“WE LEAVE the Filipino caregiver to the jurisdiction of Taiwanese authorities because deportation is really a decision to be made by Taiwanese authorities, which forms part of China.”
So Duterte loudspeaker Harry Roque dismissed Tuesday the deportation issues initiated by a factotum of the Department of Labor and Employment against Taiwan-based Filipina worker Elanel Ordidor for criticizing the President‘s handling of the coronavirus crisis on social media.
Making sure that there was not the slightest slip in his tongue on a patently political faux pas and geographical wrong, Roque even more emphatically reiterated: “We leave that wholly to the decision of Taiwan and China. Taiwan is part of China.”
Ah, the arrogance of infallibility of the medieval papacy the spox arrogated unto himself there: Roque locuta est. Causa finita est. Roque has spoken, cause and case closed. Wrong. Absolutely, wrong.
On Wednesday, Taiwan rained down on Roque’s parade of arrogant sycophancy.
“My country expresses strong dissatisfaction and high regret over Philippine government officials wrongly accusing Taiwan as part of China.”
Terse and trenchant was an unofficial English translation of Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Joanne Ou’s official statement.
“Taiwan, the Republic of China, is a sovereign and independent country and has never been a part of China. The People’s Republic of China has never ruled Taiwan…and only the elected Taiwan government can represent the 23 million people of Taiwan internationally,” Ou said.
Thereafter, proceeding to school Roque, and by extension the one he blabbers for, in international diplomacy: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has instructed our representative office in the Philippines to immediately negotiate with the Philippines to express their protests. We solemnly call on the government officials of the Philippines to face up to the facts and stop misrepresenting Taiwan as a part of China.”
In effect, shaming this regime by stressing that foreign workers in Taiwan “are protected by relevant laws and regulations, including freedom of speech,” and they will not be deported if they did not violate Taiwanese laws and regulations.
But what is that to Roque? Or for that matter to Duterteand his minions?
For sure, having long promoted himself as a public intellectual and schooled in international law – putatively, at least, having served as prosecuting lawyer in the murder trial of US serviceman Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton, accused in the killing of transgender Jennifer Laude in 2015 – Roque cannot even feign the least ignorance in Communist Chinahaving neither de jure nor de facto sovereignty over democratic Taiwan, no matter the former’s insistent illusion of the latter being its mere province.
So, what gives with Roque?
Nothing more than strictly toeing, aye, toadying the Sinophiliac line blazed so zealously by his Malacanang principal – China, above all else!
The Filipino nation – but for the 16 million useful idiots, as Lenin would have put it – have been seeing that in Duterte since Day One. And only a few days back, in the AFP chief of staff using his officialposition asking favors from the Chinese embassy, in the Defense Secretary trivializing an international incident of a Chinese warship training its radar gun on a Philippine Navy ship as just “testing our reaction.” Not the least in the consideration of reviving POGO operations amid the lockdown, even as Filipino businesses are kept closed under pain of penalty.
Parrot Chinese lies, truth be damned, the Philippines be doomed.
Roque is but a recycled pawn in the grand scheme of the Duterte-Chinese hegemony, to use the hackneyed activist line.
Speaking of lines, can’t help now but be reminded of afamous quotation from the very icon of world revolutions but infamously perverted here to suit the times: What do the danger and sacrifices of the Filipino nation matter, when the interest of China, when the love for Xi Jin Ping, is at stake?
