‘Vote of confidence’

As bombs are going off in Metro Manila and political warfare continues, Britain has announced that it is building a new embassy on a 1.2-hectare site in Taguig City.

The property on McKinley Hill, behind the American War Cemetery, was bought from Megaworld Corp. and will be developed starting January next year at a cost of 10 million pounds. At current exchange rates, that’s nearly P1 billion.

"That’s a major vote of confidence on the Philippines," British Ambassador Peter Beckingham told me yesterday.

The new embassy, expected to be completed by 2009 when Beckingham will end his tour of duty here, will house the chancery, consular section and possibly an office for the British Council. The embassy currently occupies three floors at the Locsin building in Makati City, where congestion, high rent and real estate prices as well as local politics are driving away people to booming Taguig.

Beckingham said the British decision to invest a substantial amount in building their own embassy showed their commitment to a strong long-term relationship with the Philippines.

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Is this a vote of confidence as well on Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?

Like the Americans these days, the British prefer to discuss bilateral ties on a long-term basis, going beyond the tenures of individual government officials.

Beckingham does believe, like many of the other foreign diplomats I have talked to after the political turbulence in February, that President Arroyo will finish her term. He did not think her impeachment would prosper last year, and it is even less likely this time, he said. The British ambassador, however, is also keenly watching potential successors to the President.

There is another reason for the construction of a new British embassy. More than political noise, the British are concerned about the security situation. Construction of the new embassy makes sense security-wise, Beckingham said; it is easier to control security in your own compound.

The Brits, as we all know, are the staunchest allies of the Americans in the global war on terror and are favorite targets of Islamic extremists.

In October 2000, a day after the deadly terrorist attack on the US guided missile destroyer Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, a bomb was flung into the compound of the British embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The explosion shattered windows but did not injure anyone.

In November 2003 suicide bombings outside the British consulate and the local headquarters of the British-owned Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. in Istanbul left 27 people dead.

On May 5 last year, when Britons went to the polls and gave Prime Minister Tony Blair a third term, an explosion also rocked the British consulate in New York.

You can see why the British would want to hold office in their own building in Manila.

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Like the Americans, the Brits are impatient for the Philippines’ passage of an anti-terrorism bill.

Since the attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, the British have also implemented controversial security measures at home that tend to restrict civil liberties. The measures intensified following the deadly terrorist bombings in London last year. But Blair’s recent proposals for stronger measures have run into stiff opposition.

British security officials are not ruling out more attacks of the same magnitude in the UK, Beckingham said. I don’t know if his phlegmatic appreciation of the threat is typical of the British. It’s probably just a realistic approach to a new world order that has emerged after 9/11.

Beckingham considers Southeast Asia a terrorist hotspot. Unlike Washington, which has sent troops to help Filipinos fight the terrorist threat, London has a lower-key counterterrorism cooperation program with Manila, with Philippine security officials going to the UK for training and exchange programs.

Britain also has what Beckingham describes as a modest investment in development projects in areas in Mindanao that are potential breeding grounds for extremism.

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Poverty and illiteracy breed terrorism. Beckingham points out another major British concern, at least in this country: the high population growth rate.

The UK is sponsoring programs to educate Filipino women about reproductive health. Beyond that, however, the Philippine government is on its own. The United States Agency for International Development has stopped its program of providing free contraceptives to the Philippines, and US Ambassador Kristie Kenney told me recently that the program was unlikely to be revived soon. The Arroyo administration, always eager to curry favor with the Catholic Church, is in no hurry to take up the slack.

Opponents of artificial contraception bristle at attempts to link the terrorist problem with runaway population growth. But high population growth rates with no corresponding economic growth undoubtedly aggravate poverty. Our public education system is a disaster, unable to cope with the steadily growing student population.

Poverty and illiteracy, while not the driving forces behind individuals like Osama bin Laden, are exploited by people like him to sow hatred, intolerance and violent extremism around the world.

The Americans and their closest allies, the British and Australians, are the top targets of those extremists. Now the Danes, to their great dismay, have been added to the list of targets.

Long before 9/11, Filipinos have felt that violent hatred, courtesy of the Abu Sayyaf. Today the group is still around and has joined forces with the Southeast Asian terror cell Jemaah Islamiyah, which was responsible for the bombing of a Light Rail Transit coach in Sta. Cruz, Manila in December 2000 that left over 20 people dead. The two groups were also behind the sinking of a ferry in Manila Bay two years ago that killed over 100 people.

These groups continue to pose threats as well to the US and its allies, including the British, who aren’t taking any chances on their security.

Rather than suspend embassy operations as they have done in some countries where the terrorist threat is high, the British at least are building a new embassy here and investing on a long-term relationship.