Backchannels must stay in the back

Spies are posted in part to extract information from, or disinform and thus confuse, the enemy. Ghostwriters are employed to craft in coherent terms the principal’s thoughts. Backchannels, in diplomacy and mediation, are dispatched as secondary routes to exchange information.

All are covert operators. A spy must keep secret or be ineffective. A ghostwriter must remain a ghost, never taking credit for accolades to the principal. A backchannel must stay in the back, never presuming to be the formal diplomatic authority. Only someone with an immense ego will talk about his confidential role, and deprive the principal the option of denying him. And it is wrong to expose a clandestine operator, be he a mere ghostwriter or a superspy.

So Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile is being slammed for outing Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV as the President’s backchannel to China. Critics say he should have kept himself to answering Trillanes’ allegations about being ex-President Gloria Arroyo’s stooge in gerrymandering Camarines Sur. Instead, he disclosed out of spite last week the notes of ambassador Sonia Brady about Trillanes’ trips to China. In doing so, his detractors say, Enrile declassified without authority a document marked red or Secret. Worse, he could have weakened the Philippine position. It showed China that the highest Philippine officials are fighting each other instead of having one voice.

Trillanes is being twitted too. Even before his special work for the President was exposed, Trillanes allegedly had been telling people about it. Just that, Senate beat reporters giggle, nobody believed him. Why should they, when Trillanes has no known grounding in diplomacy? He used to be a Navy lieutenant and so knew about recurrent maritime territorial friction with the giant neighbor. But precisely due to low rank, he was never in position to draft military, much more diplomatic policy, even if once assigned to the Naval Strategic Planning Office.

Only when Enrile blew Trillanes’ cover during their heated exchange did the public find out. President Noynoy Aquino did assign Trillanes in May as backchannel at the height of tension with China over the Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal. The month before, 36 Chinese poaching craft and government vessels had trespassed Philippine waters. Provoking war, they occupied the shoal throughout the summer, preventing Filipinos from fishing there as they’ve been doing for centuries. The Chinese ambassador kept promising a withdrawal that never happened (to this day). As Aquino detailed, it was at this point that Trillanes volunteered to backchannel. The Chinese had requested for the senator, and Malacañang felt it had nothing to lose by trying him out to ease tensions.

And so, by Enrile’s account, Trillanes went to China 15 or 16 times, disallowing Manila Immigrations to stamp his passport on departure and arrival. Not only that, Trillanes also denigrated Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and the latter’s department. Allegedly del Rosario committed treason in calling for U.S. support for the Philippine territorial claim. Too, Enrile revealed, Trillanes lectured Brady, then-ambassador to China, that the foreign office should stop representing the Philippines since he was already there. Supposedly Filipinos don’t care about Panatag Shoal, Trillanes told Brady. In a Cabinet meeting in July, which Enrile joined, Trillanes cut off del Rosario’s presentation and gave his own recommendations. None were accepted, but that didn’t stop backchannel Trillanes from desiring the role of foremost diplomat.

With the cat out of the bag, Trillanes bragged about his supposed accomplishment. He said he was able to get China to remove all its ships from the area. Actually it never did so. On the contrary, it continued to trespass in the oil-rich Recto Bank, and one of three trespassing warships ran aground in a reef off Palawan in July. The defense department attests that three Chinese government ships continue to occupy Panatag Shoal, and have even chained off the area to prevent Filipinos from entering.

Aquino too is being criticized. Supposedly he shouldn’t have acknowledged Trillanes as backchannel. For, foreign government might henceforth no longer deal with Philippine ambassadors and the foreign office, and instead ask to talk with the President’s backchannel.

Enrile now is demanding that Trillanes disclose his contacts in China and what he had committed to them. Indeed Trillanes must do so, if he has not already — to Aquino. That way, Aquino and his experts can assess Trillanes’ work. Surely Malacañang knows that China cultivates contacts among Filipino officials whom it can use at the right place and time. It got Gloria Arroyo to sign a Joint Marine Seismic Understanding in 2004, covering mostly the Palawan Sea — and calling it “disputed waters.” Then it bribed Arroyo tens of millions of dollars under the cover of such projects by ZTE Corp. as the national broadband network and the Diwalwal gold mining. Surely Trillanes, as a young senator with a long political career ahead of him, has strategic value to China.

Apparently discomfited by Enrile and Trillanes’ disclosures, Aquino has had to stress two things. One, that Trillanes never was part of diplomatic policy-making. Two, that his back channeling was limited to easing tensions over Panatag.

Still, Trillanes doesn’t seem to think he has done any wrong. He has not apologized to del Rosario or Brady for overstepping their work. He has stopped yakking only because requested by Aquino. Likely Trillanes will brag about other backchannel accomplishments in a tell-all autobiography.

Meanwhile, the President has learned a big lesson from the outing of a voluble backchannel. And that’s to appoint only illiterates from hereon. He can’t afford to have know-it-alls around him. For, the know-it-all has done everything there is to be done — except shut up about it.

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

E-mail: [email protected]