Ratings pulled down by admin in-fighting?

China is inventing history to suit its territorial entitlement to the whole South China Sea. Its bases for trespassing the Philippine exclusive economic zone are half-truths. For Beijing interpreters, the only history that matters is that written by Chinese and disregards non-Han accounts. This conflicts with records of the Philippines as well as Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Hong Kong-based journalist Philip Bowring ably explained these points in “China’s Invented History,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2012. (http//online. wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303 918204577 446202239267134.html) Some highlights:

• China asserts ownership of the Scarborough Shoal via a map from the 13th century, when it was under alien Mongol rule. It ignores a historical fact of the first millennium. That is, ancestors of today’s Filipinos, Malaysians and Indonesians dominated seafaring in the region, and so must have known the shoal. China’s “we were there first” argument is like saying the Europeans got to Australia ahead of the Aborigines.

• In China’s own records, Chinese voyaged to Sumatra and Sri Lanka on Malay ships. A thousand years before the Chinese visits, Malays from what is now Indonesia had conquered Madagascar, the world’s third largest island 4,000 miles across the Indian Ocean. When the Malay seafaring center shifted to what is now Vietnam, Scarborough came directly in the trade route, long before China’s 13th-century map.

• Waving the 1898 Treaty of Paris, China says that since Scarborough was outside the old Philippine boundary, the latter has no right to it. That pact was written by the United States and Spain without the participation of Filipinos. By the same token, might Vietnam own all of the Spratlys by inheriting the French claim over the archipelago? Yet, China’s communist rulers reject “unequal treaties” imposed by Western imperialists, such as the division of India and Tibet. Baseless in history and geography, China is afraid to have its territorial claims heard under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

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Could his allies’ early politicking be the cause of the drop in President Noynoy Aquino’s approval ratings?

Separate polls of the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia have Malacañang officials baffled. In the SWS survey, May 24-27, Aquino’s net satisfaction mark was down seven points to 42 percent, from 49 last March. In the Pulse version, Aquino’s trust score dropped four points in May to 65 percent, from 69 in March. This is happening just as Aquino is closing his second of six years in office.

Palace aides would do well to check if it’s all due to early political realigning for the May 2013 congressional-local election. Although the congressional campaigning has yet to commence in February and the local in April, the contenders have begun to position themselves. This is because the filing of candidacies must be done by October, to suit printing deadlines for automated ballots.

The positioning is mainly for guaranteed party and financial backing. Aquino’s Liberal Party has been recruiting local politicians to bolster support for its senatorial and district representative tickets. So is the United Nationalist Alliance, composed as well of Aquino allies but who are not LPs. What’s shaping up in short is a fight not between the Aquino admin and the anti-Aquino opposition, but between two factions of the admin.

The LP-versus-UNA realignment reportedly is a bigger scale of what’s happening inside Malacañang. There the LPs in the Cabinet and the camp of Executive Secretary Jojo Ochoa reportedly have stepped up a turf war. It’s like the Balay-versus-Samar of 2010 all over again. During Aquino’s presidential run that year, his consigliores had split into two. One, under LP boss and VP running mate Mar Roxas, was headquartered in his family mansion, called Balay, in Cubao, Quezon City. The other established a separate war room on Samar Street, also in QC, to work not only for Aquino’s but VP Jejomar Binay’s victory as well.

Unintended casualties of the politicking are the President’s economic programs. The factions keenly are waiting to pounce on any mistake with which to point up the foe’s corruption. This makes both sides, and even the politically unaligned presidential aides, too careful to be able to function. In several major projects, potential financiers of either camp contend as bidders, then end up stalemated. Such is the case in the expansion of an international airport in Luzon and the erection of an elevated highway in Metro Manila. Stalled or ignored altogether are job creation, infrastructure works, housing, anti-poverty legislation, and tax reforms.

International raters and traders are praising Aquino’s drive against graft as magnets for investment. They didn’t mind waiting two years for the post-Arroyo cleanup. But Filipinos didn’t have the luxury of time. Thievery in government had left them poor and neglected since the last decade. They expected change as soon as Aquino became President in June 2010.

If this goes on, the second half of the Aquino Presidency will be as divided — all the way to the 2016 selection of his successor.

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