Leaked

If administration officials can’t help opening their mouths in reaction to the avalanche of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, they should limit themselves to saying everyone is entitled to his own opinion.

By their confidential nature, all those cables from US diplomatic missions around the world, now in the public domain, were not meant for the eyes of host countries.

And if a diplomatic cable is confidential or classified, the writer doesn’t have to worry about the niceties of diplomacy.

What the writer must worry about is the reliability of his or her report, which can contain personality assessments or forecasts of the outcome of political unrest. If consistently unreliable, such reports can derail a diplomatic career.

I’ve been told that even if cables bear an ambassador’s signature, it doesn’t necessarily mean the envoy wrote all the reports, or even read all of them in detail.

You can’t please everyone, even if you’re Corazon Aquino. She had her share of criticism during and after her presidency.

And if her only son was described by a former US ambassador to Manila as “diffident and unassertive” before he became a presidential candidate, well, that was a pretty accurate description of the image he projected at the time. In those days people had the impression that even his future running mate had the same image of Senator Noynoy.

Did the image match the reality? Only those close to Noynoy Aquino would know, and there weren’t many of them.

Noynoy the official Liberal Party standard bearer no longer came off as diffident and unassertive; that transformation was fascinating to see. But Kristie Kenney was no longer around to observe the change and comment on it.

Palace officials should take their cue from Sen. Manny Villar (Kenney’s apparent pick for the presidency) and his former running mate Sen. Loren Legarda. A leaked US cable said Villar had a low opinion of Loren – something he did not deny yesterday. But both shrugged off the story.

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The US cables coming out about the political crisis in 2005 precipitated by the “Hello, Garci” scandal and the resignation of the so-called Hyatt 10 contain many details that are already known.

We saw the US chargé d’affaires at the time, Joseph Mussomeli, going on TV and declaring that Washington would not support extrajudicial methods of regime change and did not want to see violence.

Palace officials quickly went on TV, thanking the US government for the statement.

The Americans were mainly worried that changing presidents at the drop of a hat, when someone marched in the streets and demanded it, could become a bad habit, triggering a cycle that could weaken Philippine democracy. US officials liked to emphasize that they supported institutions, not personalities. But henceforth the US was seen to be largely supportive of the Arroyo administration.

Several leaked cables show what US diplomats actually thought of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Palace officials should consider those cables when they are tempted to react to unflattering US assessments of Noynoy Aquino before he became president.

Days after the Hyatt 10’s resignation, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines held a meeting during which the prelates decided they would not support calls for Arroyo’s resignation. To this day GMA is perceived to be the bishops’ favorite Philippine president.

Kenney, upon her arrival, said Philippine democracy had become stable enough for Washington to stay out of Manila’s rambunctious politics.

In fact Washington would later wade in again, amid reports that GMA wanted to prolong her stay in power. Kenney and, later, President Barack Obama himself, said the US liked to see regular elections held. Depending on where people stood, the statements were described as meddling in Philippine affairs or support for democracy.

Charter change attempts collapsed, and the 2010 elections pushed through.

The US, as the leaked cables show, also became actively involved in the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. But this was an open secret. Kenney was one of a handful of ambassadors who flew to Malaysia in that aborted signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain with the MILF.

Kenney has reportedly received congratulatory remarks on her Facebook page for her assessments of Cory and Noynoy Aquino. But in line with Washington’s stand on WikiLeaks, no US diplomat will give an official comment on the cables.

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The reports that have been coming out about the cables since WikiLeaks started releasing them indicate that American diplomats for the most part are on the job in many parts of the world, deeply plugged in, sifting rumor from fact.

In our country in the past decades, US diplomats were so plugged in they were the first to know about looming coup attempts. In fact, because of their long record of direct intervention, they were sounded out about US support for coup plots and acts of destabilization.

Of course no one is perfect; political analyses can be way off the mark. The Arab Spring caught the US by surprise, probably because Washington waltzed for decades with the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world.

So far we have not seen leaked cables on counterterrorism operations in the Philippines. Putting security sources and operations at risk was a key concern of US officials when WikiLeaks made it known that it would make public all the cables.

Reading the cables at around the time that these were actually sent would have been highly informative. But long after the fact, the contents can be mainly entertaining – at least for those who are not the subjects of unflattering assessments.