The last time I checked my social media stream, our President was raking Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno over burning coals, openly declaring in true Duterte fashion that he can’t work with a recalcitrant ex-UP law professor.
And then came a platitude from the President as he faced the press during his visit to our now-friendly drug-importing neighbor across the southern China seas. Here’s the quote that made my hair stand on end:
“It’s like a flower that would bloom into something big and beautiful. It’s one stem and China and the Philippines will bloom, and you and I are in the middle of the flower…”
Gawd almighty! I didn’t know that the President is now into horticultural hyperbole particularly of the vanda-vanda type. My orchid-obsessed sister should be informed about this, I told myself. The first thing that imploded in my mind was recalling the equally mind-boggling hyperbolic abilities mastered by former First Lady Imelda Marcos. And those were indeed gay times, and I mean really fun times as in “LOL,” to borrow from the acronyms of social media.
But back to the president and his metaphor on the ‘blooming relations’ with the builder of the Great Wall of China.
As president, our Manong Digong in Malacanang has the task to fashion an independent foreign policy, no contest on that having covered the Department of Foreign Affairs (at the time of Fidel Ramos) as a nosy news correspondent. The tricky thing with foreign affairs is that it is one slippery area where a leader is tested to the max. Every word is measured and the mettle or acumen of true leadership is mercilessly tested. Scrutinized. Magnified. In other words, this is one area where one false move and you’re dead. Gone. Buking as way say in the vernacular.
Let’s deconstruct the flower metaphor of Manong Digong. ‘It’s one stem…” he said referring to Philippine-Chinese relations. The stem holds the flower or the bloom, and this bloom or ubod (in Filipino) is destined to open into “…something big and beautiful.” Of course he has to qualify that with “big and beautiful” because there are ubod or blooms that turn out to be hopeless retards. They stay small and ugly. We have low-radar weeds, or worse, we have addictive leaves. But, hey, not to digress into addiction, which our President obviously have low or zero-tolerance to…
China and the Philippines as a single-stemmed flower is not exactly a pretty sight, if you ask me. It reminds me of kanturay, which I guess is a kind of edible vine that cows would love to munch and digest while contemplating their happy existence in farm life. Having had a long and insightful contacts with the Mandarin Chinese, I can say that Digong’s foreign policy, when ‘margoted’ into the Chinese variety will quickly wilt into a deplorable bloom simply because there is no match. The botanical playing field is not level.
Here’s an anecdotal lesson. China’s President Xi Jingping recently told the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte that he appreciated Rutte’s complimentary remark regarding Chinese shrewdness on state and foreign affairs. To quote a translation of Jingping’s remarks directed at the Dutch prime minister:
“Your comments on the intelligence of the Chinese received warm applause [by the audience]. We, the Chinese people, also find ourselves exceptionally astute.”
The rub-my-back-and-I-rub-yours relationship is quite commonplace in diplomacy as it is basically a world of assurance, gestures, foresight and careful planning. What is more revealing is the direct admission on the part of Jingping. The Chinese are often hesitant to draw attention to their moves. But when they do…
Digong’s attempt at flower-power metaphor is a dismal flop. The Chinese can see through his false moves, his naiveté, and worse, his shallow confidence. I’m afraid that Duterte’s flower power foreign policy will eventually unravel. His vanda-vanda variety of horticulture is no match to the razor-sharp tactics of the builder of the Great Wall.
Mabubuking din, as we say in the vernacular.
Joel Vega, a former news correspondent, lives and works in the Netherlands as a publications editor for an international medical association.