Turning yellow
| EDITORIAL |
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06/27/2012
Now is Noynoy’s chance to play hardball with China now that a Filipino fisherman has died after a fishing boat was supposedly rammed by what the Filipino boat crew identified as Chinese in an incident that happened very close to Scarborough Shoal where a standoff ensued between Philippine and Chinese vessels over rival territorial claims.
The incident happened well within Philippine territory, off Bolinao, Pangasinan, where there was no reason for a Chinese vessel to be present in the area, much more for it to ram a Filipino vessel.
It seems that without American imprimatur, Noynoy cannot act on his own in defending the country’s boundaries.
The standoff at Scarborough Shoal happened shortly after Noynoy received the Philippine Navy’s first decent warship for ages, a decommissioned cutter of the US Coast Guard, which was named BRP Gregorio del Pilar. As soon as the cutter arrived in the country, it sailed off to the disputed shoal to supposedly arrest Chinese fishermen who have long been using the shoal along with their Filipino counterparts without any trouble.
The sudden appearance of a Navy warship in the disputed area touched off heated diplomatic exchanges between the Philippines and China, with both sides maintaining the presence of government-owned vessels in the area.
China said the Philippines provoked the standoff but indicated its willingness to negotiate, however, the Philippines was adamant in insisting on a third party mediation and insisted further on the United States playing a role in it.
The US government was obviously in it from the start since the standoff happened while it was trying to drum up support for the Obama administration’s tack to pivot US military presence to the Asia-Pacific, which already had some Asian countries that are not used to hanging on to the coattails of the US to start complaining.
Noynoy was, in contrast, all for the American policy to rotate its forces in the region and the Chinese standoff and the seeming tough talk of Noynoy generated enough noise for other countries in the region to make their positions clear on the increased presence of the Americans in the region.
After a series of meetings between Philippine and American officials and deals were struck to concretize the policy to rotate American forces and commitments were made on American determination to keep “sea lanes open” for global commerce in the South China Sea, Noynoy appeared to have softened up on the standoff and ordered the pullout of Philippine ships in the disputed area citing the safety of the Coast Guard personnel due to a mild typhoon.
The Palace claimed the redeployment of ships in the area was being re-evaluated while insisting that a mutual agreement was reached with China for the withdrawal of ships.
Up to now Chinese government vessels are in the area and China had thanked the Philippines for the withdrawal of its ships and respecting its sovereign claim on the disputed area.
The thank you note appeared to have been carried by the claimed Chinese ship that rammed the Filipino fishing vessel.
Up to now, there is no official demand from the Philippine government on China to explain the incident which is perplexing since just recently Noynoy was very assertive on the territorial claim against China and vowed to defend the country’s stake in it with the scant hardware that the government had.
The Chinese Embassy even issued an insulting note about the incident with a tone that the story was all made up claiming that it had not received any reports or distress calls from any of its vessels during the day of the ramming.
It was the Chinese boat that rammed and sunk the Filipino vessel and the embassy was expecting a distress call from the Chinese vessel. How ridiculous can that be?
Also yesterday Noynoy supposedly told Ambassador to China Sonia Brady to offer the Chinese a hand of peace and end the standoff.
Noynoy should now be giving the Chinese hell for all he’s worth and not a yellow handshake.
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