If PBBM is to salvage his presidency, he must firm up now that he’s got one direction right at least and stay the course to reconciliation with China
An asian event discussed profusely in the West, especially in the United States, but meriting hardly an inside page story in Philippine mainstream print media or any discussion in social media is the 3rd Plenum of the 20th CPC-CC (Communist Party of China, Central Committee).
It is the government of the People’s Republic of China top decision-making body finalizing the 5-year plan for China’s socialist-market system in today’s “New Era.”
The quinquennial 3rd Plenary of the 5-year CPC-CC term has become a regular focus of global attention since the historic 3rd Plenum of the 11th CPC-CC in 1978.
There Premier Deng Xiaoping enunciated the modernization campaign that delivered in 46-year socio-economic, geopolitical and technological marvel China has become, uplifting 1.4-billion of its people from the morass of feudal poverty to the pinnacle of economic and technological success in such a short time.
The 3rd Plenum has since become a legend of success of CPC State planning and implementation process, introducing a new concept of democracy delivering wholistic protection of both human and economic or material rights to its teeming nation.
Surprisingly it gave hope of the same to the Global Majority of developing nations struggling for final liberation from half-a-millennium of stultifying exploitative Western domination.
Last July 24, the Filipino “think tank” Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute did a Zoom forum on the subject of “The 3rd Plenum and its Impact on PH-China ties,” a topic that has become timely again as Philippine-China relations are undergoing a process of “de-escalation” or “easing of tensions.”
This, after a-year-and-a-half of US-inspired “assertive transparency,” a strategy of tension, now apparently rejected by the PBBM government after protest from AFP elements.
Many unbelieving Filipino and foreign observers won’t be holding their breaths over how long and how far the PBBM government can push the de-escalation.
That’s why our second topic is important as it is about the visit of US State Secretary Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet their Filipino counterparts on July 30 at the Shangrila-BGC for the quaintly called “2 + 2 diplomatic meeting” to ink some agreements.
The 2 + 2 meet of the US and Philippine counterparts is seen as the start of Round 2 of US pressure on PBBM to junk de-escalation and return to the strategy of tension against China.
If that succeeds, then the 3rd Plenum wider opening up of the Chinese market, opening up to foreign talents (including high level OFWs appreciated worldwide), opening up to foreign investment of many new sectors, among many other opportunities for the Philippines, will be all for naught here.
On July 29, the Anti-War Coalition brought together by the ACPSSII group of Ka Mentong (Herman Tiu Laurel), Ka Eric Celis of NTF-ELCAC and Anti-Imperialist group of RJ Javellana, with other groups, will gather at Aberdeen Court to protest against the Blinken-Austin visit.
Javellana’s group will be parading on Quezon Blvd. with three giant nuclear bomb effigies wearing “No to War, No to EDCA” shirts, to raise awareness of the imperative to rid the country of the US interference, its military bases and its warmongering.
The protest action will add a strong voice to the growing clamor from the “independent public intellectual class” on social media.
They include very assertive retired military officers such as Gens. Orlando de Leon, Romeo Poquiz, and Johnny Macanas, for the country to return and stay the course towards the independent foreign policy and advocacy of “friend to all, enemy to none” foreign relations to save the country from the warmongering of the West and some domestic sources.
If PBBM — suffering from self-inflicted slings-and-arrows from his “P20-rice” to the SONA’s “5,500 flood control projects” that did not show itself in the floods of Typhoon Carina, and the “Philippines cannot waver” but then seesawed twice on de-escalation – is to salvage his presidency, he must firm up now that he’s got one direction right at least and stay the course to reconciliation with China, revive the 60-40 percent Oil-Gas Recto Bank deal and bring in the energy and cash from that project that only China can make possible. rpkapunan@gmail.com
