Diplomacy

It is nearly two weeks since the diplomatic crisis with Taiwan began. Through that whole period, President Aquino has not publicly addressed the matter.

In any other nation, when a diplomatic crisis breaks out, the Chief Executive quickly addresses his people. This is done to calm fears, set perspective, perhaps even lay down a policy response to the matter.

Addressing the people is not just an option for a head of government. It is a grave responsibility.

It is not that the President completely fell out of sight. He briefly emerged shortly after the elections to sign into law the K to 12 bill, a contentious law left in the shelf until after the voting.

We know he is somewhere in the Palace, but, like an ostrich, chose to bury his head in the sand regarding the Taiwan question. I recall a Palace functionary mumbling something about the restraints of our One-China policy preventing Aquino from publicly addressing the matter.

I fail, however, to find any sense in that excuse. The president of Taiwan, like the chief executive of the Hong Kong special autonomous region, is our partner in various international forums. No protocol is breached if we talk about the death of a fisherman after the cockpit of his ship was raked with machinegun fire.

The fact is, buried under many layers of diplomatic hypocrisy, we do have bilateral relations with Taiwan. The island powerhouse is one of our most important economic partners. We have over 80,000 Filipinos working there — whose safety and employment security are now in jeopardy.

The families of Filipino workers in Taiwan are worried sick over the safety of their loved ones. Our tourism sector is now counting the probable losses from Taiwan’s blacklisting of the Philippines. Businessmen are fidgety over the punitive measures imposed by Taipei. No one knows where the bottom of this quagmire is.

Presidential silence aggravates the anxieties.

The MECO chair, a small town politician named to a sensitive post, was tasked with conveying our hedged apologies to the Taiwanese people. His apology rejected, he was sent home. There is a thing to be said about the gravitas and the skills of people appointed to key diplomatic postings in this administration.

As was the problem in previous diplomatic crises, presidential silence is aggravated by the vacuous loquaciousness of those tasked to speak on his behalf.

Edwin Lacierda and Abigail Valte appear to have not yet realized that whatever they say in their daily press conferences will be taken as official policy positions. Day in and day out, in their version of the Punch and Judy Show, the two spokespersons somehow manage to utter the most incredible things.

Lacierda and Valte are fixed on a tit-for-tat mode. Addressing burning foreign policy controversies in that mode can only produce disasters.

Recall when China returned our banana exports last year. That produced great anxiety in communities dependent on our banana exports. I cannot recall now if it was Punch or Judy who declared that we will sell bananas to the Singaporeans as alternative to the mainland Chinese market. There is an arithmetic anomaly here. Even if we force-feed Singaporeans with our bananas all the days of the year, they cannot possibly consume the volume we sell to China.

Last week, when Taipei announced, as part of a package of punitive measures, no new migrant workers contracts will be accepted, the daring duo haughtily announced we will find alternative employment elsewhere for our workers. Well, we have been trying to do that for years and still could not find enough jobs for all Filipinos who wish to work abroad.

That cocky public posture is contradicted by the fact that we are working all the available backchannels to secure the highly skilled jobs Filipinos already hold in Taiwan. Instead of threatening Taiwan with a pullout of our workers, the diplomatic response was to call for restraint and then try to soothe ruffled feathers.

Instead of repeating the intrigue that Taipei’s reaction is politically motivated, we should focus on the official matter at hand. Good grief, the anger in the streets of Taiwan is real.

We now know that one of the major reasons our apology was rejected as insincere is that Valte, after announcing the apology on television punctuated it with her habitual smirk. That rubbed salt on the wound. It is the equivalent of President Aquino caught on camera smiling while inspecting the bus where Hong Kong tourists were just killed.

The question most asked these days: Who is in charge of managing the present crisis with Taiwan? Heaven forbid, could it be the silly duo speaking for the Palace?

Yes, who is in charge of managing this crisis, of evolving a coherent strategy to restore us to the robust, mutually beneficial relationship we had with Taiwan before this thing exploded in our face?

If there is no effective management and no coherent strategy in place, then Lacierda and Valte will just have to wing it. That is exactly what they have been doing since the crisis broke out.

Although this might not be evident, we should presume Lacierda and Valte know they do not make policy. We should also presume the two are well aware of the substantive differences between a public relations problem and a diplomatic problem. The tools for addressing either are very different.

It will be easier for us to presume regularity if someone tells us who the crisis manager for this is.