PHILIPPINES
By Francisco Tatad*
The Manila Times
29 Jan 2018
A fresh slew of quotable quotes has put back President Rodrigo Duterte in action, smashing icons with his trademark discourse. Not one of his quotes threatens to enlarge our view of the world as we see it, but they tend to throw a light into the depths in which the mind of this unique political actor lives. Not many see such mind as simply flawed, they rather suspect it is twisted and diseased.
On his way to India, to attend the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit in New Delhi last week, DU30 blasted the State of Kuwait, over the reported rape of an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) who committed suicide after being abused. No Kuwaiti official was reported to have been involved in the incident, but DU30 threatened to punish the government and people of Kuwait by pulling out all OFWs in that sheikhdom should another incident occur involving a Filipino expatriate.
For the record, no OFW is posted anywhere without government documentation, but the workers rather than the government decide where and when they are to be posted. In case of emergencies, affecting the safety and well-being of the public as a whole, the government may suspend the posting of OFWs in a certain destination. This happened in places like Libya during the Arab Spring. But it is absurd to threaten the recall of all OFWs in a particular jurisdiction just because of one or two incidents in which the state as such had absolutely no involvement.
Punishing Kuwait
We can all agree that one OFW getting raped, and committing suicide afterward, is one tragedy too many. But should the Emir of Kuwait be made accountable for it? Were the same thing to happen in the Philippines—where perhaps as many crimes are committed by abusive employers against their own domestic help —-would it be right to make DU30 accountable for it? If the Kuwaiti government had done nothing to make the guilty parties accountable, then there would be just ground to rail against the host government for its lack of concern. But we cannot call them out just because the crime happened in Kuwait.
Kuwait is a country of 4.2 million people, of whom 1.3 million are Kuwaitis, and 2.9 million expatriates. Of the 2.9 million, an estimated 250,000 are Filipinos. Should any Filipino ever figure in any crime, whether as perpetrator or as victim, the first thing our government should do is to investigate and determine all the facts before making a statement. This was what former Vice President Jejomar Binay used to do as presidential assistant on OFW concerns. Was this done before DU30 isued his statement? An open mouth is hardly a solution to anything.
As a populist politician, DU30 apparently wanted the poor OFWs to see him as their champion, by blasting their host government for its allegedly inhumane treatment of Filipino migrant workers and threatening to pull out all of them because of such alleged treatment. It is pure and simple demagoguery and theater, and it unnecessarily puts to risk our excellent relations with a government, which has been a close partner.
Kuwait is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain, joined by Egypt, imposed a diplomatic blockade on Qatar for allegedly supporting terrorism, despite the fact that Qatar is hosting a large and important US base engaged in the fight against terrorism and has been recognized by the US as one of its strongest partners in the fight against terrorism. This blockade has now assumed the nature of an economic war, and plunged the Gulf countries into a crisis that has harmed their peoples more than their governments.
In all this, the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al Admed Al Jaber Al Sabah, has tried to provide the voice of reason by trying to mediate the conflict. Other leaders like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have tried to join in this effort. Some Arab sources fear DU30’s attack on Kuwait, although proceeding from a different premise, could threaten to downgrade the Emir’s leadership.
For this reason, they are hoping DU30 would rectify or at least clarify his statement on Kuwait.
The Uses of the UN
While in New Delhi, DU30 managed to turn his attention to the United Nations once again, and denounce the world organization as “useless.” It has not been able to prevent any war or massacre anywhere, he said. No UN spokesman has bothered to respond to his statement, just as the former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon never bothered to respond when DU30 publicly abused him for raising some concern about the extrajudicial drug killings in the Philippines.
The present UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was in Manila for the ASEAN and East Asian summits last November, and said nothing about DU30’s human rights record. However some UN agency or official appears to have called on DU30 this time to restore the license of the online news platform Rappler to operate, after the Securities and Exchange Comission cancelled it for its alleged violation of the 100-percent nationality requirement of the Constitution.
Rappler is accused of having allowed foreign equity to dilute the constitutionally mandated 100 percent Filipino ownership. Rappler has denied this charge, saying the money they had accessed from a foreign source did not grant ownership to that source. The government says this is a purely constitutional issue rather than one involving press freedom. This opinion is contested by various organizations.
The controversy is expected to intensify because of its very nature. Rappler is the only truly independent news outfit in a country dominated by pro-government news outlets, propagandists and trolls. On November 2, 2017, Rappler won the W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award from the National Democratic Institute in Washington, D.C. for its crusade against “fake news.” Maria Ressa, Rappler’s CEO and executive editor, received the award at Fairmont Hotel from former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, NDI chair.
The late former President Corazon C. Aquino received the same award after she left Malacañang.
In 2015, UN Secretary General António Guterres as UN High Commissioner for Refugees at the time, received the same award, along with the top leaders of Tunisia’s Arab Spring. I met Dr. Albright and the awardees during that dinner.
The Philippines is a founding member of the UN, and an active contributor to its worldwide effort to promote peace and international cooperation. When DU30 says the UN is useless, what does that make of everything we have done for the world body, from 1945, when we were “present at the creation,” through all these years? Is DU30 ready to send home our UN Ambassador Teddy Boy Locsin, close down our Permanent Mission there, and lease out our brownstone on 66th Street in Manhattan, where the ambassador now lives, to add to the travel funds of our favored officials?
Indeed, the UN has not been able to prevent wars, genocides and massacres, just as it has not been able to prevent epidemics and dictatorships. But it has been able to allow reason to intervene even at the height of genocides and wars, so that ultimately peace, no matter how short-lived, would prevail.
Intervention in the Gulf
In the Middle East for the last eight months, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain—three rich and powerful countries—have declared a blockade on their tiny neighbor Qatar, for the most specious reason, and have refused any kind of dialogue to resolve whatever quarrel they have.
They have done everything to make life for the Qatari population, which includes 260,000 Filipinos, unbearable. Qatar has proved more resilient than the siege states had expected, and has not retaliated in any manner. But the political crisis has deepened.
Above the mediation efforts of Kuwait and Turkey, it is the UN alone that has provided the world some hope that the crisis might end soon. A report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, based on the findings by a UN technical mission on human rights, which visited Doha between November 17 and 24, has declared that the siege on Qatar has exceeded the bounds of diplomatic action, and assumed the character of economic war, which has hurt the lives and well-being of Qatar’s population more than the interests of its government. Although Qatar has not retaliated and appears to have no plans of retaliating against the siege countries, the crisis has affected the overall stability of the region, and the world.
Qatar’s ambassador to the Philippines Ali Bin Ibrahim Al-Malki shared the report with some newsmen during a private dinner at his residence last week. The ambassador said he did not want to color the report with any interpretation; but he would like the press to read it and interpret it objectively, as written. It contains a litany of human rights violations by the siege countries.
By calling attention to the nature of this crisis and its effects, the UN is performing a role which even DU30 will have to concede is useful. If he decides to join the call for an end to the crisis through negotiations, he would effectively be acting in response to the UN. He will have to concede then that the UN is not worthless, after all, contrary to his own statement.
Advising Aung San Suu Kyi
Still, in India, DU30 was reported to have given Myanmar’s Nobel laureate and State Counselor an unsolicited advice on how to handle public criticisms over her handling of the Rohingya Muslims crisis. Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize for enduring 15 years of house arrest while opposing Myanmar’s military rule, but has failed to oppose the military crackdown on the 655,000 Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine.
“Do not mind the human rights (critics). They’re just a noisy bunch actually,“ DU30 reportedly told Suu Kyi.
No third party heard this alleged conversation. But DU30 narrated it during his meeting with Indian investors. He seemed to want to give the impression that he had something to teach other leaders, even if he may in fact be the one who needs to learn from them. But in fairness to DU30, although he could have advised Suu Kyi not only to ignore her critics, but above all to insult the “sonofabitches,” and if necessary threaten them with bodily harm, he decided not to give her the full prescription. Just ignore them, he said.
With all these sensational quotes from DU30, our people will have enough irrelevant issues to chew on, while the President and his sycophants move at full speed to use the proposed Charter change to balkanize the nation and formalize the next dictatorship.
(First published in The Manila Times – http://www.manilatimes.net/despite-du30s-heckling-can-still-use-un/377057/)
