Lost opportunity

It is all very well if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dropped by the Philippines on her way to the Apec Summit in Singapore. Filipinos are hospitable and it is good that she was received warmly except for the usual rabble-rousers who rallied in front of the US embassy. There is nothing wrong with cheering schoolchildren when she announced $5 million aid for the Ondoy and Pepeng victims in Marikina.

By all means we can indulge in joyful rituals but at the end of the day, we should have used the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as an opportunity to take up serious if contentious issues.

Press reports said issues were taken up in a town-hall like meeting with exclusive ABS-CBN coverage. That itself raises the question why this network should have been given exclusive coverage if electoral impartiality was desired or if it was supposed to be a town hall-like meeting. Was Clinton aware that giving exclusivity to ABS-CBN was a partisan act being the media support of the Noynoy-Roxas tandem?

More importantly, the Philippines could have led the agenda instead of being told by the American secretary of state what they would like to see or do in the Philippines. In my opinion the visit was poorly choreographed. We were at the receiving end of what America wants rather than a dialogue on differences.

She said that Washington was “committed to the people of the Philippines and the democracy of the Philippines” but she did not venture into what that democracy entails and that the Philippines, as an independent nation, must be given enough leeway to find its own solutions.

The fripperies were more visible than substantial issues highlighting once again that the Philippines is not a country to be taken seriously. We have ourselves to blame for that.

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When she announced her visit Clinton said she wanted to “show solidarity” with the Philippines after the typhoons that killed more than 1,000 people and thousands made homeless. We had to wait until the end of her trip when she finally gave away her parting gift of what she was really here for.

The VFA should have been a strong point for the Arroyo administration if it had been put on the table right from the start. What is wrong with informing the visiting Secretary of State that there is a pending Senate review of the agreement? She could have been politely informed.

Our own foreign secretary should have brought this out into sharper focus. But at least from the press reports I read he would rather join the adulation of Clinton by what he called her “fans and fanatics”. Instead the Philippines seemed to apologize ahead of time even before the issue was discussed that “it would not be an irritant in the strong ties between the two nations.” What? It may not be a pressing issue for the visit but it would not have hurt if Clinton were told of Senate Resolution 1356 that urged the Arroyo administration to terminate the agreement if Washington does not agree to a renegotiation.

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But before she left, she made clear that this trip was not just about showing solidarity with Ondoy victims. She dropped broad hints on how the Philippines should conduct its government.

Clinton said the government and the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front should strike a peace deal before President Macapagal-Arroyo steps down next June. And here was the big if, the give-away on how America interferes in Philippine affairs. According to reports, at the same time that Secretary Clinton was urging for a peace agreement, she “cautioned” against reaching an agreement outside the Constitution and laws of the country because “that will be creating more problems.” This comment certainly needs to be read into as a veiled warning that we should not take lightly, I mean, the interference. This was the dead give-away of how the US has intervened and will intervene in our government.

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The overarching fact in all this is that America forced the issue of elections first before constitutional reform with the American ambassador leading the campaign by appearing in the Lopez owned ANC with her message. (Is that the reward to ABS-CBN for the ads to put down any attempt for constitutional reform? That was the ongoing national debate until the American ambassador came into the picture.

We could have thanked Clinton for her country’s concern for a “smooth transition of power in the Philippines through peaceful and orderly elections next year” but tell her anyway that we are not Afghanistan or Myanmar.

Surprisingly she was quoted to have said that Washington would not place any conditions on Myanmar for better ties. “This has to be resolved within the Burmese people themselves. We are not setting or dictating any conditions,” she said.

It may be instructive for both Filipinos and Americans to turn to Stanley Karnow who wrote immediately after the February People Power Revolution in 1986. He said duplicating US-style democracy in the Philippines was “doomed to fail in a society with an entrenched oligarchy, a powerful tradition of compadre loyalty, and an inherent respect for unabridged power.” Of course, he did not say, that is partly because of its long colonial history.

He deplores that “a succession of US presidents and administrators coddled the archipelago’s 60 or so ruling families, perpetuating the feudal oligarchy that continues to this day, and widening the gap between rich and poor.”

Karnow also wrote on Vietnam: A History. He demonstrates that “the American venture in Southeast Asia, draws intriguing parallels with the US-Philippine war of 1898. It dehumanized US troops, who looted and annihilated villages.

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Those who are more politically attuned know that it is the geopolitical rivalry between America and China that has put the Philippines back into our former colonizer’s vision. We may have lost the opportunity during Secretary Clinton’s visit to Manila but we can make up for that by comporting ourselves to be less submissive without provoking antagonism.

All the talk in Singapore is how Apec looks to China for recovery. We will do well to keep a balance on how we deal with a former colonizer and the rising hegemon in the region.

Al Jazeera’s Veronica Pedrosa, reporting from the Apec summit venue, said “much discussion at the summit would centre on China’s role as the economy that is the best hope for leading the world out of economic decline.”