Sour

You know that our bilateral relationship is at its lowest point when Beijing dispatches its lowest conceivable official to call our President a liar.

In the fine art of diplomacy, praises are best heaped by the highest ranking official, the better to herald it. Disdain, on the other hand, is best uttered by the lowest ranking official, to better coat with insult the injurious thought.

Our President was called a liar for denying the matter of Luneta fiasco was taken up during bilateral his talks with the Chinese premier on the sidelines of the APEC summit a few weeks ago. Clearly Beijing remembers the matter figured high in their talking points.

The fact that Beijing found it necessary to formally address President Aquino’s apparent bout with amnesia indicates how closely the Chinese monitor what our president says. It also indicates how sloppy our side has been in treating explosive diplomatic issues.

The Aquino government might want to play down the Luneta fiasco. For Beijing, however, this incident is of great importance. The Chinese government feels its concerns have not been taken seriously enough by Philippine authorities.

The continuing controversy over the Luneta hostage fiasco is fueled by intent Chinese demands for a formal apology and the Aquino government’s stubborn refusal to issue such an apology. China was profoundly aggrieved by the senseless massacre of its nationals by bungling Filipinos. The Aquino government, characteristically, fails to empathize with that.

Failure to empathize is an emotional disability. That disability, it seems, is chronic in the present leadership we have.

This controversy occurs within the context of a territorial dispute between our two countries. This makes the controversy even more important: it guides strategic decisions undertaken on the other legal, political and diplomatic concerns.

I wrote in this space some months back about the rather low regard Beijing has for our President. The low regard was emphasized by Beijing’s decision to abruptly disinvite Aquino to the ASEAN exhibition held in China — even as the Philippines was, ironically, the country of honor in that event. President Aquino was all set to go to China when Beijing announced he need not come. All the other leaders of the ASEAN countries were present and lavishly hosted.

Given the low esteem Beijing holds for our President, especially after he was caught lying, it is unlikely that any improvement in our bilateral relations will happen until the current presidential term ends. Beijing will rather wait things out, seeing it more productive to deal with the next Filipino leader instead of enduring the present one.

Manila may, in the meantime, acquire old American ships to prop up our maritime force and buy a squadron of obsolete fighter planes from South Korea. We will need to increase our military capacity a hundred-fold before it manages to impress China.

With less than three years left in his term, President Aquino has been deemed a lame duck in Beijing. There will be no diplomatic progress until after he is gone.

Lameduck

This paper scooped the story about an internal Palace survey showing President Aquino’s approval ratings falling more disastrously than the commercial surveys earlier indicated. One commentator called this a “free fall.”

A devastating confluence of events makes the collapsing popularity rates understandable. The controversy over the PDAF and the DAP implicates the administration directly not only in the misuse of public funds but also in direct bribery of legislators. There is now talk of a “fiscal dictatorship” in place and continuing revelations about what former senator Panfilo Lacson calls the Aquino administration’s “ugly side.”

Public outrage over the massive and blatant misuse of public funds is not mitigated by other events: the fiasco in Zamboanga City, the weak response in the aftermath of that calamitous typhoon crossing Central Luzon last month and the utter incoherence of official response to the devastating Bohol quake.

Increasingly, in the public mind, this is the image formed of the Aquino administration: it is weakly managed from the top, leading to slippages of every sort down the line.

Three years in office, there is not much to show. No major infrastructure project is shovel-ready. No economic master plan has been produced. We have not increased our meager share of direct investment flows. Unemployment worsens. The economy is dragged forward by the sheer magnitude of suppressed demand, abundant purchasing power made possible by our large army of migrant workers.

There is simply insufficient time left for this administration to complete a legacy project of any importance. Nor can breaking the cycle of corruption become its legacy, not after the revelations about DAP.

The Palace, ever reactive, responded to the falling popularity numbers with appropriate panic — although also with a host of badly conceived excuses.

The President tried blaming its falling approval rates on the previous administration. That did not resonate.

Then the President tried to minimize the controversy over DAP by offering a bizarre conspiracy theory about deflecting attention away from the high-profile PDAF offenders. Citizens decided their intelligence was being insulted.

Now the Palace is frantically reconfiguring its public relations frontline. The shallow and burnt-out trio of Carandang, Lacierda and Valte is apparently being put out to pasture. In their place, the more experienced Sonny Coloma is given more face time.

Coloma, to be sure, improves the timber of official statements emanating from the Palace. The question, however, is whether a mere change of face on the podium will suffice to tame the more disturbing questions being raised.