Pride is becoming our greatest enemy

As if we do not have our hands full already, we seem to still want to go and grab some more of what we do not really need. Good if it was gold that we are after, then maybe we can even use our mouths to bite what our hands can no longer manage to grasp. But problems? Problems always spell trouble no matter how you look at it. And trouble is something we need like a hole in the head.

The Philippines is a drug-crazed, corruption-ridden, violence-prone, overly-politicized country of more than a hundred million people, eighty percent of whom are poor and Catholic. It is fighting a war against terrorists, Muslim bandits, and communists. It is reeling from a pandemic whose end is not in sight despite bold but risky moves in pretense of normalcy.

It has a slow, pretentious and inefficient government constantly being undermined by a hollow and shallow political opposition that cannot wait for its turn and must, as a guiding principle, keep constantly noisy if only to stay relevant. The drunk neighborhood bully China is already sitting in the veranda and the only reason it has not yet kicked the door open is because the man in the house is trying to sweet talk it down the stairs.

As topsy-turvy and chaotic as the scene might already be, someone just had to be seized by enough nonsense to not just let sleeping dogs lie. No less than the foreign secretary wants to revive the Sabah issue, an old claim that, while definitely not abandoned, is at least blissfully dormant to the best interests of all concerned.

The Philippines, with all its current problems, cannot afford to go scouting for one more. Restarting an old conflict with Malaysia will only complicate further the already-complicated situation in the South China Sea, where both the Philippines and Malaysia are already embroiled in tense sovereignty issues not just with China but also with Vietnam, Taiwan, and Brunei.

If in our best economic, political, and military form we cannot hope to even match a third of China's overall might (even in population we are just a third of the .3 of China's 1.3 billion people), how do you think we will figure in a regional South China Sea conflict if we have to add Malaysia into the picture?

I do not think it is genuine nationalistic fervor that drives people to do drastic, and sometimes irrational, things. I think pride has got to do with a thick slice of it. Reviving the Sabah claim at this point in time will not in any way make our prospects, if any, of recovering it from Malaysia any better, in the same way that not claiming it now will not further entrench it with Malaysia more than it already is.

To be sure, there is an off chance we might recover Sabah. After all, who would have thought a cussing mayor from Davao would be president, or that a quick-tempered personality would be top diplomat. But then again we could also lose more than what we already have. We could lose chunks of Mindanao if we don't look at the big picture. And we can lose Palawan, maybe even more, if we are not careful.