Those Chinese missiles are for us, silly

SECRETARY Alan Peter Cayetano’s reign at the Foreign Affairs department has not been a smooth ride mostly because of President Duterte’s war on illegal drugs. The former politician, who is now the country’s top diplomat, has spent a lot of time since taking over from the unfortunate Perfecto Yasay, deflecting criticism from the international community against the bloodletting that has attended the execution by the Duterte administration of his campaign promise and flagship program.

Cayetano has his hands fuller now for two main reasons, the first occurring outside of the country and, in all probability, with his knowledge and the second taking place at home without his participation or, there was at all, was very little.

Good, in fact noble, intentions launched the Philippine embassy’s rescue operations for abused Filipino domestic helpers in Kuwait. Any other foreign affairs secretary would have felt as I’m sure Cayetano had, that he couldn’t stand idly by while his compatriots were being beaten, starved and otherwise robbed of dignity by their foreign employers.

The operations were fraught with danger, not the least of which was its discovery by the host country. But everything went well, the Kuwaitis were caught napping in their own backyard until an embassy official decided to upload the videotape of the rescue job which was taken supposedly for their protection, just in case the Kuwaitis got wind of the operations and one of the employers — or the workers — screamed kidnapping.

That single act of idiocy has resulted in the expulsion of the Philippine ambassador from Kuwait, the detention of four embassy workers and arrest warrants for three embassy officials. The Kuwaitis realized that they had been stabbed from behind and were understandably enraged. Our relations with the country that employees some 260,000 Filipinos could be at their lowest.

While Cayetano was trying to mend fences with the Kuwaitis, another controversy arose, this time involving the Chinese who deployed missiles in three Philippine reefs in the West Philippine Sea while everyone else was sleeping. This was clearly a breach of Philippine sovereignty, a matter that is right down the foreign secretary’s alley.

The Senate foreign relations committee will investigate this latest act of Chinese land-grabbing. Senate President Koko Pimentel has been quoted as saying that they want to know what happened and how the government, through the DFA, intended to handle the situation. That means that they will have to invite Cayetano, who, however, is probably as clueless as we are on how the missiles ever got to the three Philippine reefs undetected.

The senators should spare their former colleague and talk to his boss instead. In Davao City on Friday, Duterte assured the nation of China’s noble intentions. “China said, ‘we will protect you. We will not allow the Philippines to be destroyed. We are just here and you can call four help anytime’.”

So there. Those missiles are for us, not against us. They are meant to thwart any threat of external aggression to the Philippines. But threat from whom?