A Duterte interview in China!

I am embarrassed to admit that I am not good in Tagalog, the core of the Filipino language. There have been many times in the past as there will probably be occasions in the future that I will not get correctly the message delivered to me in Tagalog simply because I do not speak the language. I am making this clear because I came across an FB video posting of one Miriam that was labeled in Tagalog. DUTERTE HINDI NAKATIIS! NAGPA-INTERVIEW sa CHINA! DUTERTE SOBRANG MAHAL daw niya ang CHINA. Owing to my difficulty in understanding Tagalog, I offer here my rough translation of the Miriam FB post: “Duterte cannot anymore wait. He asked someone from China to interview him. According to Duterte, he exceedingly loves China.” I only have my sincere apology if this translation is wrong.

I have not read any news report and neither have I seen any television broadcast about a recent trip made by former president Rodrigo Duterte to China. So, let me assume there was none. In all likelihood, Miriam’s post should be taken to mean that the reported Duterte interview was done in Davao with the supposed Chinese lady interviewer still based somewhere outside of the Philippines using modern communication. Or it was possible that the interviewer came to the Philippines and went to Davao to talk to Duterte. Whatever, as the young would say.

As a past president of our republic, Duterte enjoys the same constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of expression as any other Filipino. He has the right to express his opinion, right or wrong, it may be so, but because he is a former Malacañang occupant, whatever he says tends to command listening.

Somewhere in the interview, Duterte somehow opined that China has a right to patrol the West Philippine Sea. His words could be summed up to mean as if China owns this territory. This is where the former president, who always reminds his audience that he is a lawyer (and therefore he knows his law) is wrong. Just shortly after Duterte took his oath, in 2016, as the president, the permanent International Arbitral Tribunal ruled in the case filed by the Philippines under President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, that majority of the vast West Philippine Sea is within our country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Duterte, the lawyer, should understand the implications of that ruling. He knows what is EEZ. Atty. Duterte should know that with the Arbitral Tribunal’s decision, Philippine territorial sovereignty, in its perfectly legal concept, comes into play. The Philippines has sovereign rights over the WPS to the exclusion of Communist China. Especially that when the tribunal’s ruling was handed, Duterte was the new president, he had the sworn duty to uphold it. He could not say then as president, as he cannot now, as an ordinary citizen, that Communist China has sovereign rights over the WPS.

In the interview which Duterte allegedly asked for, Miriam quoted him as saying China is a friend of the Philippines.

Here the mindset of Duterte is manifest. His accompanying gesture is, like China’s, unfriendly. Remember what happened to the late mayor Espinosa in a jail in Leyte? The gruesome violence of many policemen in killing a lonely prisoner was as unfriendly as the act of Chinese maritime assets in training their water cannons against unarmed Philippine vessels. The statement of Duterte in that interview actually falls exactly under Article 114 of the Revised Penal Code that “any person, who owes allegiance to the xxx Government of the Philippine Islands, not being a foreigner, and xxx adheres to their enemies, (the act of China being inimical) giving them aid or comfort within the Philippine Islands”. Duterte, the lawyer knows this. That is why he reportedly asked a Chinese to interview him because if that interview is published in a foreign territory, he could raise jurisdictional issue in his defense in case treason is filed against him. Brilliant. Such brilliance, however, projects his unpatriotic personality.