MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte's recent demand for Washington to pay the Philippines if it wants the Visiting Forces Agreement to remain is in bad taste, Vice President Leni Robredo said, adding money should not be the reason to stay in or leave the deal.
"It sounds just like extortion," Robredo said in Filipino on her weekly radio show. "It's embarrassing because it looks like we're extorting from them."
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"If we say we want to abrogate the VFA, we should explain why we don't feel it will benefit us. Money shouldn't be the main consideration. It should be based on the mutual benefit of both parties involved. It can't be, 'you're my friend if you give me money'," the vice president also said.
At the onset of his campaign, Duterte was not shy about his intent to pursue an independent foreign policy and distance from the United States, the country's treaty ally and former colonizer.
In February last year, the Philippines expressed its intent to terminate the VFA, after the cancellation of Sen. Ronald dela Rosa's US visa earned Duterte's ire. The termination of the VFA has been suspended twice since.
The chief executive, speaking this week before members of the Philippine Air Force, said he is reluctant over speaking out against China over the West Philippine Sea, the part of the South China Sea that is inside the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone.
"I am walking on a tightrope, actually. I cannot afford to be brave in the mouth against China because we are avoiding any confrontation, a confrontation that would lead to something which we can hardly afford, at least not at this time," Duterte said in the same speech.
He was not as shy about comments on the US, however.
"I would like to put on notice if there’s an American agent here, that from now on, you want the Visiting Forces Agreement done? Well, they have to pay...Because after all, when the war breaks out, we all pay. You, kami (us), we are nearest to the garrison there where there are a lot of arsenals of the Chinese armed forces," he said.
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Duterte also said last December that termination of the VFA would continue as planned if the US would not provide the Philippines with coronavirus vaccines, which are made by American manufacturers but not by its government.
Speaking before the United Nations that same month, appealed to the international community for generosity with the jabs, calling it a "gross injustice" to exclude poorer countries from vaccination.
Lacson: We are not a nation of extortionists
Sen. Panfilo Lacson has also slammed the president's latest ramble, saying in a tweet: "Just to clarify, please be informed that we are not a nation of extortionists; at lalong hindi kami ‘mukhang pera’ (and we are definitely not greedy)." He addressed his post to "Sam."
Beijing continues to reject the arbitral ruling that the Philippines won at an international tribunal in 2016 that held that China's nine-dash line claim does not have legal basis.
Other members of the Phillippine delegation in the South China Sea arbitration have already said that enforcing the arbitral win does not necessarily mean going to war with Beijing, suggesting other possible measures to uphold the ruling.
Robredo held issue with the president's logic, saying that asserting the country's sovereignty was not the same thing as declaring war—two things the chief executive has wrongly equated in the past, asserting that he cannot do anything on the maritime dispute.
"We aren't here to start fights. We're just fighting for what is ours. We're fighting for our rights. When you do that, people can't say you're starting conflicts. The number one obligation to the Filipinos is protecting them, and you can't say you're not doing that because you're scared," she said in her radio show.
"What is that? We can't protect our own because we're scared of someone else?"
— Franco Luna with a report from Bella Perez-Rubio