WHILE referring to life in general, Shakespeare’s famous quote applies so well to President
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration’s two-year chapter in trying to prove that we control
Ayungin Shoal and that we can supply the BRP Sierra Madre, deliberately grounded since
1999, not only with food that the Marines stationed there need but also repair materials for
the dilapidated vessel. Marcos Ayungin chapter has been “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing.”

The Philippines and China are back to former president Joseph Estrada’s agreement made
25 years ago with the Chinese, designed for both sides not to lose face. The Chinese won’t
forcibly remove the Sierra Madre that Estrada’s defense secretary had ordered the Navy to
ground there in 1999 as a symbol of our sovereignty, which Estrada didn’t authorize.

It was actually a silly idea. A Navy admiral, who knew nothing of international law, claimed
that it would still be in the Navy’s list of vessels (each of which is technically Philippine soil).
However, maritime law would classify it as a shipwreck, requiring the owner to remove it.

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s worst assertion in his recent State of the Nation Address was that the “West Philippines Sea is not fictional” (kathang-isip). He melodramatically, but in a jingoistic manner, claimed: “This is ours, and it will remain ours until our love for the Philippines is aflame.” Marcos is so blatantly wrong.

“WPS” is fiction, and I will stop writing forever if anybody can prove I am wrong. Worse, Marcos is maliciously tapping on Filipinos’ nationalist sentiments against another nation and ensuring US support to buttress his failing presidency. Emotional sentiments against other countries are not easy to reverse, making it extremely difficult for our country to resolve our territorial maritime disputes with China and Vietnam in the South China Sea.

It was the late President Benigno Aquino 3rd, the son of Marcos’ father’s archenemy, who demonstrated his utter ignorance of our territorial and maritime disputes in the South China Sea. Ironically, Marcos, in his SONA, announced to the world that he embraces the absurdity of this fiction invented by Aquino 3rd. Jedi master Obi-wan was certainly right when he rhetorically asked: “Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?”

Aquino 3rd created the “West Philippine Sea” through his Administrative Order 29 of Sept. 5, 2012, which defined the “West Philippine Sea” (WPS) as the western side of our exclusive economic zone (200 nautical miles from the “baseline,” roughly the outermost land points of the archipelago). It includes the waters “around, within and adjacent to the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and Scarborough Shoal.”

For starters, for the KIG to be part of the WPS is no longer tenable: our arbitration suit against China ruled that the KIG is as illegal as China’s nine-dash line, and we committed to comply with it.

We lost Scarborough Shoal to the Chinese even earlier, in May 2012, and China Coast Guard vessels routinely patrol it and drive away foreign vessels at will, as it claims the area is part of Chinese territory. How can we include it as our WPS?

THE claim that the arbitration suit filed against China in 2012 was a victory for us and the international rule of law is as blatantly false as the US allegation in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction so that Iraq had to be invaded and put under the American yoke.

It won’t take too long to prove how colossal this lie is, as incontrovertible facts are plain to see if one just removes the blinders created by the powerful American media, as they did in the case of the fictitious WMD.

Instead of a legal victory that strengthens the rule of international law, the suit led to the militarization by China and then by the US of the South China Sea, making our part of the world a powder keg that could make it a nuclear battleground for the two superpowers.

UNDER-REPORTED in the Philippine mainstream media, the US in April deployed to an unidentified military camp in Northern Luzon its state-of-the-art ground-based missile system consisting of a containerized system of four strike-length launcher cells and radar facilities linked to US satellites.

Called the Typhon Payload Delivery System, all it needs to create a nuclear Armageddon in the South China Sea are the nuclear-tipped missiles themselves — mid-range Tomahawk and SM-6 — to be inserted into the launchers and fired at its targets.

The aviationist.com website described the system: “The MRC (mid-range capabilities)/Typhon missile system comprises the SM-6 air defense missile tweaked for anti-shipping roles and Tomahawk subsonic cruise missiles for land targets, respectively. The system bridges the range gap between the 482-kilometer range Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) and the 2776-kilometer range of the US Army’s hypersonic Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW). In other words, it requires missiles to reach targets up to 1,800 km away.”

I HOPE gullible Filipinos, or those awed by the US media apparatus, found enlightening, and atrocious, the recent Reuters investigative report — confirmed by the Pentagon — that an American “psywar” command from 2020 to 2021 ran a black propaganda operation to discredit Chinese anti-Covid vaccines as ineffective mainly through social media*. (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/).

Analysts point out that this operation aimed at discrediting Chinese-made vaccines led to skepticism over all kinds of vaccines among Filipinos that could explain the fact that the country had the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia resulting in about 50,000 deaths.

If the US military can do this in the case of Chinese vaccines, they have done and are doing similar “psy-ops” over our dispute with China over the South China Sea in order to demonize it as a “bully” and an expansionist power. The Americans aren’t doing this to help us pursue our claims in that sea region but to paint China as the new Evil Empire, even if our Filipino servicemen are hurt or even killed. They will just segue to claim Taiwan is another “country” China would be bullying soon.

ON Monday, I wrote a piece whose title is its gist: “We have become a leaderless nation.” With certain recent developments, I rest my case. President Marcos can’t even set policy on an urgent issue facing the nation, our conflict with China.

His Defense Secretary, Gilberto Teodoro, has publicly defied his alter ego, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin who had announced a de-escalation in government’s rhetoric against China.

On June 17, China Coast Guard vessels had several inflatable boats block Philippine Coast Guard crafts from supplying the platoon of Marines at the BRP Sierra Madre grounded 25 years ago at Ayungin Shoal. The Chinese even got to board the Philippine boats, brandished pick axes and spears to puncture and deflate dinghies to sink them.