A failure of leadership

Five years ago, the Philippines legally won the South China Sea arbitration case which invalidated China’s claim to historic rights over resources within the West Philippine Sea.

Since then, our country’s fight for the West Philippine Sea has lost momentum as President Duterte decided to set aside the Award in favor of Beijing’s promise of economic benefits.

When a President-elect in our country assumes office, he takes a solemn oath to faithfully fulfill his duties as President of the Philippines, preserve and defend the Constitution, execute the laws, do justice to every man and consecrate himself to the service of the Philippine nation.

One of the paramount constitutional mandates of the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, “is to secure the sovereignty of the State and the integrity of the national territory.”

Thus, it is the paramount constitutional duty of the President to protect and assert our nation’s rights in the West Philippine Sea.

During the election campaign of 2016, President Duterte made his famous vow to ride a jetski towards the Spartlys, plant the Philippine flag and challenge China – in his own words, “suntukan o barilan (fist fight or a gun duel).”

Given such an unrealistic scenario, we think that our countrymen who voted for President Duterte did not literally believe in this promise of riding a jet ski to the Spratlys and issuing this challenge to China.

However, our countrymen believed in the message apparently conveyed by President Duterte through the jet ski metaphor: that he would stand up to China and protect the West Philippine Sea, consistent with the Constitution.

Last May 10, 2021, the President claimed that his pledge to ride a jet ski to the Spratlys and plant a Philippine flag there was a “pure campaign joke,” calling those who believed him “as being stupid.”

With less than a year left until the end of President Duterte’s term in June 2022, his record of asserting the rights of Filipinos in the West Philippine Sea has been abysmal.

As President Duterte himself admitted in his State of the Nation Address in 2020 regarding the Chinese presence in the West Philippine Sea: “Talagang inutil ako dyan, walang magawa (I’m really useless there and there’s nothing I can do).”

This admission speaks volumes.

Did Xi make Duterte win?

When we reflect on past events, we believe that President Duterte’s actions fit into a disturbing pattern of loyalty to a foreign power.

On Feb. 22, 2019, we received information from a most reliable international entity that high officials from China are bragging that they had been able to influence the 2016 Philippine elections so that Duterte would be president.

We believe that our Beijing post can easily validate this. Moreover, subsequent actions of the President lend more credence to this information.

As early as May 15, 2018, our President proudly declared in Casiguran Bay in Aurora that Chinese President Xi Jinping has sworn to protect him from moves that will result in his removal from office.

(To be continued)