WHY should the opposition (now tagged yellowtards or yellow army) deter the plan of the Duterte administration to craft a foreign policy that would dovetail with the global shift of policies of other nations?
Our subservience and dependence to the US has classified us to being among the vassals of America. President Rodrigo Duterte takes the lead for other nations similarly situated like we do to elevate our status from being too submissive to one which merits respect and attention.
For Duterte to deliver that message, required some degree of courage and determination. It helps that US President Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon earlier issued derogatory remarks which questioned Duterte’s all-out-war against drugs and what they claim to be state-sponsored summary killings.
What better forum then can Duterte illustrate his response to those who denigrate him than the Asean summit where Obama and Moon were present.
Isn’t it that these two displayed their arrogance by questioning the strategy of the Duterte administration in dealing with the drug problem in the country that has metamorphosed into virtual eight-headed hydra. Even prior to this, a minor state department official of the US and an Australian envoy had the temerity to insult Mayor Duterte on his rape joke. Save for the diplomats and the sensitive well-heeled Yellowtards savages around us, we Pinoys did not mind it for it was merely a reminder of how the beasts like the rapists be dealt with.
The spokesmen of Malacañang sadly seemed to be apprehensive of the possible repercussions of the President’s diatribes. They failed to comprehend that the primary issue objective here is to hammer into the heads of domineering nations like America that the Philippines is a sovereign nation deserving of respect.
The Philippines is facing internal threats that have not been addressed by previous Aquino administration and have in fact abetted it. That 98 percent of our barangays in urban and rural areas have become a virtual market of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu should have shocked the past administration. Criminal elements, among them riding in tandem, rapists go about town in broad daylight victimizing innocent civilians many of them barely in their teens.
Then we suddenly realize the reasons for the acquiescence of Malacañang at the height of this scourge when in the first 30 days of Duterte’s administration not a few active and retired generals, local government officials were discovered to be involved in the drug syndicate either as protector and wholesaler. Why? Even inside the penitentiary drugs are manufactured and luxury prison cells had become a distribution centers.
How can this iniquity be addressed when the Secretary of Justice would rather spend her leisure time inside the confines of a five-star karaoke bar within the penitentiary?
Will President Duterte watch and condone these indecencies and allow drugs to destroy the generation after us? Obama and Ki-Moon should realize the immensity of this problem before they lectured on Duterte on how to deal with this scourge. “Do it right”, they intoned. It is short of saying “stop extrajudicial killing” which is the propaganda line of the Yellow Army and the incorrigible lapdogs of the failed Aquino regimes in the likes of Senators Leila de Lima, Riza Hontiveros, Frank Drilon and of course Sonny Trillanes. Add to that Representatives Harry Roque, Edcel Lagman, and Vice President Leni Robredo and you have a coterie of stooges who believes the Aquino chapters 1 and 2 are the best episodes in this ill-fated country.
The Duterte government should therefore proceed with its objective to craft a new foreign policy that would define our diplomatic, security, and economic strategies that would harmonize with the exigencies of the time.
If America and other western countries are doing that, why cannot the Philippines wiggle out from the straight jacket that had confined us to being dependent and, being one, suffer the indignities and veiled threats of those who we thought were our friends but turned out to be fiends?
Why can the US do an Asian pivot and why should Duterte be a suspect if he would engage China to a bilateral talk. We cannot be strapped to Jurassic foreign policies like some idiots thought that we will be missing American chocolate bars if we attempt to trifle with it?
And yes, why can America dub the slaughter of unarmed women and children that sought refuge in a dormant volcano crater in Bud Dajo and call it “decisive victory” and then condemn Duterte’s campaign against drug syndicates and criminals and dubbed these extrajudicial killings and gross violations of human rights? As my mother-in-law would quip: “Ano ka hilo?”
By the way, there are hidden chapters in Philippine history that tell of gruesome slaughters of tribesmen (Tagakaolos) by American military in Davao and in Samar. To this day, the massacres are events that are celebrated in the US but we opt to be quiet about it because these had been buried deep in the catacomb of forgetfulness.
Nobody ever held America accountable for these bestialities. Since Obama and Ban Ki-Moon found fault in our own war to eradicate the scourge of drugs and unabated crime in our own native land then maybe these little glimpse of how those who claims moral ascendancy over us should keep calm and think awhile.
We are witnessing the dynamism of change and shifting times. The big powers used to plot war using conventional weapons. Today, they hedge and confine themselves by showing their armada of war ships, submarines and warheads. The US telegraphed their Asia Pivot shifting their arsenals of lethal weapons and what have they to the South China Sea and the Pacific. Would these scare China?
For that matter would you ever believe that China will invade Philippines as some idiots post in their funny timeline on Facebook? As I had repeatedly quoted a top Chinese official in this inconsequential corner where I write from the boondocks of Davao City, “no one is crazy to burn the house of his next door neighbor”.
Duterte is leading us and taking us to a new level of foreign engagements.
Be proud. Take pride in being one with our President in our struggle to free ourselves from the tentacles of syndicated crime, corruption, and weakness. Be strong.
