‘Protect Pinoy minds from manipulation’

MANILA, Philippines —  As security challenges evolve, Filipinos should be protected not just from armed threats, but also from “manipulation” that sows distrust and targets institutions and democracy itself, according to Executive Secretary Ralph Recto.

The “battlefield has obviously widened” and the nation’s next test “may not begin with the sound of marching armies,” Recto said in a speech at the joint celebration of the founding anniversaries of the National Security Council (NSC) and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) on Tuesday.

“It may begin with a false story designed to make Filipinos distrust one another,” Recto said.

“In the information space, security means protecting the Filipino mind from manipulation. A lie repeated a thousand times should not be allowed to defeat a truth spoken once. It becomes an attack on trust, on institutions and on democracy itself,” he added.

He noted that the front line has moved and now covers servers, classrooms, communities, triggering challenges including over the West Philippine Sea, cyberspace and artificial intelligence.

On July 12, the country will mark the 10th anniversary of the arbitral ruling that voided China’s expansive claim in the South China Sea.

No excuse to curb freedom

Despite the emerging challenges, Recto said security must never be used as an excuse to weaken freedom.

“Our duty is not to choose between a safe nation and a free nation. Our duty is to build a nation strong enough to be both. That is the higher calling of the NSC and NICA,” he said.

On Wednesday at a summit on the West Philippine Sea, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. called on Filipinos to be not just aware of the country’s maritime domain, but to also embrace it as a shared national responsibility. He also called as ludicrous and outlandish a claim supposedly by Chinese scholars that Batanes belongs to China by way of Taiwan.

Retired Supreme Court senior associate justice Antonio Carpio said China, despite its continued bullying at sea, may have unwittingly admitted Philippine territorial jurisdiction over its waters when it referred to three pre-World War II international treaties in defending its position on Manila’s filing of the arbitral case in 2013.

He was referring to the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the 1900 Treaty of Washington and the 1930 agreement that defined the boundaries of the then US-controlled Philippines and North Borneo then under Britain. –  Michael Punongbayan, Ghio Ong