IN PRINCIPLE, we should have a new president by this time – days after President Duterte backed out of his own dare to former Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio to debate on the South China Sea dispute.
Walking away was not as simple as that. The challenge had a pricey wager to it: Duterte would resign if he lost the debate. Retreating from the debate meant, for a lot of people, that Duterte conceded Carpio’s point: Duterte’s position on the South China Sea was wrong.
Duterte did not resign, of course. He decided not to pursue the course of event he himself almost foreordained because, in the words of his (in)famous spokesperson, it was a mismatch, a sitting president against a retired magistrate, an apple versus an orange deal. Everyone forek new the outcome. Prediction preempted itself. Duterte vanished into the warm night and threw in a bogeyman or a ring master to replace him.
So, where are we now in the dispute? The Duterte administration, deeper into self-made delusion and confusion, looks like a disorganized one,as one member of choir sings a different tune while the choir director doesn’t mind.
The latest roll down in the slippery slope is Harry Roque’s startling revelation that the Julian Felipe reef isn’t ours. If it isn’t, the implication is clear: it could be China’s. Before Roque’s shot in the foot, the reef was barricaded by more than 200 Chinese militia ships that triggered several diplomatic protests from Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.
The reef’s name, to begin with, doesn’t sound like Chinese. Someone must have been powerful enough to inveigle Roque that it was really Chinese. It is the same trick that someone said the devil used in the Garden of Eden to deceive Eve into biting off a coconut which it passed for an apple or something.
Otherwise, how could Roque, a human rights lawyer, a politician honed in the art of inveiglement, an avowed patriot, ignore the screaming evidence before him. Motivation maybe part of the reason. Sen. Francis Pangilinan has a pointed question: who’s paying Roque’s salary? Better yet, who’s running to the bank gleefully?
Given his job description, Roque is the president’s , or ex-president’s—mouthpiece. His latest remark is wholly consistent with the earlier pronouncement of his principal that China is in possession of the South China Sea, which Carpio has disputed and was willing to bet his marbles on in the debate that, unfortunately, never was.
Did he, wrote William Blake in his poem ‘Tiger, Tiger’, who made the lamb, make thee? Locsin who threatened mayhem if Roque didn’t shut up, are both members of the Duterte ensemble. Does anybody suspect that someone other than the Filipinos who took an oath to defend the Constitution and the Republic, must be passing on the wrong idiot board?
Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno was ejected from her post by quo warranto for failing to file some of her statements of assets and liabilities.
It’s about time the country’s leaders from top to bottom or vice versa are held accountable for a much graver crime: dishonoring their oaths of offices. But of course, they can always argue that those are mere scraps of paper. Or disregard the oath altogether. “ No one, by swearing, makes themselves more honest, said Jane Kaniak in “ The Punishment of the Gods”. “Oaths may make a liar a liar yet again; having lied about the oath as well.”
As it is now, with Duterte and other members of his government shooting off cross purposes statements, the oath must be revisited.
Honor and honesty are fundamental in a public office. Which is why it is called public trust. Which is why Carpio is saying that Duterte may be guilty of betrayal of public trust because of his pro-China pronouncements and stance. It is an impeachable offense, except that he knows what he is up to: lawmakers and legislators—most of them anyway, are perceived to be deep down in his pocket.
Some nights ago, Jose Cuisia, former Philippine ambassador to the United States, could not contain himself in disgust over what he felt a very improper posture of the President over the South China Sea dispute. How could he speak in China’s favor when that isn’t what he signed up for, regardless of the failed jet ski narrative?
In a word, a lie, big one, is being foisted upon the nation by no less than its top leaders over who owns the territorial rights of the Philippines in the South China Sea that China is claiming hers despite an arbitral award to the contrary.
At the rate Roque and others are tempted or egged to say something about it while a bigger, richer, powerful shadow is watching over them, a gag role is necessary to stop the insanity, to say the least.
