The choice of Alan Peter Cayetano as the country’s top diplomat was always on President Rodrigo Duterte’s mind, from Day One of his administration.
In fact, as early as the days after the resounding victory, the president-in-waiting had already privately offered the post to his vice-presidential running mate.
But there was a one-year constitutional ban, and so the President chose his good friend Perfecto Yasay Jr. to fill the void, foreign affairs being a most important affair (pardon the pun).
We were kidding Sen. Alan then, saying that the President-elect wanted him as DFA secretary because of his mestizo looks and his American middle name.
Alan’s mother is a Schramm, an American descended from European forebears who migrated to Michigan generations before.
His father, Renato Cayetano of Bulacan and Pateros, was then pursuing his masteral degree in law at the fabled Ann Arbor University in Michigan when he was smitten with the simple and unassuming American.
Those who remember the late Senator Rene Cayetano, who was a brilliant legislator and a colorful legal practitioner and broadcast personality, hardly knew the gentle woman behind his successful career and more importantly, the very Christian values upon which were moored the work ethic of their family. She was always in the background, and remained in the background even when her daughter Pia and son Alan, along with younger siblings Ren-ren and Lino, became active in local and national politics.
“Pang-balanse si Alan sa mga ‘Kano”, a common friend whom I shall not name, then quipped over a late dinner at Sonny Dominguez’ Marco Polo Hotel’s Chinese restaurant.
Our dinner group knew what he meant, though. It was Alan’s middle name. But we all knew that maternal parentage notwithstanding, Alan Peter Schramm Cayetano would be nobody’s “little mestizo Amerikano” in the lamentable fashion of the “little brown American” which has characterized many chapters of our past foreign policy directions.
He would be as fiercely independent as his boss Rodrigo Duterte, and equally patriotic.
But while the mercurial president finds speaking his mind out so natural, resulting in often colorful if controversial epithets directed at those who interfere in largely internal affairs of the Philippines, Alan would calibrate his language. Alan would seek balance.
This is not going to be too easy for the young Alan, who will turn 48 come October this year.
He is known as a rabid anti-graft crusader, having tangled with a former first gentleman, and having been a vociferous leader of an impeachment drive against a sitting president. Of more recent vintage, he tore into the once-fabled poor-man narrative of a highly successful mayor who rose to the vice-presidency, and succeeded in demolishing the chances of one perceived to be the sure winner in last year’s presidential elections.
Alan is a motor-mouth fighter, and metamorphosing from microphone specialist to the quiet whispers (“murmurings” to borrow from President Digong’s inaugural speech) of diplomacy is going to be worth watching.
The key word is balance, which rhymes serendipitously with Alan.
In his first foray into the world of diplomacy after his history-setting three-minute confirmation by virtual acclamation in the Commission on Appointments, Alan proposed that while there is yet no legally binding mechanism to enforce any deal on the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea dispute, China and the Asean should in the meantime “settle for a gentleman’s agreement” to prevent any hostile actions and promote stability in the region.
This statement came after Asean and China finished a draft framework towards negotiating a code of conduct over the disputed maritime area.
“Many countries want it to be legally binding, but what I’m saying is, let’s start with a binding gentleman’s agreement.”
Realistically, or pragmatically in the parlance of geopolitics and international relations, there is no court, not even an international tribunal, that can enforce its rulings on any sovereign nation. All it can do is use international pressure, which upon the other hand, could create unsettling instability in the region affected.
“We are all trying to avoid not only war, but instability,” Cayetano said.
Using the arguments of a lawyer, Cayetano tiptoes into the realm of diplomacy. What we cannot enforce, we can make acceptable and face-saving compromises upon.
As his superior, the President clearly intones, “we are not giving up our sovereign claims.” We are just putting the conflict in the back-burner, for the future, to resolve with finality if ever.
And meanwhile, no matter how the usual jeremiads of doom and purveyors of fear keep jeering, we ought to benefit from friendlier relations with our neighbors.
Short of a settlement, we start first with building trust and avoiding more tension in the region.
Politics is the art of the possible. In the political realm of international relations, balance is the key.
And for the Philippines, it is Alan to the balance.