Late Saturday night, I received a call from someone asking me to speak at a forum on foreign policy the next Monday. It was short notice and I almost declined. However, when told by the caller, Melo Acuña, that I was to be a member of a three-man panel which included former congressman and National Security Adviser Roilo Golez and UP professor Roland Simbulan, I accepted, considering I would be in good company.
Golez, who spent four years at the US naval academy in Annapolis, was the right resource person to speak on the country’s security concerns. He came armed with a video presentation of China’s island- building in the disputed territory. He explained how reclaimed land to build military installations in the South China Sea poses a threat to the region’s peace and stability and destroys the coral reefs under the ocean floor.
As a former ambassador, I was asked by someone in the audience if we actually have a foreign policy. Some 20 years in the foreign service gives one a better look at other countries’ foreign policy —how they deal with international issues and challenges confronting them and how we can adapt some of the things they do right. We have a foreign policy but it is an “in the box” foreign policy —constrained from charting a truly independent foreign policy. So much for thinking out of the box.
There is no such thing as independent foreign policy because interdependence among nations and governments is the essence of diplomatic relations. Professor Simbulan and I were on the same page that the formulation of foreign policy is dictated by domestic policy and national interests. For example, we cannot have a credible, decent foreign policy in dealing with Middle East countries where we send our workers. We are strait-jacketed in our bilateral relations with countries who host our overseas Filipino workers which give our millions of unemployed the jobs our own government cannot provide. Our Civil Aeronautics Board granted Emirates and Etihad airlines additional flights to the Philippines because the UAE employs hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers.
Although protecting our OFWs is one of the pillars in our foreign policy, it is difficult for a Filipina maid who had been abused by her Arab employer to get justice because we are “boxed in” by the imperatives of our domestic priorities. The government itself is one big job recruitment agency placing our people overseas lest the number of unemployed contribute to the build-up of a social volcano waiting to explode. The daily passport applicants at the DFA’s consular office are those mostly with intention to work abroad. They outnumber 10 to one applicants for tourist visas in the various foreign embassies here.
Our Department of Foreign Affairs and our embassies abroad must be commended when they evacuate our OFWS in strife-torn areas. But then, their being over there in the first place is because they were driven in their desperation to try their luck in Libya, Syria and even in such places in West Africa like Nigeria, Liberia and Guinea where they have to cope with health hazards like ebola and the Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus or MERS COV for short. This, aside from dodging bullets when caught in the crossfire of a raging civil war.
National security is one of the other pillars in our foreign policy. Despite the territorial dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea, this President has not convened the National Security Council since he assumed power five and half years ago. Even the administration-conceived Bangsamoro Basic Law is fraught with national security implications because the BBL creates a state within a state and the framework agreement was brokered by Malaysia, a country with a conflict of interest in our claim to Sabah. It is doubtful that the next government will focus on foreign policy given that not one of the four candidates for President has spoken out on the subject. Poll surveys give us a glimpse of voter preference for presidential candidates and their popularity but not on how they would like to see them lead the nation. Hopefully, the presidential debates proposed by the Commission on Elections will provide us with the right questions and answers.
How can an archipelago without a credible navy deal with external threat? The rusting and half submerged MV Sierra Madre manned by a handful of Marines serves as an outpost in the West Philippine Sea. It also symbolizes the sorry state of our naval capability. The country is being destabilized internally. It’s alarming when drug busts involving Chinese nationals are reported almost daily in the six o’clock news. There is a saying “we have seen the enemy and it is us.” Foreigners with intent to engage in criminal activity come in with the connivance of immigration officials.When arrested for drug trafficking, these criminals who erode the moral fiber of our people, are merely deported for a fee. Filipinos also serve as distributors of shabu which is now manufactured locally. The Philippines is no longer a transshipment point of drugs but the source itself.
With the external threat posed by an aggressive China, the Philippines acquired two refurbished frigates and nine helicopters from the United States. Earlier, 10 choppers were also purchased from Poland. Primarily to be used for counter insurgency operations, the Polish manufacturer Swidnik equipped the helicopter gun ships with rocket launchers and night vision capability.The choppers were in Zamboanga after ferrying President Aquino, his security men, Department of National Defense and Department of the Interior and Local Government officials.Why they were not sent in during the Mamasapano encounter to assist the embattled PNP-SAF commandos has to be asked. Was Aquino waiting for the commandos to deliver the head (just a figure of speech) of international terrorist Marwan? All Aquino got was Marwan’s index finger cut off for DNA testing. A middle finger might have been more fitting.
