When loyalty to the nation ends

BY ANTONIO CONTRERAS

JUNE 20, 2019

I NEVER thought I would see the day when Filipinos would prefer to believe the spin of a foreign country over the pain of other Filipinos, at a time when the age of colonialism is over, when we have just celebrated our independence day, and when we are supposed to have a president who promised to bring back a sense of pride to our wounded sense of nationhood.

Our history is replete with abuses by colonizers. We suffered under the hands of the Spaniards, the Japanese and the Americans. We fought hard to resist, and many offered their lives in the process. Yet, our history is also full of complicity, collaboration and betrayal. We saw our elites take the side of the colonizers, from the pro-Spanish ilustrados, to the Japanese collaborators, to the American puppets and lackeys. But these are mostly the elites. The ordinary people were the base for resistance, rebellion and revolution.

It is therefore tragic that at a time when our politics has taken the turn of booting out the oligarchic elites by electing a president who stood by and with the people, or at least was imaged as one that would fight on their behalf, we also now should witness a palpable weakening of a sense of nationalism that is most pronounced among a section of the non-elites. And this is because those who belong to this group have abdicated their sense of nation, and entrusted this to be borne by a president to whom they are overwhelmingly loyal. While we cannot determine their size or number, they definitely are a noisy group that propagates their discourse in social media.

This is a group which instead of taking China to task for its reckless and offensive behavior, is more interested in attacking fellow Filipinos who are critical of China. They doubt the story of the 22 fishermen who were abandoned by the Chinese after their boats capsized after being hit by what is now believed to be Chinese maritime militia right within our exclusive economic zone (EEZ). They diminished the veracity of the fishermen’s claim by deploying conspiracy theories and conjuring images to create a sense of impossibility — that it was impossible for the Vietnamese to have magically appeared out of nowhere to rescue the fishermen from the waters, that it was impossible for them to swim for 8 nautical miles, that it was impossible to refloat a boat that big — this after doubting how a boat that size can accommodate 22 people — and that it was impossible to tow a damaged boat to shore. They even circulated pictures to cast doubt on the identity of the boat itself.

They gleefully point out imagined holes on the stories of our fishermen yet are dismissive of the obvious holes in the official story of the Chinese. They seem not to have a problem with the claim that a big Chinese ship can be besieged by smaller and slower boats. They also have no problem swallowing hook, line and sinker the amazing story of how the Filipino fishermen from the fishing boats were allegedly in hot pursuit of the faster, bigger and more modern Chinese ship, and how they simply abandoned their fellow Filipino fishermen and left them to drown.

But what is even more deplorable is when they keep on doubting that an actual incident did happen, or that a boat actually was hit and sank, even after China has admitted that indeed a boat was hit and it sank. Some even gleefully point out that the pictures of the damaged boat do not actually show that it had sunk.

But what really is most unkind is for these people to accuse the fishermen of lying, or worse, of deliberately positioning their boat to be accidentally hit. And here, the story takes a bizarre turn, from that which allege that the fishermen did it on purpose to collect money from the Chinese, to that which allege that the fishermen are part of a destabilization effort against the government of President Duterte. The latter is so outrageous, if not laughable, simply because China has already officially admitted that the incident did occur.

While some of these are simply the work of trolls, there are many that aren’t. Some are done by well-known pro-Duterte bloggers and social media influencers.

But the most unkindest cut of all is when the President and his alter-egos mouth lines that amount to telling the world that our fishermen are lying, or dismiss and belittle the horror they have gone through. We now see Cabinet officials all supporting an investigation but only after expressing their opinion that the collision was not intentional.

Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi dismissed the claim of the fishermen that it was intentional, simply because the damage was only minor. This begs one to ask Cusi what made him a forensic expert, and to remind him that the severity of damage is not an accurate indicator of intent.

Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol earlier supported the claim of the fishermen but left it up to investigators to ascertain if it was an accident or not, but later labeled what happened as just a simple incident that has simply been overblown.

Piñol appeared to be echoing what the President himself dismissed as “banggaan lang ng bangka.” Frankly, it is a bit insensitive for the President to say this, as it even sounds eerily similar to former President Noynoy Aquino’s infamous “buhay pa naman kayo, di ba.”

We are therefore witnessing the sorry spectacle of Filipino citizens and leaders denying, demeaning, dismissing or diminishing the pain and trauma of other Filipinos, all because they want to show support for the President and protect our relationships with China. It is indeed sad that loyalty to the country stops when it will compromise their loyalty to the foreign policy of the President.

https://www.manilatimes.net/when-loyalty-to-the-nation-ends/572038/