Of human life and human rights

BY ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS ON AUGUST 2, 2018

ONE of the most applauded statements of the President in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) was his claim that he fights for human life, and not for human rights.

Yet, it was also one of the most criticized by the political opposition. Leni Robredo, Noynoy Aquino and their cohorts in the opposition and critics of the President make it appear that he has made out human life and human rights to be mutually exclusive.

Indeed, it is wrong to say that they are mutually exclusive. But the President did not actually say that they were. And it is equally wrong to imply that they are one and the same, which is what his critics are saying.

To better understand the relationship between human life on one hand, and human rights on the other, one has to go back to the evolution of the doctrine of rights as an essential feature of modern democracies. Emerging from decades of political violence, where states committed untold horror on their citizens, and on citizens of other countries with which they were at war, modern states saw it as necessary to install mechanisms to protect the rights of individuals against the actions of their governments.

Theoretically, however, the doctrine of rights goes back to the classical theories of the state, particularly on the social contract theory, where citizens wanted to avoid a state where they may have perfect freedom to exercise their individual rights, but such could easily degenerate into a state of war. Hence, citizens decided to form a state to whom they would “surrender” their rights, not necessarily to lose it, but in exchange for the state’s duty to protect those rights. Hobbes differed from Locke on the manner of such surrender, where the former talked of it as an absolute one, the latter talked of a conditional one which can be taken back if the state fails to live up to its end of the social contract. Rousseau’s idea of a social contract was different, since he viewed it as a restraint on state power, to prevent the state from acting on behalf of the political elites. Hobbes and Locke viewed civil society as an outcome of the social contract, while Rousseau saw civil society as a product of human greed, and the social contract was a necessary instrument to protect citizens’ rights.

The general principle behind the social contract theory is that the state, in pursuance of its contract with the sovereign citizens, is duty bound to ensure that their individual rights are protected. This is the Western model of human rights, where collective rights are expressed only as derived from individual rights, and where states legislate and enforce laws to promote these rights.

Non-Western models which value collectivist, communitarian perspectives, look at collective rights not as an aggregation of all individual rights, but as one that possesses an autonomous logic. In the non-Western model, a political community’s right to exist is presumed to be a separable telos or goal, and to which individuals must submit. When conflict exists between individual and collective rights, the later would prevail.

In the Western model, the collective right of a community only exists in relation to how it can protect individual rights. The right of a political community to exist is derived from its individual members. A Bill of Rights is always present in any Constitution and is expressed as a defense of individuals against the power of the state. When there are conflicts, such as when the exercise of an individual of his or her right undermines or threatens the right of the political community to exist, or when the exercise by one of his or her right undermines that of another, then the state has to rely on the institutions of law to set the standard to adjudicate these conflicts. A state can deny one person the exercise of his or her right — one can be detained or imprisoned despite the right to freedom, or even be executed despite the right to life — only when such person has transgressed the laws, and only being accorded the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, to a fair trial and to due process.

There is only one instance when a person can violate the right to life of another, and this is in the context of self-defense, when there is a clear and present danger where it would be a justifiable course of action.

More importantly, the act of the state is always derived from its duty to protect the individual rights of its citizens to be secure in their persons and their homes and to be free from criminality and political violence. Unfortunately, while the state is entrusted with the mandate to protect the very existence of the Republic, and can act to deter threats to it, it can only raise the issue of self-defense not as an organic juridical entity, but only as expressed through threats to its individual agents.

Thus, while the President can declare martial law and suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus or call on the military to quell rebellion or terrorism, or to declare an all-out war against criminal gangs and drug syndicates, the Philippine state doesn’t have an organic right to take away life without due process of law. It is only in armed confrontations when state agents may take away the rights to life of the criminals and rebels in self-defense, but only as a last recourse, and under proper rules of engagement, and within the terms of international treaties and conventions in which the Philippines is a signatory.

Much as we still possess elements of the non-Western worldview, as evidenced by our strong communitarian traditions, our social contract — that is, our Constitution — is crafted using a Western rubric. Hence, the Philippine state is expected to privilege individual rights, even of those who threaten not only its collective rights, but also the rights of majority of its citizens. This is the position of human rights advocates.

The President, however, appears to challenge this Western view of states and rights, when he said that he values human life, and not human rights. He deployed an organic, autonomous right to life of the collective Filipino nation, which carries with it the right to protect itself. And this means privileging the right to life of those it has sworn to protect over the human rights of individuals whose actions tend to threaten the life of its citizens, and the life, or the very existence, of the political community and the Republic.

http://www.manilatimes.net/of-human-life-and-human-rights/425856/

Drilon has no shame

BY JOJO ROBLES ON AUGUST 2, 2018

YES, Sen. Franklin Magtunao Drilon has no shame. And I don’t mean that as an insult, since only senators are allowed to insult us, a privilege apparently granted to no one else.

First of all, Drilon has no call pretending to be one of the senators interested in getting to the bottom of the reports of alleged massive cheating in the May 2016 elections, as exposed by Senate President Vicente Sotto 3rd in two privilege speeches. As someone who garnered more than 18 million votes to top the Senate elections that year, simple delicadeza should have made Drilon skip the investigation of the committee chaired by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel 3rd.

But Drilon seems to have abandoned any appearance of propriety. Not only did the Iloilo senator attend the hearing, he also took it upon himself to act as de facto defender of the Commission on Elections and its automation partner Smartmatic, especially when he repeatedly did a number on resource person and anti-electoral fraud crusader Glenn Chiong.

That’s where Drilon’s now-viral “insult” comment comes in. Chiong, who as a former congressman knows his parliamentary procedure, asked former Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim through Pimentel if perhaps he did not understand him (Chiong) or was not paying attention to his questions.

Drilon quickly pounced on Chiong, saying that resource persons like the former congressman from Biliran were not allowed to insult other Senate guests. Only senators, Drilon explained huffily, could insult other people.

Now don’t get me wrong. I admire Chiong for his work and have even endorsed him as Comelec chairman under the Duterte administration.

But if I had been bullied by Drilon in that manner, I would certainly have replied in kind. I would (respectfully, of course) asked the senator why he could insult me, a citizen who pays his salary, and be prohibited from doing the same to him, for example.

I would also have asked him to clarify for me, for instance, if calling a senator a big, fat, lying pig would qualify as an insult. Only so that I may not make the mistake of insulting a member of the Senate in future statements, of course.

Chiong backed down from Drilon’s bully tactics in that instance, even if he had done nothing wrong. But he also redeemed himself when Drilon once again attempted to destroy his credibility by producing a document which purported to show that Chiong had been contracted, among other lawyers, as an alternate counsel of former senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Chiong correctly pointed out that while he may have been included in a list of lawyers for Marcos, who is protesting the election victory of Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo, he never accepted the appointment, much less appeared as counsel on Marcos’ behalf. And Drilon scored no points at all for getting his information from another lawyer, Anna Bernadette Sardillo, who was seen handing the sheet of paper with Chiong’s name on it to Drilon, the same document that the senator proudly waved at the resource person, as if to say that he caught him in a lie.

What Drilon was really doing was trying to divert the attention of the committee away from generalized cheating in the last elections, which could possibly lead to a probe of his own controversial victory over front-running candidates like Sotto and Manny Pacquiao, to name just two. By making it appear that Chiong was a Marcos operative, Drilon hoped to hijack the proceedings and convert them into yet another round in the long-running Marcos-Robredo match.

Which leads me again to question Drilon’s attendance at the Pimentel committee hearing. Like the president of his party, Sen. Francis Pangilinan, Drilon’s presence was only intended to scare off Chiong and other witnesses called in to bolster Sotto’s case of massive cheating — except that Pangilinan was not a surprise topnotcher in a Senate race that was being investigated in a hearing of the chamber.

Drilon’s naked attempts to destroy the credibility of Chiong prompted Sotto to declare that the former congressman was not the source of his information of widespread, computerized cheating in the last elections. Sotto pointedly told the hearing — with Drilon apparently as his audience of one — to lay off Chiong because his real witnesses were persons “whose testimony could not be overturned.”

I think we will be treated to more shameless attempts by Drilon to treat this investigation — one of the few Senate probes that has captured the attention of the public — as a venue to protect himself, his partymates like Robredo and the Comelec-Smartmatic syndicate that Chiong speaks so eloquently about. I’m sure that Sotto will not allow this investigation to end suddenly and inconclusively, just like other controversial quizzes started by his colleagues, especially now that he is head of the Senate.

But let this serve as fair warning for Drilon and the other Liberal senators who only want the Pimentel investigation to grind to a halt by besmirching Sotto’s witnesses: the people are watching this probe intently, and they will see through the usual self-interested scare tactics employed by well-known bullies like Drilon.

And by the way, it will not help the cause of Drilon and his like-minded senators to keep the public in the dark about the investigation of Sotto’s earth-shaking allegations by conspiring with the mainstream media to suppress news reports about it. I fully expect the blogging community and social media to cover the proceedings completely from hereon in, especially since mainstream outlets have proven that they cannot be trusted to report on this matter, which is of great concern to them.

Having said all that, I just want everyone to remember how Drilon acted during the first hearing last Tuesday and to expect that he will act in the same way in the hearings to come. Because Drilon simply has no shame.

http://www.manilatimes.net/drilon-has-no-shame/425861/

25% shades of fraud

BY ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS ON JULY 31, 2018

A MINIMUM shading threshold is an indispensable element of an automated election system and is not just an innocuous detail that can be decided matter of factly by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). It will have to be programmed to the individual vote counting machines (VCMs). And it is a crucial detail because it will determine which votes will be counted as valid. It is information that needs to be decided by the Comelec en banc, and of which the stakeholders, from the political parties to the candidates and the independent election watchdogs, must have prior knowledge. It should also be made public to properly advise the voters to ensure that they mark their ballots accordingly so that their votes will be properly counted by the VCMs.

This is precisely why the 2010 rule of 50 percent was issued through Comelec Resolution 8804, which was made public prior to the May elections. Specifically, Rule 15, Section 6. Letter l of the Resolution states: “…However, marks or shades which are less than 50 percent of the oval shall not be considered as valid votes. Any issue as to whether a certain mark or shade is within the threshold shall be determined by feeding the ballot on the PCOS machine, and not by human determination.”

It is not disputed that there is no single numbered Comelec resolution which amended this rule, not for the May 2013 elections, and certainly not for the May 2016 elections. What the Comelec issued on April 12, 2016 was Resolution 10088 which amended Resolution 10057, where Section 6 of the former amended Section 40 of the latter to now read: “The voter shall, using the ballot security folder and marking pen provided by the Commission, accomplish the ballot by fully shading the circle beside the names of the candidate and the organization participating in the party-list system of representation…” This is a clear indication of the Comelec’s intent to remind voters to fully shade their ballots, and this was matched by the information and education campaign materials which it disseminated directly to the public and was echoed by media and various civic organizations.

It is therefore in this atmosphere that one can’t help but express utter anger, if not total disbelief, at how Comelec can now admit in its comment submitted to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) — prepared by its legal department but was not signed by any single commissioner — that the 50 percent threshold had been abandoned a long time ago. This practically confirmed the earlier admission by former Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes, Jr. that the threshold was lowered to 20 percent in the 2013 elections, and to 25 percent in the 2016 elections.

It is now obvious that the Comelec, the very same agency that is tasked to protect the sanctity of our votes and the integrity of our elections, has blatantly betrayed its own mandate by changing an important feature of the automated election system without a properly numbered resolution, and without informing the voting public and the various election stakeholders. It is also now a glaring fact that the Comelec has tinkered with and has therefore undermined the integrity of the system by programming the VCMs to reflect the change in the minimum voting thresholds without complying with the transparency requirements set by the automated election law.

Comelec now insists that it is constitutionally mandated to issue rules and regulations on the conduct of elections. No one is denying that it has the power and authority to do so. But what it conveniently forgets is that in a democracy governed by laws, rules and regulations are always made public prior to their implementation. They are not formulated in the cloak of secrecy and treated like protected trade secrets. The state is restrained from deceiving and misleading its citizens. Fidelity is a norm for government agencies, more so if they are mandated to implement and regulate activities that have a significant bearing on citizens’ rights, such as the conduct of elections.

What the Comelec practically did was to make people believe that only a full shading can ensure that a voter will not be disenfranchised by spending millions to propagate that view through a massive information drive. Yet, they secretly altered the rules without informing the public, the candidates, the political parties and the election watchdogs.

Comelec now uses as a defense the guidelines it formulated for the conduct of random manual audits, where it now specifically mentions 25 percent. Some Comelec apologists and defenders, mostly Robredo partisans, now proclaim that such document has clearly settled the issue and should put it to rest. However, the 25 percent rule articulated in the audit guidelines still begs the question of Comelec’s failure to make transparent the process of changing the threshold and the corresponding programs in the VCMs in violation of the election law.

According to Comelec, one of the reasons for adopting a minimum threshold of 25 percent was to ensure that “no accidental or unintended small marks are counted as votes in order to reflect the true intent of the voter.” This is so idiotically irrational, considering that the chance of counting as valid votes the accidental or unintended small marks increases when you have smaller or lower thresholds.

Indeed, automation begs Comelec to specify the shading threshold prior to elections, and for the public to be informed of such, to ensure that only valid votes will be counted. But it is inconceivable that the Comelec should opt for a lower 25 percent minimum shading threshold when that would have a higher chance of accidentally reading marks that are not intended as votes and would negate and put to waste the efforts to educate voters to shade fully.

Comelec’s argument is patently bereft of reason, unless the intention is to aid the commission of a fraud. An unpublished shading threshold becomes a precious commodity for someone with the intent of revealing to a possible client the secretly held information that mass-manufactured dots on the ovals will still be read by the VCMs as valid votes because they are programmed to do so. After all, it is easier and faster to repetitively mark ballots in a wholesale manner with dots than to shade them fully.

However, allegations of fraud are easy to make but hard to prove.

On the other hand, Comelec has already admitted that it lowered the shading threshold, and by implication has programmed it in the VCMs. And it is a fact that this was done without a resolution, and without informing the public and the relevant election stakeholders. These are facts that no longer need proof, and establish that Comelec has patently betrayed public trust, which is a ground for impeachment.

http://www.manilatimes.net/25-shades-of-fraud/425157/

Flooded Filipinos pay P1.2B for flood-control project that Aquino stopped

BY RIGOBERTO D. TIGLAO ON JULY 23, 2018

TO my mind, it is one of President Aquino’s biggest crimes against the nation, because of the misery and adverse economic impact caused by the yearly flooding of metropolitan Manila, for which he is really to blame. Blood is even on Aquino’s hands because of the deaths—over a hundred during this rainy season so far—due to leptospirosis, an infection caused by a type of bacteria found in the urine of rats and other vermin spread by floodwaters.

Aquino’s crime is nearly forgotten now, for which he has not been made accountable, but of which I am reminded with the onset of the rainy season each year when floods make metropolitan Manila a hell for many Filipinos.

Prodded by the devastation of two typhoons hitting the country in the space of a few days in October 2009, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo rushed a project to address the flooding in the metropolis, called the Laguna Lake Rehabilitation Project.

Estimated to cost P19 billion, the project proposed to dredge the Laguna Lake so that it could contain more of the rainwater falling on the metropolis. The project would have also dredged the garbage and silt in, and deepened the 7-kilometer Napindan Channel in Taytay so it could better and more quickly draw floodwaters away from the metropolis to the lake.

The P19-billion project was all set to be undertaken by the 150-year-old Belgian dredging firm Baagerwerken Decloedt En Zoon (BDZ), world-renowned in that industry and part of the group that built the below-sea-level Netherlands’ canal and dike system.

The Philippine government practically didn’t even need to put up money up front to fund the project as it was to be financed by a P12-billion loan from the Belgians’ BNP Paribas Fortis bank, with remaining P7 billion to be funded by a grant from the Belgian government — the biggest development aid it would have given the country ever.

Arroyo’s project
However, because it was a project of his predecessor Arroyo whom he and his Yellow cult demonized, Aquino abruptly ordered the project stopped in November 2010, a few months after he assumed office, just before it was scheduled to start, with the Belgian firm’s initial equipment and engineers already in the country.

If Aquino had not cancelled that milestone project, it would have been completed in July 2012, and would have significantly reduced flooding in metropolitan Manila as rainwaters could have been swiftly channeled to the Laguna Lake. For all of Aquino’s promises that Arroyo’s project would be replaced by new ones to mitigate flooding in the metropolis, no major initiative was made for such replacements during his entire six-year term.

Aquino claimed it was a midnight project of the Arroyo administration, and was graft-ridden. After six years of Aquino’s administration, with his operatives combing every single government document involving the project and reportedly even threatening officials involved in the project to lie about it, not a single instance of graft has been found.

That wasn’t surprising: a Congress committee, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (because it involved a foreign loan), even then Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, and four other government agencies gave the green light for the project.

Even then Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme appealed to Aquino not to gullibly believe unfounded claims fed to him. Leterme officially vouched for the project’s integrity, and even submitted to Aquino an independent evaluation of the project, by the British dredging expert Anthony D. Bates Partnership.

For some reason nobody could fathom, Aquino stuck to his insanity that the project had to be stopped. He even maliciously lied that the “project would move silt from one area of Laguna de Bay to another.” That was so totally false, distorting the project’s plan to use the silt as foundation for a high-way along the lake’s shores—which would have turned it into a new growth area.

“A much deeper Laguna de Bay would relieve residents of Metro Manila, Rizal and Laguna of the flooding that happened at the height of typhoons ‘Ondoy’ and ‘Pepeng’,” then Laguna Gov Jorge Ejercito, an ardent supporter of the project, summed up in September 2010 the aim of the planned massive dredging. For Ejercito’s public statements in support of the project, Aquino brought down the full force of his government apparatus against him, removing him as Laguna governor in 2014.

Belgians sue
After trying for months through their government to convince Aquino not to abort the project, the Belgian firm gave up and sued the Philippine government in October 2011 before the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement Investment Disputes, asking for damages of P4 billion.

The ICSID issued its decision five years later in January 2017. While it recognized the right of the Philippines as a sovereign nation to stop a project on its territory, the ICSID did not find any indication of government corruption in the project.

The ICSID ordered the Philippines to reimburse BZD of the P700 million it had already spent for the project when it was stopped, and P40 million for its expenses to hear the case.

The Aquino government also paid P420 million for the legal fees of the US law firm White and Case that handled, and lost, the case. The Commission on Audit (COA) said that the Aquino government had violated regulations for having contracted the law firm’s services without the COA’s and even the Solicitor General’s authorization. The COA, however, did not report the amount of fees paid to the late former Justice Florentino Feliciano, whom the Solicitor General contracted as its attorney to represent it in the ICSID, which I am told could have amounted to at least P20 million.

In sum, government – we taxpayers – spent some P1.2 billion for Aquino’s irrational move to stop on his own—without any other government agency or even a court supporting him that decision—a project that could have mitigated the yearly flooding in the metropolis.

Aquino’s stopping of this flood-control project certainly ranks high in the crimes he has committed against the nation. The present government must file a case, at a least civil one, to claim that P1.2 billion that taxpayers spent for nothing. As important as that, President Duterte must undertake a flood-control project as important as what Arroyo planned, and Aquino aborted.

For details of this colossal crime, refer to my columns on this: “Aquino axed key flood-control project in 2010,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 15, 2012;“Blame Aquino especially for the Laguna and SLEX flooding,” The Manila Times, August 22, 2013; and “World court rules Aquino’s 2011 cancellation of Belgian dredging project illegal,” MT, February 1, 2017.

E-mail: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com

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http://www.manilatimes.net/flooded-filipinos-pay-p1-2b-for-flood-control-project-that-aquino-stopped/422409/

August 2nd, 2018 – Powerful Net

August 2nd, 2018 – Powerful Net

Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

[Matthew 13: 47-53]

Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. “Do you understand all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the Kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.” When Jesus finished these parables, he went away from there.

Introductory Prayer: Lord, I believe in your power. I know that you are the Lord of all history. I trust that you are guiding my life. Thank you for showing me that you will triumph. Thank you for the triumph you have already achieved in my heart and in the hearts of so many people. I want to allow you to have total control over my life.

Petition: Lord, help me to have confidence in the triumph of your Kingdom.

1. Nothing Escapes the Kingdom: Christ is reminding us that all souls and all human history are encompassed in the vision of the Father. Both the good and the bad will be brought before him. He is able to see what good and evil has been done. His power extends over all the failures and successes of human history. I should live with a confidence that God sees the good I do and will make my efforts to spread his love bear eternal fruit.

2. Evil Does Not Have the Last Word: I should live with the confidence that evil does not have the last word. The mercy of God has imposed a limit on evil and the Lord will come one day to take away the power of evil. I should use my brief time on earth – which I should use today – to sow all the good I can, aware that this is what will stand steady at the coming of the eternal kingdom. I should not be so impressed by evil that it paralyzes me from doing good.

3. Already Home: The Eucharist is an anticipation of God’s triumph. There we learn to trust that God holds the strings of human history. There his “net of love” brings his children together to feed and strengthen them. When I participate in the Mass my confidence in the Lord’s providence should grow. I should strive to bring others to the Eucharist as well, so they can experience the peace and happiness of anticipating heaven here on earth.

Conversation with Christ: Lord, I know you are all powerful. I believe that your Kingdom will triumph. I believe that you will come to judge the living and the dead. Help me to do all I can to bring others into your Kingdom, so they can experience the joy that comes from knowing you and from living ready for the coming of your Kingdom.

Resolution: I will invite someone who is struggling in their faith or who has fallen away from the sacraments to join me this Sunday at Mass.

Aquino, Del Rosario must disclose to the nation exactly how they lost Panatag

BY RIGOBERTO D. TIGLAO ON AUGUST 1, 2018

Congress has the duty to investigate this colossal boo-boo
I WAS astonished at the gall, and hypocrisy, of former President Benigno Aquino 3rd, when he recently admonished President Duterte to be transparent in his dealings with China.

Aquino will go down in history as the first, and hopefully the last, president to preside over the loss of territory: Bajo de Masinloc, also known as Panatag or Scarborough, Shoal, in June 2012.

Yet Aquino and his official directly responsible for the loss, his foreign affairs secretary Alberto del Rosario, have not explained exactly how they lost Panatag to China. It is not just an academic exercise for the truth on this matter to be ferreted out. The details of Aquino and del Rosario’s colossal boo-boo, will enable our nation to see clearly what our foreign-policy stance should be over the South China Sea territorial dispute.

I have written a number of articles on what led to Aquino and del Rosario’s loss of Panatag, all of which have been confirmed by unbiased reports abroad, a summary of which is as follows:

In April 2012 vessels of the Philippine Coast Guard and the Bureau of Fisheries Aquatic Resources arrested Chinese fishermen in the shoal’s lagoon, alleging they were catching endangered fish. When a China Maritime Surveillance t(CMS) vessel — a civilian ship — arrived to prevent the arrest, Aquino deployed the BRP Gregorio del Pilar, the Philippine Navy’s biggest warship, which had been donated to us by the US a year earlier.

Yellow media reported our ships left Panatag due to typhoon mid-June, when they actually left June 3 Trillanes alleged, upon Del Rosario’s orders.

However, the very next day, Aquino ordered the warship out, informed that oops! he had just militarized the squabble. Three CMS ships with about 50 small fishermen’s dinghies enter the shoal and block the Coast Guard and BFAR vessels, which had of course released the Chinese they had arrested.

Month-long stand-off
For more than a month, Chinese and Filipino ships were in a stand-off, with their governments knowing that the party that withdraws from the shoal will in effect be losing it — forever as it were. The unwritten rule in territorial disputes all over the world, is that occupation –especially one undertaken not through violence — is ownership.

On June 3, after a month of so-called back-channel talks by his personal envoy Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th, and purportedly after negotiations through official channels by del Rosario and our ambassador to the US, Jose Cuisia, all the Philippine vessels were ordered out of the shoal. Since then, no Philippine vessel has been allowed to enter the lagoon: We lost Panatag Shoal.

Trillanes informed me back in 2016 and in a written aide memoire of this “Back Channel Talks,” that when he was still arranging the details of the simultaneous withdrawal of both Philippine and Chinese ships, Aquino called him and told him that the Filipino ships had already sailed out of the lagoon. Aquino told the stupefied Trillanes that del Rosario had informed him that an agreement had already been reached with the Chinese in Washington, and that it was his foreign secretary who ordered the Filipino ships to leave.

Trillanes wrote in his aide memoire, quoting Aquino: “Kaya nga sinabihan ko si Albert kung bakit niya pinalabas yung BFAR na hindi ko nalalaman.” (“That’s why I asked Albert [del Rosario]why he ordered the BFAR vessels to leave without my permission.”)

This account has not been disputed by Aquino, del Rosario, and Trillanes ever since I first wrote it in May 2016 and repeated in several articles.

Del Rosario in fact last month confirmed the gist of the account when he wrote an article posted in the website of his Alberto del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies, which had the following paragraph:

“During the impasse at Scarborough Shoal with China, we were approached by the US, an honest broker, for both China and the Philippines to agree to a simultaneous withdrawal of ships from the shoal. We therefore agreed. At the appointed time, we withdrew, whereas China did not — in violation of our agreement.” (Emphasis mine.)

Self-serving, misleading
It is obviously a self-serving, misleading claim, intended to hide his big blunder. Consider the following points, and one could easily see through del Rosario’s lies.

If China reneged on the agreement, wouldn’t the US have protested loudly to the world – especially as it was the mediator — that the Asian superpower didn’t keep its word, therefore confirming the American narrative that that nation can’t be trusted and intends to occupy the entire South China Sea if not by force, by subterfuge? If the US State Department could not officially claim that there was an agreement, wouldn’t it do what it often does, which is to leak it to its media especially its usual venue The New York Times?

Based on accounts of very credible sources, Fu Ying, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs in charge of Asia (who had been ambassador here from 1998 to 2000) met June 1 in Washington with Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, to discuss Aquino and Del Rosario’s request for the Americans to intervene — even militarily, my sources claimed — in the Scarborough Shoal stand-off. Campbell proposed the idea of a simultaneous withdrawal. Fu told Campbell that she would relay the suggestion to her superiors in Beijing. She never got the green-light from Bejing.

Isn’t this account more credible, given China’s system of governing, in which such crucial foreign policy decisions are decided in the highest echelons not just of government but of the Communist Party of China?

Del Rosario isn’t bound by any confidentiality agreement, nor is he a foreign secretary any more. He (and Aquino as well) should disclose to the nation the following:

1. Who exactly in the US State Department brokered, as del Rosaio claims, the agreement between the Philippines and China? Was there a document on this very important agreement? If none, why wasn’t there one?

2. Who in the US State Department informed him about the alleged agreement? Or was it just his close friend our ambassador the US then, Jose Cuisia? Or did del Rosario — 73 years old at that time — possibly mishear what was relayed to him, that he heard only “agreement” when it was actually “proposed agreement”?

3. Was Aquino informed about the alleged agreement before the order to the Philippine vessels given to withdraw from Panatag Shoal? Or was Trillanes being truthful when he reported that it was del Rosario who ordered the vessels out without even getting clearance from the President. If this is the case, del Rosario is liable for usurpation of authority, similar to what could put former national police head Alan Purisima in jail, because he supervised elite troops when he was no longer in the required post of authority.

4. Who exactly did del Rosario issue order for the Philippine vessels — those of the Coast Guard and the BFAR — to withdraw from the shoal? Was it the commandant of the Philippine Coast Guard, then Rear Admiral Edmund Tan, or his boss Mar Roxas, secretary of the transport and communications department, under which the Coast Guard is?

The answers to these questions are crucial for the nation to assign accountability for our first loss of Philippine territory. Del Rosario, with his enormous wealth and longtime associate, the Indonesian magnate Salim (who controls the Philippine Star-TV 5 media empire) of course has been creating a different narrative, which paints China as the villain in this episode and practically demands an antagonistic stance against the economic superpower. He apparently has even recruited academics with expertise in the South China Sea dispute into his “institute” with fat consultancy fees. Would they not toe del Rosario’s line?

It is only Congress that has the resources more than what del Rosario commands , which can ferret out the truth. An objective narrative of how we lost Panatag is crucial for the country to adopt a correct foreign policy.

On Friday, I will explain how the possible answers—or absence of answers—on exactly how we lost Panatag could lead to an intriguing, but likely explanation: The US played Aquino and del Rosario to lose Panatag, so a flash point could be created in the South China Sea territorial dispute to paint China as an expansionist power.

Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com

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http://www.manilatimes.net/aquino-del-rosario-must-disclose-to-the-nation-exactly-how-they-lost-panatag/425508/

August 1st, 2018 – The Treasure Hunt

August 1st, 2018 – The Treasure Hunt

Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop and Doctor of the Church  

[Matthew 13: 44-46]

Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.”

Introductory Prayer: Lord, you have made me for yourself, and my heart is restless until I rest in you. I want to encounter you more deeply today so that you can be my treasure. Thank you for the gift of this new day. I know you love me. I wish to discover your love more deeply and give it to others.

Petition: Lord, help me to treasure the gift of your friendship.

1. In Search of a Treasure: The restlessness in our hearts can be compared to a hunt for treasure. In different ways we all experience the desire for unconditional love, true goodness, the answer to our deepest questions. In Christ, God has come to give himself to us. He is the one we truly long for; he is our greatest treasure. During this time of prayer let us deepen our awareness of the greatness of his gift of friendship and let us strengthen this friendship by our openness to his love.

2. The Priceless Treasure: In Christ we have experienced the overwhelming faithfulness of God’s love for us. In his mercy we discover that our life has infinite value in the Father’s eyes. In his teachings we discover the wisdom to build our life on solid ground. In his grace we receive the strength to grow in love and holiness. This is where we can build a true future. This is where we can live up to our calling to greatness. But we must be willing to leave aside all other concerns to really possess this treasure. We must leave aside anything that tries to give us a false sense of security outside of God. Am I making my friendship with Christ the one value that guides my heart and my decisions?

3. The Unopened Treasure Chest: Unpacking this treasure is the work of our spiritual life. We need to cooperate with Christ’s grace in order to truly possess this treasure. The cultivation of faith, hope and charity helps us discover and live this treasure more fully each day. Our sacrifices and renunciations done to put on the new man help us dig this treasure out of the earthy make-up of our lives. Living generous charity helps us make this treasure truly last and enrich our lives. Am I sincerely allowing Christ’s treasure to transform me? 

Conversation with Christ: Lord, thank you for the gift of your love. You are the treasure I truly long for. Help me to enter more deeply into your heart this day by doing things your way no matter what the cost. Help me to value the gift of your friendship above everything else.

Resolution: I will make a small sacrifice of my time to do something extra for someone who needs God’s love.