Wait and see if China keeps promises

I wrote in a previous column that our President Rodrigo Duterte reminded me a lot of US Republican candidate Donald Trump. After all, they both speak their mind (often without thinking it through), they both tend to shock people with their statements, and they both tend to backtrack on many things they say. The difference though is that while Donald Trump is certainly making the news, he doesn’t have the experience or the support that President Duterte had and continues to have. While our president here won by a landslide victory, it looks like Trump is on a downward trend in the polls, which is a really good thing.

It’s scary to think of someone like Trump in a position of so much power. I honestly did not think he was going to be a real threat early on in the campaign period. I was surprised by how much support he got and how quickly he gained popularity. At this point though, I can only hope that cooler and smarter heads prevail in the end. While we still have to wait until November 8 to see whom the American people will vote into the highest position in the land, I truly believe that they are on the brink of electing their first female president.

This will be landmark first for them. Similar to when they put Barack Obama in office eight years ago. I think America is ready for their first female president. While it will be a whole new ball game to them, that’s nothing new to us here in the Philippines as we have had two female presidents. I think women make exceptional leaders and Hillary has the chance to go great things. After all, we only need to look at Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and most recently the UK to see that women leaders are strong and more than capable. I look forward to seeing what Hillary can do for the United States and global relations.

And speaking of the United States and global relations, what a colorful past couple of weeks it has been in terms of our own relations with the US. I have been hearing a lot of stories about how difficult it has been as of late to get a visa to travel to the States and I can’t help but wonder if there is a direct correlation to what has been happening here in terms of the assault on the US embassy and our own president’s harsh words towards one of our strongest allies and the difficulty that many of our kababayans are now facing in terms of getting visas approved.

It’s no secret that there is no love lost between President Duterte and the United States. Even before he claimed to “severe ties with the US” during his visit to China, he already had strong words for the land of the free and the home of the brave. He called President Obama bad names and did the same for the US Ambassador here in the Philippines. It was actually quite perplexing where all the vitriol was coming from, but I didn’t pretend to understand it, what was clear was that President Duterte did not like the USA and he felt very strongly about it.

Of course the cherry on top was when he said he would be parting ways with the United States at the state visit to China. This caused quite a bit of uproar in the country especially among the foreign investors that hail from the USA. I heard many of them contacting their local counterparts and asking for business continuity plans in case things fell apart. They had to be constantly assuaged that their business was safe and that nothing bad was going to happen.

As he often does, once he got back, President Duterte clarified his words. He didn’t mean that economic ties and business with America would stop but that the Philippines would now be pursuing a more independent foreign policy and that he looked to stop the dependence of the Filipinos on the West. I understand where the president is coming from in this aspect because yes, the Philippines has often taken its cue from the United States and maybe it will be a good thing to be more independent. However, I don’t think independence means taking away our dependency on one country and placing it on another.

To be honest I know many politicians and even businessmen who are quite troubled at the many conflicting statements made by our president. It’s become exceptionally difficult to predict the direction the country is going to take in the next six years because he is constantly taking one step forward and two steps back. Sure it might make sense to ally with China who is a growing behemoth in Southeast Asia, but who’s to say that the Chinese will keep their word also? They haven’t shown the best side of themselves during the South China/West Philippine Sea dispute. Why the sudden 360 with the promise of billions in investments?

I approach things warily and with caution. And I know many Filipinos feel the same. So many Pinoys here have ties to the United States and so many have families abroad and don’t want to see their potential source of livelihood lost because the president has suddenly decided he would rather work with China or Russia. I hope he understands just how much his words affect the lives of Filipinos both here in the Philippines and in countries abroad.

I have said it before about our president and I will say it again – I really wish he would choose to be more diplomatic. Life isn’t the way it used to be and we are not an island alone in the middle of the sea. We all live in a global community these days and every word and every decision matters.