By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
Geopolitical analysts are still reading into China’s bold maneuver in the West Philippine Sea and are making a connection with the United States. While Beijing preaches stability and mutual respect among claimant nations over territories disputed in the South China Sea, it has been consistent in playing the bully’s role in the maritime region to which the US has strategic economic and military interest.
China couldn’t be any bolder in sending 200 maritime militia vessels into Philippine territory at Julian Felipe Reef (Whitsun Reef) with – as Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana puts it – “intent of occupying” maritime features well within our country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). It’s the same swarming done by China in January of 2019 at Sandy Cay, the sandbar close to Pag-asa Island.
International maritime security experts are all too familiar with this swarming as a military-police-civilian tactical operation of China. The Chinese embassy in Manila continues to mask this as a seasonal fishing expedition – one that has been unsuccessful in netting fish as it has in raising tension.
Last week, the Philippines started bombarding China with daily diplomatic protests over the continued presence of scores of its vessels in the area, which, as of this writing, has reportedly come down to 32 – still a malicious number. The other day, Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian was summoned by the Department of Foreign Affairs for the Philippines to express its “displeasure over the illegal presence.” But there has since been little or no sign of China taking a step back.
For this reason, I am moved to agree with analyst Carlyle Thayer, of the Australian Defence Force Academy, that China’s outsized presence in the WPS could be intended “to disrupt any possibility of getting the US alliance with the Philippines reinvigorated and demonstrate that the US has no strategy that would alter the status quo.” Question is: Will China’s stunt pressure President Duterte to completely break the Visiting Forces Agreement with its long-time ally?
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Make no mistake. Metro Manila, Cavite, Rizal, Bulacan, and Laguna are still very much “high-risk” areas for COVID-19 infection. Although the government has decided a shift to a less-restricted Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ) in what is now referred to as the “NCR-plus bubble,” none of the pandemic management indicators support the move.
Verily, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) was aware of this. However, it refrained from heeding the voice of experts like analysts from OCTA Research or medical frontliners represented by the Health Professionals Alliance Against COVID-19 (HPAAC). Instead, the government’s COVID-19 policy-making body chose to modify the already modified ECQ by issuing additional guidelines with a prayer that shortened curfew hours, limited resumption of public transport, a lesser capacity for common spaces, and a strong drive for home care of asymptomatic, mild and moderate cases of the infection would lower the caseload and ease overwhelmed hospital facilities and health care workers.
Even Malacañang never claimed it was a wise call, but only a “balanced decision” – whatever that means. The Duterte administration admits it was swayed to uncork from the lockdown because of economic concerns, e.g., keeping industries running, preventing loss of jobs and incomes, and government inability to sustain financial aid to unproductive families, among others.
We could say it was a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The deep blue sea might be quiet for now, but it could also be working up a tsunami that would burst the NCR-plus bubble. As we speak, COVID-19 patients needing critical care are being rushed to hospitals as far as Dagupan City. However “un-Christian” this may sound, not everyone with an oximeter reading of 90 can secure a room at the Philippine General Hospital like Harry Roque Jr. – especially if you spell your name without a “presidential” title.
Many people we know in our circles continue to die of this pandemic. Might I suggest that if we are to take matters into our own hands, that we secure our families in our homes as if an ECQ were still in force at least until the numbers whittle down to a level our health care sector could handle?
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