our Asean partners indicated willingness to join a conference we called to discuss the South China Sea issues. We might learn a thing or two from their sophisticated insights about dealing with China.

At the last Asean summit in Phnom Penh, the Philippines is credited with injecting tension into the regional association. It is as if we wanted to accomplish our diplomatic goals by making a scene.

It seems the regional forum was too non-confrontational for our taste. Across the region, however, people are wondering what Manila is up to. Nevertheless, our partners will no doubt participate in whatever initiative we undertake because that is the polite thing to do — and perhaps to humor us in the most discrete way.

Our diplomatic strategy appears to have entered a one-way street — from the wrong end. One might call it “wang-wang” diplomacy.

We are trying very hard to make the Asean a forum for resolving territorial disputes. Our partners are hedging on that. The association is most useful as a forum for discussing mechanisms for cooperation and issues of mutual benefit. It cannot be a court adjudicating differences.

True, our partners seem to prefer sweeping under the rug the issues we would rather see on the pedestal. That is because they tend to work on a larger equation of concerns, carefully balancing territorial claims with long-term relationship-building that will yield better net gains. Our diplomacy, by contrast, seems to take a tunnel vision on the matter of territorial disputes, pushing aside all other possibly more productive concerns.

The competing territorial concerns will not be resolved in this century. Meanwhile, trade and investment decisions are made each day with the urgency that pragmatic economic gains dictate.

Note, for instance, how Vietnam balances the need to cultivate a more robust economic relationship with China while making the routine noises required to insist on her own territorial claims. Vietnam did not have to make a scene at Phnom Penh and risk, as we did, being rebuked by the warm and cordial embrace between Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. Hanoi knows fully well that a more confrontational stance will only move Beijing to take a harder line, if only to annoy the saber-rattler.

We are probably doomed by fate, or political stupidity, to miss the investment train.

Three decades ago, just as Japanese corporations were pushing investments to Southeast Asia in the light of the rising yen, a Japanese executive was kidnapped in Manila by communist guerrillas. Billions in potential investments were redirected to Thailand and Malaysia, fueling a decades-long boom in those economies.

Today, with labor costs and the yuan rising, Chinese corporations are beginning to move trillions in investment to Southeast Asia. Our confrontational diplomacy towards the economic superpower will again redirect the investments to the other Asean economies. These investments are at the top of mind of our neighbors’ diplomacy.

Meanwhile, at Albert del Rosario’s Batcave, the preferred strategy is to beat the neighborhood bully by playing the village idiot.

Evercrest

On the descent to Nasugbu, Batangas is a wonderful golf course once called Batulao and then named Evercrest. It is now idle turf surrendered to wild grass.

The BSP, which now claims possession of the valuable property, closed down the golf course December 2010. They tried to sell the property, valued at between P1.2 and P1.73 billion, but there have been no takers.

Sale of the property is held back by a slew of cases pending in the courts. The most salient of these cases involves the question of whether the BSP can possibly acquire Evercrest at all, considering this is a golf club owned by members with proprietary shares.

The BSP took over Evercrest as part of the bank’s recovery of the amount owed it by Gotesco Corporation after efforts to prop up Gotesco-owned Orient Bank failed. The bank was subsequently shut down by the BSP, to the grief of small depositors.

Proprietary members of the golf club are questioning the BSP takeover of the property. In no document relating to the BSP-Gotesco proceedings are officers of the club signatories. Each share held by a member of the club represents part-ownership of the assets and properties of Evercrest. These shareholders have nothing to do with whatever deal there was between BSP and Gotesco Corporation.

When Evercrest was closed down by the BSP, its shareholders were deprived of their proprietary rights for use of the facility. When a new title was issued to the BSP, it cancelled the shares of the members. The members, who paid good money for their shares, sought justice from the courts.

In a split vote, the Court of Appeals (CA) refused to rule on the petition of club members, saying simply the case was rendered moot by the BSP takeover. The CA position puzzles many club members. How, indeed, may property rights be annulled in such cavalier fashion?

The shareholders argue the CA abandoned its responsibility to make a determination on the principal issue raised: whether one corporation’s real properties may be used to cover for the liabilities of another, entirely distinct, corporation. Club members say their golf course is theirs and not Gotesco’s and therefore cannot be garnished for Orient Bank’s debts.

In the face of the CA’s cop out on the matter, the shareholders of Evercrest have no other option but to bring the unsettled matter up to the Supreme Court. There, they hope for a more just ruling on what they see as a transgression of their property rights.