DURING the strongman rule of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) was the premier, most respected agency of government. His foreign secretary, Carlos P. Romulo, was legendary in diplomatic circles, and the popular quip about him was that his towering intellect was in inverse proportion to his height.

By contrast, the son’s foreign affairs department has been so inept, his foreign secretary appearing to have stage fright so serious he has been virtually invisible.

The DFA, my sources claimed, wasn’t even consulted on the Marcos government giving the US access to four more of our military camps that Americans can use for a war effort.

TO save its officials’ time, the Foreign Affairs department might as well print a form for its notes verbale against China over the South China Sea disputes, with blanks to be filed up for the date of issuance, date of incident and location of the incident.

Chinese fishing vessels, whether you call them “militia,” and China Coast Guard ships will always roam the Spratlys, the big part of which is what we call the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and about three fourths encompassed by our ‘theoretical” exclusive economic zone (EEZ). (“Theoretical” as we haven’t passed a law defining it with precision, especially as it overlaps with the EEZs of Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.)

No matter how loud and often President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. cries to the world and the US that China and Vietnam are violating our sovereign rights when their vessels, civilian or government, sail through these waters without our permission, it won’t matter at all, our notes verbale will be the Chinese embassy’s toilet paper.

THE tragedy of the “EDSA People Power Revolution” involves three inarguable facts. It merely reinstated elite rule, and the political system that maintains their power. It allowed the growth of insurgencies that have scared away investments. It demonized the kind of state-directed economic policy responsible for the growth of the “Dragon and Tiger” economies of Asia.

The tragedy of EDSA is that it didn’t help us much in achieving economic growth on a scale our neighbors did.

First, while toppling a dictatorship, EDSA swiftly restored the Philippines’ anarchy of elite families that was the situation since the nation’s birth. This reality has always been and still is, though concealed through the scheme of popular voting that also prevents inter-elite conflicts from turning violent that would be disastrous for everyone.

YET this “solution” hit the headlines the other day, with most people not realizing its vast geopolitical ramifications, that it could finally end the possibility of war over the South China Sea disputes. It’s often referred to by its acronym RCEP, which makes it appear more inscrutable.

RCEP stands for Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, with the Philippines the 15th East Asian country to ratify it, just the other day — after China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore and eight Asean members in the past two years. It calls for the elimination of 90 percent of the member countries’ tariffs in a phased manner within 20 years of their ratification.

While its proponents boast that it will be the world’s biggest free-trade bloc, representing 30 percent of world GDP, hardly pointed out that China accounts for a huge chunk of this — 18.5 percent of the global economy. The shares of the other members of RCEP are far smaller: Japan 9.3 percent, Korea 1.7 percent, and Australia 0.9 percent. Except for its undiplomatic tone, it could be more accurately called the Regional China Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

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LAST Monday I wrote about how the International Criminal Court’s two prosecutors’ report on alleged widespread extrajudicial killings (EJKs) under President Duterte’s war on illegal drugs (WoD) were to a great extent based on biased and false articles in the news website Rappler, which was dedicated to demonize the former president. In short, it relied for its accusations on media accounts, which in a system of justice are mere hearsay, inadmissible as evidence.

More than 27 percent (116 out of 441 citations) of the sources the ICC used were from Rappler, which strived for six years now to portray Duterte as a bloody authoritarian. The ICC prosecutors swallowed hook, line and sinker that outfit’s claims, even if many of these — such as their false report on number of those killed — had been incontrovertibly proven to be false. Very anomalously, the ICC prosecutors didn’t cite articles in mainstream media that had been operating for decades and had proven to be accurate and objective, and which presented a different picture from what that website, just a few years old then, claimed.

The ICC based its recommendation to undertake a full-blown investigation of alleged EJKs during Duterte’s administration on three other sources that were nearly as fanatically partisan against the WoD as Rappler. These were Reuters’ reportage from December 2016 to mid-2017, as well as those also during this period by the Manila office of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

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THE International Criminal Court’s demand for an investigation of alleged widespread extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during President Duterte’s war against illegal drugs (WoD) is not only an intrusion into our sovereignty. If you read the two prosecutors’ June 2021 report* recommending the probe, you will be shocked:

It is totally based on biased media reports — legally hearsay in the justice system of civilized countries.

Indeed, in its September reply to the ICC prosecutors’ report, the Office of the Solicitor General pointed out: “The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) predominantly relied on media reports… and failed to explain its lack of consideration for government’s explanations.”

The OSG argued that this violated a provision of the Rome Statute that created the ICC, which requires the OPT to “investigate incriminating and exonerating circumstances equally.”

IN order to prevent the rise of China as the hegemonic power in Asia, the US has been maneuvering to make the Philippines its “Asian Ukraine” — that is, its proxy to provoke the Asian superpower to undertake aggressive actions against us or even the US Navy, in order to demonize it as the Evil Empire of the region.

Make no mistake about it: I condemn Russia’s near-genocidal war against Ukraine, a country poorer than us, killing tens of thousands of civilians and destroying Ukrainian homes and infrastructure that would take them as least half a century to rebuild. There is just no excuse for such horror inflicted on a country.

However there is consensus among Western scholars and observers that the US had provoked Russia, which calculated that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s moves to make his country a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) represented the last stages of its encirclement by the West.

I CERTAINLY hope it is just coincidental, but a Chinese coast guard’s recent blocking of a Philippine Coast Guard ship delivering supplies to a platoon of Marines stationed at the Ayungin Shoal (Second Thomas Shoal) could be China’s first response to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s recent moves to place the country in alliance with the United States.

Marcos on February 2 agreed to allow the US to use as it pleases four more of our military camps (on top of the five that President Benigno Aquino 3rd gave it in 2014) under the 2014 Enhanced Cooperation Defense Agreement. The Ayungin incident occurred on February 6.

The Chinese move was quite serious. The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) in a statement said that a Chinese Coast Guard vessel shone a “military-grade” green laser light twice at the Philippine ship, “causing temporary blindness to her crew at the bridge.” This is the first time the Chinese have done this.

“Temporary blindness” would be the least of the PCG’s worries.

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AND the boon is this: a media sympathetic to President Ferdinand Marcos, strengthening his hold on the Philippine press.

Marcos and the US defense secretary jointly announced last February 2 that the Americans would have four more of our military camps that they can use under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

So telling that in their first columns after this announcement, rabid Yellow anti-Marcos columnists praised him to high heavens.

One Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist, who had been vociferously against the elder Marcos as well, titled his piece “EDCA: Marcos, Jr.’s bold move.” He couldn’t contain himself lauding Marcos for his “decisiveness to raise and enhance the profile of the Philippines.” Another columnist in the same newspaper, a certified Yellow ideologue, on the same day titled his, “EDCA: Marcos Jr.’s game-changer move,” practically saying that Marcos’ big move will be the key in giving the Philippines the leverage to “confront China.”

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s stunning announcement last week that four more of our military camps may be used by the US armed forces in case of and a US war with China — this time directed to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion — endangers both our national security and our economy.

I discussed last Monday the rather obvious risk that the new agreement puts us in the Chinese line of fire in case of a war with the US. No other Southeast Asian country or territory has such US or any foreign military bases.

Congress in 1991 expressed the national consensus that Filipinos don’t want foreign arms and troops on our soil. The late President Benigno Aquino 3rd disregarded this consensus and agreed to allow the US to transform five military camps into theirs under the so-called 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). President Duterte in practice shelved it. Marcos has not only revived it, he has expanded it.