Ambassadors

I do not understand why there is a lynching mob clamoring for our non-career ambassadors to have been home by June 30.

The same lynching mob raised a howl, duly echoed in the media, when the tenure of the non-career ambassadors was extended by the Foreign Secretary and the new Executive Secretary. Extending their tenure was, however, the practical thing to do.

There is a pace and process for getting the transfusion of our diplomats done. Until that pace and process happens, there is little to be gained by rashly decapitating our diplomatic missions abroad.

Defeated senatorial candidate Apolinario “Jun” Lozada, riding the crest of the lynching mob, declared in an interview that the continued service of the non-career ambassadors was illegal. He is dead wrong.

Every incoming administration extended the service of non-career ambassadors until such time when it was ready to replace them. The appointment of new ambassadors is not an instantaneous process. They will have to be nominated first. The nomination will need to be passed upon by the Commission on Appointments, which in turn will be formed only after the new Congress buckles down to work and farms out committee assignments.

Needless to say, some of the new appointments might fail to win confirmation at the Commission on Appointments. In which case, new nominations will have to be made.

Only after a newly designated ambassador is confirmed can he actually deploy to his post. The actual deployment requires its own reasonable amount of time. After that, he waits for the host government to schedule the presentation of his credentials to the head of state. Only after the presentation, and formal acceptance, of his credentials can the newly designated ambassador become fully functional.

I know, from recent conversations with some of our freshly assigned ambassadors, that the scheduling of presentation of credentials can take months. Ambassador Romy Manalo in Rome, for one, has not yet been scheduled to present his credentials. Because of that, he could not represent our embassy in last month’s Italian national day reception. On the day of the reception, we enjoyed a meal at a Chinese restaurant beside the embassy.

Although the non-career ambassadors are political appointees, they are not all partisans. Former Secretary Domingo Siazon in Tokyo is a seasoned diplomat acknowledged for his impressive network of Japanese connections. He headed the Department of Foreign Affairs when Joseph Estrada was President.

Delia Albert in Berlin has served as one of the country’s best diplomats for more years than the average age of Filipinos. Surely her skills cannot be justly described as ordinary. She speaks six foreign languages and has personal acquaintances with many European leaders.

Our permanent representative to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Dondi Teehankee, was a former undersecretary of justice. No one I know has the same depth of expertise as he has for the critical post he serves.

There are several high-profile posts where the usual budget afforded by the DFA is simply not enough for our ambassadors to function well. For this reason, our government appoints people who are independently wealthy so that they are able to subsidize their postings. This is the reason why we had Kokoy Romualdez at the Washington post for quite a while, Ed Espiritu in London and Al Yuchengco in Tokyo. There are many others like them who spent their own money to hold diplomatic receptions in very expensive cities abroad.

In fact, very few of the non-career ambassadors we’ve had gained any income from their terms of service to the country. Our ambassadorial posts are not the best endowed in the world. For the most part, they spend for their posting. They do so for the chance to serve their country.

There might be a need to underscore this: our ambassadors, even if they are politically designated, do not represent the sitting president. They represent the Republic. This is why they are formally addressed as excellencies.

It might be easy for the newly-installed Aquino administration to inflict chaos in the entire bureaucracy by, as Memo Circular 1 did, simply declaring all non-career executive positions vacant. There is no pressing reason to do the same for our diplomatic posts abroad.

Former Ambassador to Washington Ernesto Maceda correctly pointed out that our ambassadors cannot simply return home at the drop of a hat. First they need a recall order from the home office before they can leave their posts. Otherwise they can be properly charged for dereliction of duty.

There is no need to vilify the “political” ambassadors, therefore. Although some of them are eager to return home, they cannot do so without a proper recall order. The country’s interests are best served if they endure in their postings until officially relieved by their successors.

Hilario Davide, our erstwhile permanent representative to the UN, did abruptly resign his post so he can return to the country to campaign for Noynoy Aquino. That might be a smart political move. But I do not think this is exemplary behavior for all the other “political” ambassadors to emulate.

Our diplomats, career or non-career, have professional commitments. They have duties to discharge on a day-to-day basis. When they accepted their appointments, they took on the obligation to discharge those duties faithfully until formally relieved. They should not be vilified for keeping to their obligations.

In the meantime, the new administration might want to consider replacements for the “political” ambassadors and go through the usual vetting and confirmation process to ensure they are fit and proper to represent the Republic. To date, not one has been formally nominated.