Memories of Vietnam and APEC-ASEAN Summits; Difficult solution for Rohingya crisis in Myanmar

WE were in Da Nang, Vietnam, for the recent Nov. 8-11, 2017 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, which was followed b y t h e N o v. 1 3 - 1 5 A s s o c i a t i o n o f Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila.

As a 19-year-old foreign correspondent for the first Asian news agency, the Pan-Asia Newspaper Alliance, and later as weekly columnist on Asian Affairs of the then Philippines Herald, we first flew to Da Nang in 1956 to cover the visit of then Vice-President Carlos P. Garcia, who was also Secretary of Foreign Affairs, for the Proclamation of the (South) Vietnamese Constitution and first anniversary of the Vietnamese Republic in Saigon (now renamed Ho Chi Minh City) under then late President Ngo Dinh Diem. We flew on President Ramon Magsaysay’s World War II-vintage C-47 (DC-3) plane, the Mt. Pinatubo, named after the Zambales mountain hideout of the Magsaysay’s World War II guerrillas.

We first flew to Hong Kong for a Philippine Consulate opening or anniversary there (we don’t exactly remember for that was some 61 years ago) and then flew to Saigon. We landed for refuelling in coastal Da Nang, which was then called Tourane by the French, who ruled Vietnam as a colony since the 19th Century, until the defeat of the French Foreign Legion and Army by the North Vietnamese Forces in the classic battle of Dien Bien Phu in North Vietnam. The French defeat led to the Geneva Agreement partition of Vietnam at the waist, along the 17th Parallel into North and South.

Later, President Diem and his family were killed by assassins and much later, the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong guerrillas overran the South, defeated the South Vietnamese Army and forced the pull-out of the 500,000 US Armed Forces, and reunited all of Vietnam in 1975. We were assigned in Saigon in 1966 as Minister and Economic Counselor of the Philippine Embassy in the beleaguered capital, and then retired from the foreign service at an early age of 32 to run as an independent candidate for Congress in Pangasinan, which, thank God, we won, as the incumbent Jack Soriano and the other official party aspirants had already been proclaimed. The Philippines had sent PHILCAG (engineering, civic action, and security battalions or some 2,000 troops) with Gen. Gaudencio Tobias as commander including then Maj. Fidel Ramos as one of his young senior officers (who later became Secretary of Defense and President).

We flew back to Manila from Saigon on the same Mt. Pinatubo C-47. The next year the plane crashed in a Cebu mountain, killing our most popular President in history, Ramon Magsaysay, a member of his Cabinet and staff, with only one survivor, then Philippines Herald Malacañan reporter Nestor Mata, who still writes a great column today for the newspaper Malaya.

In Vietnam, President Duterte and his Cabinet team included Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano and Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez, Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia, Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol, Presidential Assistant Bong Go, new Press Secretary Harry Roque, and Presidential Legal Adviser Sal Panelo. We were invited to join the team as the President’s Special Envoy to APEC and Intercultural Dialogue. The title seems high-sounding but is without salary. We told our wife, former Congresswoman Gina, it is high priviledge to serve the country even in our senior years at 81.

President Duterte sealed his personal friendship with US President Donald Trump during the Da Nang and Manila Summits. Trump initially pledged $16.3 million for the RP anti-drug war as he put an end to the deterioration in RP-US relations in the late Obama years.

In Da Nang, one of my great surprises as a former resident of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, is that with the great drive of the intrepid Vietnamese people, Vietnam has now a $32-billion trade surplus with the US, their old enemy in war.

Presidents Duterte and Obama had even closer interaction at the ASEAN, Summit in Manila where Duterte played host, even sang a love song at the glittering celebration for the 10 ASEAN Heads of State and presidents and premiers of ASEAN’s dialogue partners: US, China, Japan, Russia, India, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, European Council and the UN, represented by its Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The ASEAN Economic Community dream continues – to create a single market and insure the free flow of goods, services, investments, and skilled labor. Indeed the Philippines can look forward to further economic integration in the region.

One of the most important of the great commitments was the joint ASEAN. US, European Union (EU) pledge to protect and insure the freedoms of navigation and overflights, with great reference to the South China Sea. Even President Duterte’s after-dinner love song, dedicated to Donald Trump, was well applauded at the jampacked gala dinner.

At the ASEAN Summit, we had a memorable chat with our good friend Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s constitutional Senior Leader, the much-admired Nobel Peace Prize winner, head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won most of the seats in the last parliamentary elections.

The day before former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo honored her and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in a well-attended dinner in Clark Field, Pampanga after they landed on separate planes for the ASEAN Summit in Manila.

With Erwin Aksa, one of Indonesia’s leading young entrepreneurs, nephew of Indonesia’s two-times Vice President Yusuf Kalla, and great business leader, we confirmed our joint Philippine-Indonesian plan to develop up to 100,000 hectares of potential rice fields along Myanmar’s great rivers, under government-to-government and/ or private-sector auspices, to help supply the rice requirements of the Philippines and Indonesia, both of which are large rice importers for their burgeoning populations.

We had earlier discussed these programs in Myanmar’s new capital, Napyidaw, when Philippine Ambassador to Myanmar Eduardo Kapunan Jr., his lady, Elsa, and our wife Gina and we called on her, a few months ago to discuss this possibility to help supply the Philippines and Indonesian rice requirements.

Erwin Aksa, who travelled to the APEC and ASEAN Summits in Da Nang and Manila in his private jet, is on our Board of Directors at the Centrist Asia Pacific Democrats International (CAPDI) with his uncle, Vice President Kalla as Chairman, former President Fidel Ramos and Cambodian PM as Co-Chairmen Emeritus.

We have since sent information to President Duterte and Secretary of Agriculture Emmanuel Piñol on the proposed rice development plan for their consideration, and/or for private sector initiative, subject to Myanmar’s approval.

In our last conversation with Madame Aung San Suu Kyi during the ASEAN gala dinner, we indicated our personal support for her courageous yet controversial effort to work out with senior Bangladesh officials the safe repatriation back to Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine State of some of the 600,000 Muslim Rakhine refugees, who were forced to flee Myanmar to Bangladesh in the last few months and weeks to escape alleged persecution by members of the Myanmar Armed Forces. It is a most difficult problem and the whole world is watching. There are no easy solutions.