Pork barrels blocking our defense build-up vs China
War is imminent with Communist China. Seventy-seven percent of us Filipinos will fight for the motherland.
But our politicos pull us back. Dynasties plunder our meager food, health, education, even defense funds.
In 2024 Malacañang proposed only P50 billion for AFP Modernization. Congress slashed it to P40 billion. For 2025 Malacañang again sought P50 billion. Congress cut it to P35 billion.
The defense cuts went to congressional pork barrels. Both times President Bongbong Marcos went along with his supermajority legislators’ greed.
What can P35 billion this 2025 buy? Consider naval materiel:
• Two frigates from Korea, built 2019-2021, cost $554 million, or P28.25 billion. Not included: weapon systems, new berthing facilities and training.
• Two Agusta anti-submarine helicopters cost 100 million euros, or P5.3 billion, in 2019.
• A sea drone costs $250,000, or P15 million, including explosives and guidance cameras. An aerial drone, $19,000, or P1.14 million. With skill, five of those can sink an enemy warship.
China Communist Party’s two million-strong People’s Liberation Army has ground, naval, air, rocket, space and cyber forces.
PLA-Navy has 405 warships, excluding small craft for patrol, auxiliary, survey, replenishment and ceremonies.
Like PLA, China Coast Guard reports to the CCP Central Military Commission. CCG has 157 gunboats, some with missiles, all with 76-mm cannons, 50-caliber machineguns and anti-aircraft guns.
Monster ships 5901 and 5902 are each 12,000 tons, larger than naval destroyers, 8,000 tons. Each is 165-meters long, dwarfing the Philippine Coast Guard flagship BRP Teresa Magbanua.
Also reporting to CCP-CMC are 177 distant-water fleets of China Maritime Militia. Their 2,551 steel trawlers poach in the coasts of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and the Baltic, Antarctic, East and South China Seas.
We Filipinos can’t begin to match PLA toe-to-toe. Traitorous politicos pocket hundreds of billions a year for fake flood works and AKAP-TUPAD-AICS political “ayuda.”
During the Duterte admin they overpriced highway rock nettings and cat’s eyes 12 fold, and took 70 percent kickbacks from road and bridge works. Malacañang and security officials sided with Beijing against Filipino fishermen.
CCP-dominated National People’s Congress has enacted two laws of aggression. One, to subjugate Taiwan as a renegade province. Two, to annex the entire South China Sea under a ten-dash line, previously 11- and nine-dashes.
Xi Jinping, as president of China and chairman of CCP and CMC, stepped up hostilities in the West Philippine Sea last year.
He dispatched PLA-Navy, CCG and CMM vessels to ram PCG patrols and Philippine Navy resupply missions, PCG spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela sums up. PLA combat aircraft buzzed fisheries bureau light planes.
Xi ignores the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which grants coastal states up to 200 miles exclusive economic zone. As well, the 2016 Hague verdict rubbishing CCP’s illusioned 10-dash boundary that also encroaches on EEZs of Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, and all of Taiwan’s waters.
Recent events embolden Xi’s bellicosity. The other week the US voted with Russia, Belarus and North Korea against the UN General Assembly’s censure of Vladimir Putin’s three-year long invasion of Ukraine.
“For the first time in memory, US sided with the aggressor state against the victim,” notes retired SC Justice Antonio Carpio. “Russia and China’s long-term effort is to overturn fundamental international law, embodied in the 1945 UN Charter, outlawing use or threat of force to settle disputes between states. They have received a massive boost from the US.”
Xi closely watches the Ukraine War while supplying fuel and weapons parts to Putin. He believes that if Putin grabs Ukraine, then he too can grab East and South China Seas.
Xi targets to take Taiwan by 2027. He ordered PLA to advance its invasion capability by eight years from 2035. By 2027 Xi will be entering his fourth term as China president and CCP overlord. The People’s Republic will turn 80 in 2039, and CCP 120 in 2041. Milestones enamor CCP leaders.
Taiwan is vulnerable. The US State Department last month kowtowed to Beijing by stating it does not support Taiwan independence. Last week it deleted the sentence from its website to assuage anti-CCP Chinese in America.
China’s annexation of Taiwan will all the more threaten the Philippines. Only 97 kilometers, or 52.4 miles, separate Batanes from the island state. Aside from WPS, China will also grab the 46-mile wide Balintang Channel, Philippine waters between the SCS and the Pacific Ocean.
Xi covets such Pacific access. Last month he got South Pacific’s Cook Islands to accept dual use of civilian infrastructure by China’s military. New Zealand, Cook Islands’ half-century long protector, was taken aback.
In 2023 Xi got Solomon Islands to hire Chinese policemen for internal peace and order. Vanuatu and Kiribati welcome Chinese tourists and naval port calls. Nauru cut diplomatic ties with Taipei and warmed up to Beijing.
In late February, PLA-Navy held drills in waters between New Zealand and Australia, then split up to enter the two countries’ EEZs.
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